2016 Reading Notes

[bookwurm]

Now that I'm (mostly) keeping track of what I read through Goodreads, I'm going to steal borrow the_other_sandy's annual list of works read. I adjusted the categories to match the types of materials I read, however, and I left off the page counts.

Comments

[the_other_sandy]

I do my annual reading post as a way to make myself attack my Giant Pile of Unread Things. The page counts are because I'm trying to make myself read at least 10,000 pages of my own books every year. If you compare my list to my Goodreads list, I've left all the library books and audiobooks off my LJ list.

I don't read as much fic as I used to. I think M/M romance novels push those same buttons for me, so I don't need fic as much. That and my old fandoms are dying out, and I don't really have any new ones. Or rather, I seem to really like shows and characters that no one is writing fic for these days. I should probably read some of the bazillion old fics I stuck on my tablet for future reading.

[bookwurm]

If you compare my list to my Goodreads list, I've left all the library books and audiobooks off my LJ list.

Ah, I thought that seemed like somewhat low book numbers for you.

M's recommendation of the Toasterverse got me hooked on Avengers fic, which seems to be a bottomless well. However, you're a lot better about being selective in your reading. Once I start something, I generally want to finish it even if it ends up being pretty meh. Good luck working through your backlog though!

[the_other_sandy]

Has M put you onto my Pinboard yet? I have fic recs for many fandoms, including Avengers. I know there are some you've read already, but you might find something new.

I can only vouch for the ones tagged "read". I haven't read the others yet and don't know if they're any good or not.

Once I start something, I generally want to finish it even if it ends up being pretty meh.

I used to be the same way until I realized how much time I was wasting on meh fic when I could be reading something better.

[bookwurm]

Thanks for the recs! Unfortunately, I get caught in the trap of hoping that the meh fic will get better (especially if it started out well), or at least wanting to know how it gets to the end.

I recently finished The Thirteenth Man which had an interesting premise and a good start, but it fizzled badly. (random romance, two-dimensional characters, help just appears when it's needed, etc.) I kept hoping it would get back to that original promise, but it just got more and more meh instead. It didn't help that I fell into the Horse Mistress series in the middle and came back to more mediocre writing. I should have just dropped it.

[the_other_sandy]

I know what you mean. There are two authors in the BBC Musketeers fandom that try my willpower. Both of them come up with fantastic plots and plot summaries that make their fics sound so good, but they're both such terrible writers that the fics themselves are painful to read. I keep having to remind myself that no matter how good their fics sound, neither of them is going to do them justice.

It doesn't help that back in my first online fic fandom, Due South, there was a writer just like that, but it turned out she was a native French speaker writing in English, and she was having her stories beta'd by her native French speaking friends. Once she found herself a native English speaking beta, her stories were really good.