Was nominated for two book awards and won zero.
I got a job that has some serious problems. It took over my life and I am sad all the time. So I barely read.
I wrote nothing outside of work stuff. I’m actually about to have a panic attack thinking about work right now, so I’m going to sign off and try to read more books and write more things next year.
I did! I’m as surprised as you. I read fifty-five books. When did that happen? I was pretty sure I spent all of 2021 sulking in a haze of self-pity.
And librarything already has graphs I can steal totally not steal but use appropriately because they have a share button!
Look at that! All those “horror” books are V.C. Andrews, a stack of which I got for free earlier in the year.
Hahahahah! Literature. How dose the Dewey Decimal System not have a section for “trashy incest escapism?”
I rated books:
I read a book that librarything categorized as being written by a ghost? Zombie? Pigeon?
(I clicked on it: the book was written by a bunch of science journalists, so I guess not a person, but persons. I learned from said book that you can get colder than absolute zero by some sort of bizarro integer overflow style physics mumbo-jumbo which is why I am in pure math because when things like that happen in pure math it doesn’t hurt my brain as much.)
I read no Stefan Zweig books this year, so I could not ask Netgalley for interviews with the author, as I have in years past.
Also, I am super sick of this WordPress Theme, but a quick glance through other options seem like I’ll be spending forever searching for one that isn’t just a photo portfolio. This is a rarely-updated writing and book blog. There are no photos.
Here are books. More than just that, the books I read in 2021.
I passed along all my V.C. Andrews books, so I likely won’t read any this year. Maybe I’ll move onto the Christopher Pike’s I grab every time I go to the thrift store.
Or maybe I’ll not read junk. Who knows?
I feel like if I don’t have a reading challenge each year, I somehow fail reading. Like someone is going to come and take away my library card, and, as we see with that post down there, I take a lot of books out of the library and so I cannot give up my library card.
So I made myself an alphabet challenge: read a book that somehow satisfies something about each letter of the alphabet. I spent the last ten minutes filling in my missing spots, so yay, twenty-six alphabet inspired books I read this year.
A: book starts with A.
B: author’s name starts with B.
C: set in Central America.
D: Author’s first name begins with D.
E: A book written in the eighties.
F: Title of book starts with F.
G: A book narrated by ghosts.
H: A book that made me happy.
I: A book that impressed me.
J: A book with a prominent J.
K: Author’s last name starts with K.
L: Longest book read.
M: A memoir.
N: About New Mexico.
O: Read some of it outside.
P: Has a pink cover.
Q: Quickest book (shortest).
R: A reread.
S: Book starts with S.
T: All the T’s in the author’s name.
U: An unpublished manuscript.
Ora and the Dragons by Molly Westerman.
V: About a v-word.
W: Book starts with a W.
X: Okay, I tried my best. X?
Y: Book had a yellow cover.
Z: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZwieg!
Obligatory Zweig reference: He killed himself in Brazil, in part, to stick it to the Nazis!
I have no reading goals for this year. Feel free to give me one.
So I went swimming at the YMCA, but now I’m back.
I’m still not loving reading. I know I used to. But another year has passed with me being bleh about reading. And now WordPress has updated it’s interface and I don’t feel like dealing with new things since I haven’t posted since November and bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh.
Best of 2018 (4.5 stars or above):
Due to the new blocks system, I’m going to have a few posts for Year End (like the one below), so that I can make sure nothing messes up too badly.
So this is the year when I
In the late summer, I taught myself how to crochet. My current goals seem to be
Neither is conducive to books. Evenings spent favouriting Etsy items and expanding my pinterest boards leave no time for much else.
Voice in my head: You did read 131 books this year, plus half of a long Russian one that you might finish sometime in January.
Me: Still.
When I started high school, I stopped reading books (other than assigned ones) for a year. Maybe I’ll stop again this year. Who knows.
Here are some stats, and a map.
Best of 2017 (4.5 stars and above!)
Data: (I read 131 books total, which maybe makes some of this data more meaningful.) Be amazed at my ability to add stock photos to canva graphs!
(Obviously, some books can be in more than one category up there, less so in the graphs below.)
A passport to: (with a representative selection of a book partly or fully set in that locale)
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So bye 2017.
(Call to arms post from start of 2016.)
How well did I do for 2016, assuming that any book can appear in at most one category?
