New Year 2026
It’s a new year and I’m finding myself planning out books I want to read and projects I want to complete. I guess it is the time of year for reflection and planning.
Books of 2025
In years past I’ve put together a list of books that I want to try and complete for the year, allowing some room for spur of the moment decisions throughout the year. I usually at least complete the list of “new” reads I want to finish, but the “re-reads” tend to get left behind a bit.
I only finished 19 books total for 2025, which is a bit low for me from past years but there were some big books on the list. It started off with Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson, which clocks in at 62h and 48m for the audio book. I also finished up The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey. I had about 7 of those in total, including Memory’s Legion, which is a collection of all the novellas. There was also The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb and Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry.
One of my favorite reads for the year was probably Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I read The Martian by him in 2024 and figured I’d try and get Project Hail Mary in ahead of the movie. It was great and I’m looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I love the way Weir approaches problems from a scientific angle, but does so in a way that you don’t need an advanced degree to understand. And I love the humor he imparts in his books. If you’ve seen or read The Martian, there was a very similar sort of humor and problem solving involved in Project Hail Mary.
For re-reads, I finished up the original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov, and a couple of the Bachman Books from Stephen King; The Long Walk and The Running Man. I wanted to get a re-read of those in before seeing the movies, which I still haven’t seen yet. The trailer for The Running Man feels like it is a lot closer to the book than the old Arnold film was.
2026 book goals
For 2026 I decided to do something a bit different. Instead of trying to pick x number of specific books, I just threw together a list of books I wanted to use as an initial pool to draw from rather than hard goals to finish specific book. I included 43 books containing both new reads and re-reads. My goal is going to be to try and read at least 20 books this year, with 3-5 of those being re-reads, and I would like to try and explore at least 2 new authors. As always, it’s ok if I stray from the list. I never want to limit myself if I get the urge to read something that’s not on the list later in the year. These merely serve as a snapshot of what I’m feeling like at this point in time.
I’m feeling pretty confident of meeting my goal this year as there are probably going to be some shorter books on the list. The first one I started was Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved his Children of Time series and wanted to explore more from him. It’s a novella so I’ll finish it up quick, but so far I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. My current plan is to follow that up with a couple other shorter books like The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi and The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.
Outside of those, I’ll probably try and finish up some of the Foundation prequel novels, or maybe continue my Dune series re-read with Children of Dune. Maybe some more re-reads of The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. For longer books, I’ve got things like The Poppy War trilogy, which would count towards a new author for me as I’ve never read anything from R. F. Kuang. I’d also like to tackle the next series in the Robin Hobb books, The Rain Wild Chronicles. Maybe the Age of Madness series from Joe Abercrombie. I’m not going to tie myself down to anything specific beyond the next 2-3 books.
Woodworking projects
We recently moved into a new house and there are a ton of projects to work on to really make it our own. There are some backyard projects that will need to wait until the spring thaw, but I’ve got a couple I plan on starting soon.
To start with, I need a new workbench. The old house had a workbench built into a corner near some shelving. It basically just became a bench to throw everything on and wasn’t really a work bench as I never actually did any work on it. I want this new place to be different. I don’t have as much garage space as I had hoped for when looking at a new place, so I’ll have to try and keep things simple. My ultimate goal would be a movable bench on locking wheels that I could move around as needed. To start with, I’m going to create a simple 2’x4’ top and use a centipede stand to set it on. I’m going to use 2 layers of 3/4" plywood. I will then route out some T-Tracks and drill a bunch of dog holes so that I have plenty of clamping options. I could probably get by with just a single thickness of plywood, but I’d like to be able to use a bit longer screws to secure the T-Track to the top and if I route a 3/8" groove for them, that doesn’t leave a lot of space. Making the overall top 1.5" thick will also give it a bit more weight so it hopefully stays in place nicer. There will be handles cut out on either edge and I’ll setup a spot on the wall where I can hang it when not in use. I’ve got it all planned out in FreeCAD and will probably get a start on it this weekend.
Once I get the bench together, I’ll put it to use by starting to put together a corner table. We replaced a sectional with a sofa and loveseat and we want something to place in the corner between them. I haven’t started plans on those yet, but will probably get that started soon. I’ve got ideas for how I want it all to come together, but nothing concrete yet.
Blog ideas
I’ve been tossing around a few ideas for the blog for 2026. One thought was to maybe test out a different desktop environment or window manager each month. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I feel like I’m finally getting my Hyprland setup to a good spot and I am not sure I want to jump to something else yet. I have been seeing some things on Niri that I may want to check out, so that may become a thing. I can’t guarantee I’ll use a new DE/WM each month, but I’ll see if I can at least play with something new each month that might be worth recording my experiences. I’ve spent a lot of time getting Neovim setup, so there may be a blog post coming on that.
So I guess for now I’ll at least commit to giving Niri a try sometime this month. I don’t know how in-depth I’ll go on it, but maybe I’ll love it and it will become my new favorite window manager. Similar to my book reading goals, I’m not going to try and plan anything out too far beyond the next thing. Instead, I’m going to let 2026 flow like a gentle stream and not think too far beyond the next bend.