(no subject)
I read a lot, but it's god damned amazing how much time a body has when you don't work. I read 261 books last year, and I watched an ungodly amount of TV. I rewatched like, four series of Bake Off, I watched both Westworld series THREE times each, rewatched all of Call the Midwife, Bojack Horseman... I mean, the new series of Bojack that came out in the late summer or fall, I already watched twice because I flew through it and then my friend was watching it and I was forgetting what happened so refreshed myself so that I could talk to her about it. Not to mention every single World Cup game.
Of course, I haven't been doing shit in the house or for the house or properly grocery shopping, but who can argue with depression. Not my cat, and she tries every morning. Time is a curse and existence is a prison, and that's my 2018.
Italics means I finished either a current season or the entire show this year. For 2019 I'll make a note of the seasons watched. There's some really good stuff in here. Fiction shows and entertainment/reality stuff is separate.
TV: Black Mirror, Derry Girls, Deutschland 83, Out-Laws (Belgian, 'Clan'), The End of the F***king World, Father Brown, La Mante, Babylon Berlin, Baby Ballroom, Call the Midwife, Death in Paradise, BoJack Horseman, Peaky Blinders, Jessica Jones, High Life, The Boss Baby, Bob's Burgers, Charite, The Crown, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, GLOW, Disenchantment, The Crimson Field, Frankie Drake Mysteries, Feud, The Good Place, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Doctor Who, Hannibal, One Day At a Time, She-Ra, Archer, Porridge, Quatermass and the Pit, The Venture Brothers, Gravity Falls, Offspring, Norsemen, Bob's Burgers, Please Like Me,
Big Fat Quiz of Everything, Tattoo Fixers, Love it or List it UK, Pointless, Room 101, Zoo Quest, Back in Time for Tea, Money For Nothing, The Graham Norton Show, The Generation Game, The Big Painting Challenge, Encounters with Evil, I Am Innocent, Flipping Profit, HIGNFY, Handmade in Mexico, The Crystal Maze, Antiques Roadshow, Flog It, Kate Humble's Back to the Land, Britain's Most Historic Towns, Eurovision 2018, Richard Osman's House of Games, Mock the Week, World Cup 2018, Strictly Come Dancing, It Takes Two, Taskmaster, Back in Time for the Factory, The Repair Shop, James Acaster: Repetoire, Girls Incarcerated, The Staircase, Tattoo Fixers Extreme, The Mash Report, Would I Lie To You, The Time it Takes, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, Made in Great Britain, Handmade in the Pacific, Handmade in Japan, Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2018,
Garden:
Britain in Bloom, The Instant Garden, Love Your Garden, Gardener's World, Big Allotment Challenge S2, The Autistic Gardener, Beechgrove Garden, Garden Rescue,
Cooking:
Celebrity Bake Off (Stand Up to Cancer), Great British Menu 2012, Extreme Cake Makers, The Big FamilyCooking Showdown, Nailed It (S1 & S2), Britain's Best Home Cook, Bake Off: Professionals, Sugar Rush, Nadiya's Family Favorites, Masterchef, Great British Menu 2018, Million Pound Menu, Celebrity Masterchef, The Great British Bake Off, Family Cooking Showdown, Salt Fat Acid Heat, Masterchef Professionals, The Final Table, Liam Bakes,
Rewatches: Call the Midwife, BoJack Horseman, King of the Hill, North and South, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Westworld, Deutschland 83, Black Sails, Back in Time For Tea, Secrets of the Castle, Peaky Blinders, The Great British Bake Off, GLOW, The Good Place, Stranger Things, Ripping Yarns, Jonathan Creek, Red Dwarf,
Movies: Nobody's Child, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Philomena, Despicable Me 2, Despicable Me 3, Much Too Shy, The Boss Baby, Black Panther, Thor Ragnarok, The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Room, Recovery Boys, The Shape of Water, Ghostbusters (new one), The Last Jedi, Dumplin', Clue,
Movie Rewatch: Strictly Ballroom, Moana, Chicken Run, Beetlejuice, Despicable Me, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Bringing Up Baby, Horse Feathers, Addams Family Values, International House, Hocus Pocus, Harvey, Jurassic Park, Thor, Hellboy, Yellow Submarine, Help!, Antonia's Line, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Rocketeer
I have pretty much stopped functioning, other than listening to books and watched TV. My therapist says the book part is good, but it's just necessary habit. TV alone doesn't distract enough from physical pain and I've had a really hard time crafting this year, so audiobook+semi-mindless game is what I can do. Half of the watching I was playing a game on my phone at the same time.