Legend:
| Success! | The novel superbly satisfies the criteria. |
| Quasi-sucess | Parts, but not all of the novel satisfy the criteria. |
| Failure | Didn’t manage to read even one book like this. Sad panda 🙁 |
| set in British Columbia | We Are All Made of Molecules | Susin Neilsen |
| set in Alberta | ||
| set in Saskatchewan | Tears in the Grass | Lynda Archer |
| set in Manitoba | The Evolution of Alice | David Alexander Robinson |
| set in Ontario | A Place for Margaret | Bernice Thurman Hunter |
| set in Quebec | Fanny & Romeo | Yves Pelletier and Pascal Girard |
| set in New Brunswick | A Cure for Madness | Jodi McIsaac |
| set in Nova Scotia | The Lynching of Peter Wheeler | Debra Komar |
| set in Prince Edward Island | ||
| set in Newfoundland/Labrador | Sweetland | Michael Crummey |
| set in Yukon/Northwest Territories/Nunavut | ||
| set in Africa | Cockroaches | Scholastique Mukasonga |
| set in Asia | The Night Parade | Kathryn Tanquary |
| set in Central America/Caribbean | Annie John | Jamaica Kincaid |
| set in Europe | The Woman in Black | Susan Hill |
| set in North America | The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer | Michelle Hodkin |
| set in the Pacific/Oceania | A Child’s Book of True Crime | Chloe Hooper |
| set in South America | Death in the Andes | Mario Vargas Llosa |
| set on an island | The End | Lemony Snicket |
| where someone goes to Antarctica | Know the Night | Maria Mutch |
| with a beautiful cover | Inspired! | Maria Bukhonina |
| with a blue cover | Find Me | Laura Van den Berg |
| with a cover not to my taste | The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) | David Bercovici |
| with cats on the cover | Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us | Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota |
| a First Nations author | The Whale Rider | Witi Ihimaera |
| a new-to-me author | The Blue Line | Ingrid Betancourt |
| a Nobel Prize winning author | The Piano Teacher | Elfriede Jelinek |
| an author who is a POC | Ghost Summer Stories | Tananarive Due |
| an author who is transgendered | ||
| an author with a disability | Girl at War | Sara Nović |
| an author with mental health issues | You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) | Felicia Day |
| an LGBQIA author | The Children’s Home | Charles Lambert |
| one of my favourite authors | Swing Time | Zadie Smith |
| a Buddhist author | ||
| a Christian author | Prophet’s Prey | Sam Brower |
| a Hindu author | ||
| a Jewish author | The Collected Novellas | Stefan Zweig |
| a Muslim author | Ms Marvel No Normal | G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona |
| an agnositic or atheist author | Bandit | Molly Brodak |
| a reread of a book I read in 2015 | The Grim Grotto | Lemony Snicket |
| a reread of a book I read in my 30s | The Penultimate Peril | Lemony Snicket |
| a reread of a book I read in my 20s | Yevgeny Onegin | Alexander Pushkin |
| a reread of a book I read in my teens | ||
| 1-99 pages long | The Turn of the Screw | Henry James |
| 100-399 pages long | Modern Romance | Aziz Ansari |
| 400-899 pages long | Purity | Jonathan Franzen |
| 900+ pages long | Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle | George R. R. Martin |
| a comic of book length | Nimona | Noelle Stevenson |
| a commercial fiction book | The Accident | Chris Pavone |
| a fantasy book | The Whispering Trees | J.A. White |
| a horror book | Day Four | Sarah Lotz |
| a literary fiction book | The Heart Goes Last | Margaret Atwood |
| a manga | Gyo | Junji Ito |
| a middle-grade book | Fish in a Tree | Lynda Mullaly Hunt |
| a mystery book | The Likeness | Tana French |
| a science fiction book | The Three-Body Problem | Cixin Liu |
| a historical book | Margaret in the Middle | Bernice Thurman Hunter |
| a YA book | A Monster Calls | Patrick Ness |
| about feminism | ||
| about politics | Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? | Katrine Marçal |
| about race | Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso | Kali Nicole Gross |
| about religion | Between Gods | Alison Pick |
| about science | Unnatural Selection | Emily Monosson |
| written in the first person | The Story of the Lost Child | Elena Ferrante |
| written in the second person | You | Caroline Kepnes |
| written in the third person | The Maze Runner | James Dashner |
| nominated for the (Baileys/Orange) Women’s Prize | The Country of Ice Cream Star | Sandra Newman |
| nominated for the Best Translated Book Award | The Story of a New Name | Elena Ferrante |
| nominated for the Commonwealth | The Case of Emily V. | Keith Oatley |
| nominated for the Danuta Gleed | ||
| nominated for the Giller | Fifteen Dogs | Andre Alexis |
| nominated for the Governor General’s | Maleficium | Martine Desjardins |
| nominated for the Hugo | ||
| nominated for the IMPAC | The Japanese Lover | Isabel Allende |
| nominated for the James Triptree Jr | Salt Fish Girl | Larissa Lai |
| nominated for the Man Booker International Prize | The Vegetarian | Han Kang |
| nominated for the Man Booker Prize | Year of the Runaways | Sunjeev Sahota |
| nominated for the National Book | A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara |
| nominated for the Nebula | ||
| nominated for the Newbery | From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler | E.L. Konigsburg |
| nominated for the Prix Goncourt | Charlotte | David Foenkinos |
| nominated for the Roger’s Writer’s Trust | Inside | Alix Ohlin |
| a biography | So Long, Marianne | Kari Hesthamar |
| a collection of essays | Bossypants | Tiny Fey |
| a memoir/autobiography | The Cruel Country | Judith Ortiz Cofer |
| a novel | The Rabbit Back Literature Society | Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen |
| a poetry collection | You Can’t Bury Them All | Patrick Woodcock |
| a short story collection | The People in the Castle | Joan Aiken |
| translated into English | The Violin of Auschwitz | Maria Angels Anglada |
| translated into English from a non-European language | Slow Boat to China | Kim Chew Ng |
| a prequel | Who Could That Be at This Hour? | Lemony Snicket |
| an author’s final book | The Night of the Gun | David Carr |
| an author’s first book | Lost Girls | Robert Kolker |
| recommended to me by a Canadian | Fates and Furies | Lauren Groff |
| that grew on me | Escape From Mr Lemoncello’s Library | Chris Grabenstein |
| the first book in a series by a POC author | To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before | Jenny Han |
| the last book in a series by a LGBTQIA author | ||
| with the word “capybara” in it | Sisters | Raina Telgemeier |
| with the word “resplendent” in it | Horror Library+: The Best of Volumes 1-5 | Various |
| that brought me joy | Veins | Drew |
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