I’ve Read Exactly 40 Books Over the Past Two Years and These Are My Top 10 Titles

The 10 Best Books I’ve Read Over the Past Two Years

Travis W. King
8 min readJan 23

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I read on my kindle every single day. I rent ebooks to my kindle from a library back in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I grew up. If you don’t know this hack, I explain how it works and how much it’s saved over the past ten years of traveling and living abroad in this piece. (Books are between $10-15 bucks on average so you can do the math.)

Earlier this week I used the email notifications from my library to search back to the beginning of the year and record each title that I rented electronically and then finished. I did this same process at the beginning of 2022. What I found most surprising (and charming) this time around, on the second go at this new yearly ritual, is that I read the exact same amount of books in each of the past two years.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

I read every morning and every evening, on average for about 45 minutes a day. It allows me to set the pace and tone for my day in the morning. In the evening, it allows my active mind to find a pillow, get lost in a story, and then drift into a dream state. I’ve read like this for the past two years.

Nevertheless, it’s still very surprising that my routine resulted in exactly 20 books finished two years in a row. Books are all different lengths and depths and such, you know?

However this Christmas-reading-miracle came to pass, it feels nice—like grabbing the right amount of hangers from the closet or running out of gas at the gas station. It’s as satisfying as pushing in the last puzzle piece.

It has also allowed me to easily reflect on the titles that have made the biggest impact on me in the past two years.

Here are my 10 favorite.

Note: I’ve also shared a more complete version of this post—which includes my entire reading list for the past two years—with my audience on Substack if you want to check it out!

Here are my top 10 books from from the past two years, in no particular order:

1. Wave

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Travis W. King

Traveling, writing, & working abroad for 10 years. Former Remote Year Dir. of Community. Check out my travel memoir—Not That Anyone Asked—at www.traviswking.com
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