Asterisks are re-reads. Bolds are favorites. Italics are meh, strikeouts are dislikes.
January
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell *
Daring to Drive - Manal al-Sharif
We Didn't Mean to go to Sea - Arthur Ransome
Daughter of the Forest - Juliet Marillier *
Dare to Disappoint - Ozge Samanci
Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
Born Both - Hida Viloria
The Rise and Fall of Nations - Ruchir Sharma
Nobody's Child - Marie Balter
Redefining Realness - Janet Mock
Underground Airlines - Ben H. Winters
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster *
Faces in the Crowd - Valeria Luiselli
Victoria and Abdul - Shrabani Basu
This One Summer - Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
Roots - Alex Haley
Frogkisser! - Garth Nix
Letters to a Young Muslim - Omar Saif Ghobash
My Invented Country - Isabel Allende
Patternmaster - Octavia E. Butler
The Man Who Designed the Future - B. Alexandra Szerlip
Son of the Shadows - Juliet Marillier *
Until We Are Free - Shirin Ebadi
Amatka - Karin Tidbeck
The Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt
Child of the Prophecy - Juliet Marillier *
Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson *
February:
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
The Nuremberg Trials - John and Ann Tusa
Black Boy (American Hunger) - Richard Wright
Zealot - Reza Aslan
The Last Ballad - Wiley Cash
The Fact of a Body - Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Rootabaga Stories - Carl Sandburg *
Poet in Spain - Frederico Garcia Lorca
Ingredienti - Marcella Hazan
Never Caught - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
March Book 1 - John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
March Book 2 - John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
March Book 3 - John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
To the Bright Edge of the World - Eowyn Ivey * (book club)
The Door in the Wall - Marguerite de Angeli
The Queue - Basma Abdel Aziz
Ladivine - Marie N'diaye
The Gay Revolution - Lillian Faderman
The Boy on the Wooden Box - Leon Leyson
Strong Poison - Dorothy L. Sayers *
Disordered World - Amin Maalouf
The Cat Who Came In Off the Roof - Annie M.G. Schmidt
The Invention of Murder - Judith Flanders
March:
I'm Judging You - Luvvie Ajayi
The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby
The Challenge for Africa - Wangari Maathai
Lotus - Lijia Zhang
Nada - Carmen Laforet
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
My Several Worlds - Pearl S. Buck
Nobody's Perfect - Donald E. Westlake *
How Dare the Sun Rise - Sandra Uwiringiyimana
The Inkblots - Damion Searls
Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson
The Crusades - Zoe Oldenbourg
The Lost Peg Leg Mine - Car Barks
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats - Jan-Philipp Sendker
April:
Border - Kapka Kassabova
We Were Eight Years in Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Adam Bede - George Eliot
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston *
Circe - Madeline Miller
In the Language of Miracles - Rajia Hassib
The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois
Off the Shelf - Carol Ann Duffy (editor)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
The Gulag Archipelago Vol 3 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Backwash of War - Ellen N. La Motte
I'll Be Gone in the Dark - Michelle McNamara
Things I've Been Silent About - Azar Nafisi
Affections - Rodrigo Hasbun
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
I Will Bear Witness - Victor Klemperer
The Aquariums of Pyongyang - Kang Chol-Hwan & Pierre Rigoulot
The Queen of Whale Cay - Kate Summerscale
May:
Maurice - E.M. Forster
Black Man in a White Coat - Damon Tweedy
