2026 Mid Year Freakout Book Tag!

We take a break from our regularly scheduled novella reviews for my very delayed mid-year check in. This was created by Read Like Wildfire, though I pull in some of my own mid-year traditions from before I started blogging. It has been a pretty phenomenal year of books, and July has possibly been the best of the year. Fingers crossed it only gets better!

Best Books I’ve Read This Year

There was so much good stuff I’ve read this year! I felt like I had to leave off some absolute bangers to keep this even somewhat reasonable. The others will be shorter, I promise.

The Iron Below Remembers is a great superhero x academia mashup that is kind of indescribable; utterly unique and brilliant. The God Eaters and The Long Game scratched my Romance itch (I am unabashedly a Heated Rivalry fanboy, and think its a great example of how m/m and queer fiction can go hand in hand). The Memory of Ogisi and To Ride a Rising Storm were phenomenal sequels to series that I was already a fan of. Tongues is one of the more experimental comics I’ve read, and I’m a sucker for Greek Gods. Finally, Asunder and Party of Fools had impeccable atmosphere: the first as a Studio Ghibli style fantasy/horror hybrid, and the latter as a silly romp of a book.

Quick Stats

Apologies for the lack of Pie Charts this year. I need to wrangle my google sheet manager into better shape, because it has broken more and more as the years have gone on. Data is not a strength of mine.

Books Read: 152!
This is about the amount that I read all of last year. Of these 130 were prose and 22 were comics.
DNFs: 7
This is a combination of me being pickier with my books and also my stubborn brain. There were definitely a few I should’ve dropped instead of pushing through.
Average Book Length: 310 Pages
I kind of thought this would be shorter? I’ve read a good amount of novellas, which you would think would bring down my numbers. My shortest reads were some erotica novelettes, and Dungeon Crawler Carl dominated the long end of my reading list.
Top Genres: Fantasy (52%), Science Fiction (22%), Romance (19%)
This is wholly unsurprising, especially since I tend to be romance heavy in early winter. I did think I was reading more horror this year, that is not a reality.
Authors By Gender: Male (48%), Female (40.6%), Genderqueer (6.3%), Multiple Gender Teams (4.9%).
I’d like to read more genderqueer authors, but otherwise I’m mostly satisfied with this. Especially because I’ve been trying to prioritize gay fantasy by queer men, I had anticipated the male/female gap being bigger.
Authors by Race: White 73.6%, Asian 12.8%, Black 9.6%, with everything else below 2%
This I’m much less happy with. I used to read a lot more diversely, but the decline has coalesced with me doing a worse job of looking at my stats regularly and also the increase of Achillean stories I read. While there’s absolutely Achillean Fantasy out there by authors of color, its a lot less common proportionally than the general fantasy/science fiction publishing scene.
Book Origin: Purchased (67.3%), Library Checkout (28%), Classroom Library (4.7%)
I’ve been reading a lot of adult stuff, so it makes sense that my class library reads are down. I feel like I read hundreds of them a year though, with how much I talk with students about what they’re reading. I could give you the plot of so many books that I haven’t read, but which a student has fallen in love with.

Authors I Want to Read More Of

All three of these authors have a deep catalog that have crushed my dreams of keeping my TBR low. Illona Andrews had one book I adored and another I liked well enough, but their breakneck pace and easy readying quality mean that they will be a pick when I get stressed. Cassandra Khaw‘s prose is simply divine; their use of atypical words gives their writing such a unique vibe. Finally, Juni Ba‘s art style and narrative focus in the Monkey Meat series had me immediately purchase more of his comics.

Please Don’t Let This Be Your Only Book!

North Continent Ribbon was unlike anything I ever read with how it married short and long form storytelling techniques to build something utterly unique. Call and Response left me interested in what Caldwell could do with a full length novel, as his ability to capture intensely personal stories in such a short page space was impressive. Finally, Kalyna the Soothsayer (and its one sequel) both got me thinking about Fantasy in ways fiction doesn’t. Book 2 in particular was a delightful fucked up little trolley problem.

Under-read Gems

Do you like dragons? Do you like illegal street racing? Do you like worldbuilding and characterization via a Journalistic Report on Illegal Dragon Street Racing? Brimstone Slipstream has only 6 ratings on goodreads, and that is a crime. A CRIME!

The other two made my favorites of the year so far, and are obviously well worth a read. Certainly I’ll pick up more McCloud, and I really hope Biswas writes more (honestly this novella could fit on almost any one of these sections. It’s that fucking good.

Gayest Books of the Year

And by Gayest I mean … capturing the essence of what queer masculinity looks like? Obviously there’s no one way to be a gay dude, but these resonated with me despite having three very different writing styles and protagonists. A Taste of Honey is one of the few femme leads I’ve seen in fantasy and captures the moments in your life that define you. The Fall of Kings is a delightful bit of medieval academics bickering about whether magic is real or not. And Disco at the End of the World is a book that I can only recommend to those interested in the underground gay scenes in 1970s America. Mostly because everything else about that book was a hot mess, but holy shit does Nathan Tavares know how to write queer men like nobody else.

I’m a bit sad a Romance isn’t on this list, to be honest. Even the ones that rank higher overall in my esteem didn’t quite scratch this particular itch as well as these three did. All of them have romantic elements, but none are genre romances.

Books so Good I Had to Come Back to Them

Simon Jimenez remains my favorite author of all time, and The Spear Cuts Through Water is the best epic fantasy ever written (I said what I said, and yes I know these are fighting words). You and Me is a comfort romance about two single dads that makes me cry my fucking eyes out. Finally, I’ve loved how much Dungeon Crawler Carl has gained massive attention, and I cannot wait to run a game for my tabletop roleplaying game group using the world as inspiration.

Biggest Disappointments

All three of these were in my list of most anticipated releases of 2026, and none even approached my lowest expectations. I’d loved previous works by Tavares and Pueyo, but these two books both had major issues. I’ll still read any book Tavares puts out, but the tonal dissonance in Disco was rough. An Accident of Dragons meanwhile, was a cozy fantasy that saw a man’s daughter kidnapped and he just … kind of went with it? I get that you don’t want cozy fantasy to feel anxious, but that was an odd choice that didn’t work for me at all.

Favorite Visual Art

The top three are my favorite covers. Actually The Subtle Art of Folding Space is one of my all time favorites, and put me onto the absolute genius that is Weston Wei. The book was one of my few DNFs though. Works of Vermin captures the book’s ‘bugs and perfume’ essence perfectly. Meanwhile The Memory of Ogisi perfectly represents the horror and isolation the book evokes.

For comics, from left to right there’s

Drome: a straightforward hero story elevated by the art taking center stage to push plot forwards. The use of cubes was really cool.
The Many Deaths of Laila Starr: for its color choices to manipulate the mood of the reader. A very vibes based coming to terms with death.
Monkey Meat: Ba’s artwork is sunday morning cartoons, mixed with a really great critique of capitalism. It’s a cool marriage, and these books are unhinged

Books that Broke My Brain

Sea of Grass is one of my few nonfiction reads of the year. It made me fall in love with the great plains all over again, and the incredible harm we have brought to our landscapes in America. Lanny captured the feeling of living in a small town using writing techniques I’ve never seen before. Finally, Autobiography of Red is the type of story I just couldn’t wrap my head around, and I think most of it flew way over my head.