Friendly podcast host and esteemed time waster Trav here to share a bit about what I read this year. Thanks to my good buddy and Polykill Patreon Discord member Burgerchamp, I was inspired at the end of 2020 to read more books. In 2020 alone, I think Burgerchamp ingested around 200 books into his enormous, high-functioning, trivia riddled brain. When I went to goodreads.com to rate all the books I had read in my life, I think I was at 174 total. He read more books during a global pandemic than I had read in my entire 35 years. He wasn’t even in prison and still read that many books.

I set a goal to read 60 books in 2021. That’s a lot of books for a guy who skips videogame dialog that has three lines or more because reading is boring. But, since I like goals and I like learning stuff, I figured it was time to break the bonds of “but I don’t wanna” and tackle a new kind of backlog. It turned out to be no issue. I completed 61 books before Thanksgiving.

“Trav!? 61 books?! Did you go to prison?! How do you have the time?”

Look, no one went to prison. Audiobooks count. As Burgerchamp once said, “If you don’t think they count, quiz me.” Except, please don’t. I also read a few physical books as well, just to prove I was still capable.

I anticipate Burgerchamp will grace us with his reading superlative list at year’s end but since I finished my goal early AND this website needs written content, I’ll go first. I learned throughout 2021 that I like reading about a few topics in particular. True crime is a longtime favorite (thanks mom) (no, she didn’t kill anyone, she just passed her fascination down to me), harrowing survival stories, ultra runners, maritime tales, autobiographies, self improvement, thrillers, video games, books my friends wrote, and Stephen King (he ignores my Facebook requests).

I’ve sorted my recommendations by general topic and highlighted a few books in each category that I think are worth mentioning. I hope you find something here you take a chance on and enjoy!

True Crimes

In 2021 I read Harold Schechter’s Maniac about a guy who blew up a school in Bath, Michigan in 1927. What a fucking douche. I also read David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon about wealthy members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma and how they started disappearing after oil was discovered beneath where they lived. There are some douches in this one as well.

Ann Rule was my mom’s favorite true crime author and now she’s mine as well! Not to mention, most of her books are narrated by Laurel Merlington and I wish she were my grandmother or just anyone who whispered to me into the night about murder. Rule liked to write a lot of true crime compilations and I finished two of those and I’m currently partway through a third. Lying In Wait and You Belong To Me are both pretty solid. I recommend any and all Rule books. They, er, rule.

Loosely associated with Ann Rule is John Douglas. Douglas is the esteemed FBI profiler that the Netflix series Mindhunter is based on. I got to see Douglas speak in person once and he’s a real tall sexy treat. He’s obviously super smart and is unexpectedly a funny guy despite all the horrors he keeps locked away in his head. I read his book The Anatomy of Motive and it’s as good as the rest of his stuff, if not a little retread.

I also read Jax Miller’s Hell In The Heartland about two Oklahoma teenagers who went missing after a house fire that killed the parents of one of the girls. It was blamed on the girls first, then the dad for twenty years until some new evidence came to light recently that pointed in a different direction and to some different douches. True crime aficionados may be familiar with the names Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible. This went down in 1999 when I was 14 years old and I would have been a better investigator at the time. Infuriating.

The best true crime book I read was one I didn’t see coming and resulted in no murders. The Stranger In The Woods by Michael Finkel was a riveting story about a man living alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years. He survived by breaking into people’s vacation homes while they were gone and stealing their food. It’s incredibly fascinating and hard to put down. I pooped in the woods once and it traumatized me so bad I still can’t lock eyes with a tree without being overwhelmed with immense shame. This guy made a life out of it.

Video Game Books

I know what ya’ll want. This year I enjoyed Jamie Madigan’s Getting Gamers. It dives into the psychology of why games are fun. If you already enjoy video games, you won’t be blown away by any of the insights here but if you enjoy psychology, then this speaks both languages (gaming and textbook psychology) in a relatable and easy to understand way. On a similar note, I read The Gaming Mind by Dr. Alexander Kriss and if you want more of the same, it’s not bad either. I would recommend Getting Gamers over it, though.

I also read four of the Boss Fight Books. I read Bible Adventures by Gabe Durham, Super Mario Bros. 2 by Jon Irwin, Earthbound by Ken Baumann, and Silent Hill 2 by Mike Drucker. I’m a huge fan of Mike Drucker (follow him on Twitter to laugh) and his book was solid but I think the BFB I enjoyed most was Bible Adventures. Maybe it’s the lowrent NES historian in me, but I found the development and mission behind those games to be fascinating. It’s a quick read if you’re feeling up to it.

I think my favorite video game book of the year goes to Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat, and Pixels that highlights the development hurdles of some well known video games released in the last decade. Schreier shares some behind the scenes anecdotes you won’t find elsewhere. Stardew Valley, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Destiny are all games I’ve never played but hearing how they came together and the circumstances leading to their finalizations was massively intriguing.

Autobiographies

I read five autobiographies this year. The persons of interest were Tina Fey, John Cleese, Kevin Smith, Joe Perry, and Ben Franklin. A strange grouping of people, I admit. Imagine if they were all cast to star in the same sitcom though! That could be fun. Anyway, they’re all great reads! I’m having a hard time choosing one over the other. Tina Fey’s and John Cleese’s are expectedly hilarious. Unfortunately, Cleese stops short of detailing his life and times with the Pythons so that’s a bummer. Joe Perry pulled no punches in detailing his trials, tribulations, ups, downs, addictions, fall outs, and sweet emotions of his time before, during, after, during again, and as he ages along with Aerosmith. Similarly, Kevin Smith’s is as raw as his early films and highly inspirational. Ben Franklin was smart and stuff.