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - Richard Feynman
The Interior Castle - Teresa de Avila
Trumpet - Jackie Kay
War and Turpentine - Stefan Hertmans
Kokoda - Paul Ham
Bismarck - AJP Taylor
The Midwife's Apprentice - Karen Cushman *
Theatre Shoes - Noel Streatfeild *
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi *
Unmentionable - Therese Oneill
Becoming Unbecoming - Una
The Hospital Always Wins - Issa Ibrahim
Phoenix Rising - Karen Hesse *
All The Real Indians All Died Off - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Tinker Dabble Doodle Try - Srini Pillay
The Bolivian Diary - Che Guevara
Photographic - Isabel Quintero and Zack Pena
Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
Voices from the Second World War - Candlewick
I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced - Nujood Ali
Truckers - Terry Pratchett *
The Bread Givers - Anzia Yezierska
Into the Silence - Wade Davis
It Ended Badly - Jennifer Wright
June:
Iraq + 100 - Hassan Blasim
Wolfskin - Juliet Marillier *
The Neanderthals Rediscovered - Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse
Bold Spirit - Linda Lawrence Hunt
The Children of Willesden Lane - Mona Golabek
Zinky Boys - Svetlana Alexievich
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Meursault Investigation - Kamel Daoud
The Line Becomes a River - Francisco Cantu
The Trauma Cleaner - Sarah Krasnostein
On Sanity - Una
The Wizard and the Prophet - Charles C. Mann
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter - Herta Muller
The Orphan Mother - Robert Hicks
I am, I am, I am - Maggie O'Farrell
Dirty River - Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan - Shigeru Mizuki
The Spider King's Daughter - Chibundu Onuzo
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
The Hello Girls - Elizabeth Cobbs
July:
Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie
Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett *
1066 And All That - WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman
Magnificent Delusions - Husain Haqqani
The Pleasure Shock - Lone Frank
Fire Road - Kim Phuc Phan Thi
Redemption in Indigo - Karen Lord
Dear World - Bana and Fatemah Alabed
Archangel - Sharon Shinn *
Diggers - Terry Pratchett *
Ghost Bride - Yangsze Choo
The Blue Tattoo - Margot Mifflin
Wings - Terry Pratchett *
What Unites Us - Dan Rather
Memoirs of a Polar Bear - Yoko Tawada
Barkskins - Annie Proulx
Mister Monday - Garth Nix *
Don't Ask - Donald E. Westlake *
Grim Tuesday - Garth Nix *
Drowned Wednesday - Garth Nix *
Sir Thursday - Garth Nix *
Lady Friday - Garth Nix *
Superior Saturday - Garth Nix *
Lord Sunday - Garth Nix *
Jovah's Angel - Sharon Shinn *
August:
Feminism is for Everybody - bell hooks
It Devours! - Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Citizen - Claudia Rankine
The Alleluia Files - Sharon Shinn *
Where We Once Belonged - Sia Figiel
Jagannath - Karin Tidbeck
Cosmopolitanism - Kwame Anthony Appiah
A Writer's People - V.S. Naipaul
Deadly Election - Lindsey Davis
Warriors Don't Cry - Melba Pattillo Beals
A Corner of White - Jaclyn Moriarty *
Justinian's Flea - William Rosen
Anarchism and Other Essays - Emma Goldman
Barracoon - Zora Neale Hurston
Animal Magnetism - Rita Mae Brown
The Cracks in the Kingdom - Jaclyn Moriarty *
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Fannie Flagg
The Girl Who Smiled Beads - Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil
The Spy Who Couldn't Spell - Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora - Pablo Cartaya
A Tangle of Gold - Jaclyn Moriarty *
Radio Silence - Alice Oseman
Playing in the Dark - Toni Morrison
Other People's Children - Lisa Delpit
Fascism: A Warning - Madeleine Albright
The Creature in the Case - Garth Nix
Goldenhand - