When I first decided to do a Books & Bakes read-a-thon, I purposely set my personal goals on the low side. One, because this would be the first time I’ve tried something like this so I wasn’t sure how well it would be received. And two, because it always feels better to exceed a goal rather than barely make it (or miss it completely).
That’s why I told myself I’d be happy if I raised a couple hundred bucks for Cake4Kids, the charity that provides home-baked birthday cakes to underserved youth and that I’ve been baking for over the past two years. I figured that I could read twenty books between July 4 and Labor Day, so with people pledging even a dollar per book, that would be achievable.
Ultimately, we reached ten times that initial goal with $2,180 in pledges as of Labor Day.
First I want to thank everyone who pledged their support this summer. I also want to extend special thanks to Michael Kaplan, Andrew Le, Cavin Le, Sarah Louppe Petcher, Luc Lucas, Peter Parente, Don Patterson, Rob Ross, Geoffrey Schramm, and Bob Witeck for their generous contributions.
I also reached my personal goal of reading twenty books over ten weeks. To be honest, it got a little tight toward the end as I picked up a few books with more than 500 pages — that’s why I’ll be playing a little bit of catch up here sharing some thoughts on everything I read. But, with one minor exception, they were all entertaining and some I expect I’ll be re-reading in the future.
Here’s a graphic rounding up all the books plus my rankings, as well as a collection on Books & Bakes stats, such as total number of pages read, average pages read per day, and more. (Text versions of both lists are at the end of this story.)
Thank you for following along. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the books I’ve read — and I have more to share with you over the coming days — because I’ve truly enjoyed the whole experience. I’ve learned a lot, as well, that I’ll carry into next year’s Books & Bakes.
Stumbling Into Dungeon Crawler Carl
One unexpected thing that happened during Books & Bakes was falling into the rabbit hole of Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman’s sci-fi satire series that initially blew up as a self-published work on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited and has grown into a traditionally published bestseller with a TV series coming in the near future to Peacock.
I’d been vaguely aware of the books for a while but had declined to explore them. Not because they’re self-published or on Kindle Unlimited — that would be dumb since my own book is there — but because it just didn’t sound like my thing. It sounded, well, silly and I had some very serious literature to read.
Snobbery sneaks up on me sometimes, I’m embarrassed to say.
Then I heard about the deal to turn it into a show. Then I saw that friends and other writers were raving about it. What the hell, I thought, let’s give it a shot. It’s free, after all. So I downloaded Dungeon Crawler Carl to my Kindle.
Next thing I knew, I had feverishly finished the second and third books in the series (Carl’s Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook), always finding myself reading far past midnight when I should know better. I had to force myself to not start the fourth book, The Gate of the Feral Gods, otherwise the entire read-a-thon would be eaten up by Dinniman’s eight-book series (with two more to come).
I still ended up reading that fourth one as my final book of the read-a-thon. I needed something light after Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Edward Said’s Orientalism.
Not that it’s actually all that light.
Let me attempt to summarize this bonkers premise. Carl, who’s been drifting through life and wallowing a bit after discovering his girlfriend has been cheating on him, has to trek outside his Seattle apartment one late night wearing just a jacket, boxers, and too-small Crocs to chase down his girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut. While he’s outside, the world ends.
Every building, vehicle, and structure in the world has been simultaneously crushed flat, killing anyone inside, by an alien organization called the Syndicate that has claimed the mineral and elemental rights to Earth. Carl and the millions of other survivors are given the option to compete in a videogame-style dungeon crawl to win back the rights to the planet.
If you’ve ever played a role-playing videogame or just heard of World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll get the gist pretty quickly. Carl and his fellow humans — and Princess Donut — have to fight their way through eighteen dungeon “floors,” leveling up their stats, using magic and weapons, and collecting items by finishing quests. Failure is death and death is very, very real.
Oh, and they’re being broadcast across the galaxy for the entertainment of other species.
It actually is a little silly in the best and most entertaining way. Dinniman tosses all these ingredients — Warcraft, reality television, Battle Royale, social media influencers, celebrity talk shows, interstellar corporate espionage — into a blender to produce some of the most compulsively readable books I’ve picked up in ages. It’s hilarious at times in its satire of consumerism and corporatism. And nearly every character pops off the page, particularly Princess Donut, a Persian cat with a royal attitude, powerful magic missiles, and a useful feline charm.
But there’s a darkness at play as well. One of the first groups of people Carl encounters in the dungeon is a group of patients from an eldercare facility who were saved by a handful of their caregivers — but how far can a group of elderly humans suffering from physical disabilities and dementia make it in a world of deadly gnomes and magical traps? Carl also frequently finds himself drawn into memories of his traumatic childhood with an abusive father, a narrative thread that I expect will only grow as the series progresses (and I have a lot more to go).
You’ll likely know within the first few chapters if Dungeon Crawler Carl’s world is for you. If it is, and I hope it will be, you’ll find yourself compulsively reading that proverbial “just one more chapter” as your bedtime recedes further into the night and you just can’t stop. Dinniman pulls off one of the harder tricks in writing: maintaining a strong sense of propulsion over the course of multiple books (at least the four I’ve read so far).
The lesson is, don’t let your inner snob take control. You’ll miss out on all the fun stuff.
The Wrap Up
Here are the text versions of my reading list and rankings, as well as my Books & Bakes read-a-thon stats. Again, thanks to everyone who pledged their support. Now go grab a book and enjoy the final weeks of summer with a good read!
FINAL READING LIST AND RANKINGS
The Hunter by Richard Stark (★★★★☆)
Blood River Witch by T. J. Martinson (★★★★☆)
A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen (★★★★★)
Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (★★★☆☆)
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (★★★ ★ ☆)
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (★★★★☆)
Carrie by Stephen King (★★★★☆)
The Troop by Nick Cutter (★★★★☆)
The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr (★★★☆☆)
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman (★★★☆☆)
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin (★★★★☆)
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman (★★★☆☆)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead (★★★☆☆)
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman (★★★★☆)
1776 by David McCullough (★★★☆☆)
Wastelands: The New Apocalypse ed. by John Joseph Adams (★★★☆☆)
Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter (★★☆☆☆)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (★★★★★)
Orientalism by Edward Said (★★★★☆)
The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman (★★★★☆)
BOOKS & BAKES 2026 FINAL STATS
Total books read: 20
Total pages read: 6,867
Average pages read per day: 94
Longest book: 586 (The Gate of the Feral Gods)
Shortest book: 174 (The Irony of American History)
Number of Five Star ratings: 2
Number of Zero Star ratings: 0
Most common star rating: 4
Number of Genres: 6
Most-read genre: 6 Sci-Fi/Fantasy books
Number of authors with multiple books: 1 (Matt Dinniman)
Number of re-reads: 3 (Carrie, Wyrd Sisters, and Gilead)