Check these out:

John Cleese, So Anyway...
Tina Fey, Bossypants
Ben Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Joe Perry, Rocks
Kevin Smith, Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good

Tales of Survival

I love reading about people nearly dying and then not doing that because only those people can write that story. Dead people can’t write anything and very alive people have never experienced anything as crazy as nearly dying that I want to read about. They’re not all winners though, especially if the tales are written about a hundred years later and made into a boring textbook account. I read about people getting abandoned on an island after a shipwreck in 1864 (Joan Druett’s Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World) and that was boring as hell.

I also read Lost in the Wild by Cary J. Griffith about a guy who got separated from his group in Onatario’s Quetico Provincial Park in 1998. And that sucked too. Seriously, fight a bear or something. No one was there, that guy could have made up anything more interesting than being lost and then being found.

There are some stinkers in every genre. Thankfully, I fit two classic bangers in the rotation this year. If you haven’t, you must read Alive by Piers Paul Read. With a name like that, he was born to write! It’s the story of the rugby team that crashed in the Andes and had to spend ten excruciating weeks in the frigid mountains eating each other before they were found. It’s an incredible story.

I followed Alive directly with Adrift and it also kicked ass. This was one written by the survivor himself (finally), Steven Callahan. Imagine floating in the middle of the Atlantic ocean on a raft for over a month and no one knows you’re missing. It’s a must read if you have any ounce of adventure-seeking in your soul. It also made me afraid of the bathtub. Sharks could be anywhere and everywhere.

Ultrarunners

I ran a 25k recently so naturally I’m an elite runner now and must read all books concerning the matter. But seriously, it’s crazy to think that a race I took over a year to prepare for is a mere warm up lap for people who run hundreds of miles at a time in the desert or on the south pole, both of which I read about.

I read Adharanand Finn’s The Rise of the Ultra Runners and Matt Fitzgerald’s Running The Dream. Both are okay if you’ve already read a bunch of other ultra runner books and want to hear more about crazy gazelle people who pee their pants on the move and think it’s fun. The must reads are Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run and Dean Karnazes’s Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. Karnazes is basically not a real human being because he has a special gene that increases his pain tolerance but if you want to mix ultra running with a Marvel comic book hero then he is your guy.

Born to Run is an amazing book all people should read even if they think running is for pro athletes and refrigerators. McDougall researches a remote Mexican village of people who are known for ultra running without any modern high tech gear enjoyed by thousands of professionals around the world. No shoes, no energy drinks, no specialized cross-training. Just feet, ground, and water. How?

Fictions

Fiction was more difficult for me to click with via audiobook at first because my mind tends to wander and without some grounded reality to bring me back, I’m often lost in the details. I take pills to fix this now and lately I’ve been able to focus and enjoy a number of fiction weaves!

Some standouts include Michael Koryta’s Those Who Wish Me Dead that was just released as a movie this year. The book was recommended to me by Burgerchamp and the Burger don’t miss. It’s a fun read that is just over-the-top enough to still be believable but crazy enough to be memorable. The movie is, well, a movie. The book is better! It’s about a kid who is being hunted by professional killers because he witnessed a no-no. And if you like the true crime bent of that one, Riley Sager’s Survive The Night is a hard-to-put-down thriller about a young woman who needs a ride home from college in the early 90’s and thinks she’s in a car with a serial killer the whole time. It seems geared toward a younger audience but fun is fun and it was fun.

I also read classic books that I had already watched movies of. I read Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. All were really dang good. I even read Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story and honestly, he should’ve ended that motherfucker at the same point they ended the movie. End your stories, Ende! It’s in your name!

I read three Stephen King works including The Outsider, If It Bleeds, and The Institute. Of all three, I think I enjoyed The Outsider the most. It starts as a mysterious true crime tale and devolves into dark chaos as King likes to do. The Institute is great if you’re looking for that classic Spielberg-ian “band of young kids coming together to take on the world” kind of tale.

For my plunge into 1996 I read John Grisham’s Runaway Jury which is among the slower burns I’ve endured in my life. The payoff was nice but I’m not sure it was worth it. I also read Michael Crichton’s Airframe and really loved it. It would make a horrible movie but it was a nerdy thriller with plenty of engineering references. It was twisty and exciting enough to suit me just right. Highly recommended if you like math, conspiracies, and a time before TSA lines.

In Closing

My literary eyes and ears were opened this year. I’m so happy I took on this goal and I plan to knock out 60 more next year. There are special kinds of mental adventures that are afforded through books that you don’t get elsewhere. Sometimes movies aren’t good enough, video games are traditionally poor story tellers, and your grandpa’s stories are too repetitive and perverted. I encourage you to read more books in 2022. Join goodreads.com, set a goal, and read a variety of books. Join our Discord’s new #get-lit channel to get your literature on!

There are so many more books I didn’t get to mention in detail here that I would have liked to but what do you want? For me to write my own book? No thanks.

Before you go...

If you want to read a wild, chaotic tale about a horny gas station attendant check out Ryan W. Bradley’s Code for Failure. If you’re interested in a horror short story with a western setting that isn’t remotely horny but very fun, find the #1216 issue of Cheapjack Pulp and read the second story by Dylan Charles. I read both of these in 2021 and they were great reads written by great dudes.

I Read 60 Books This Year Like A Dweeb: Here are some recommendations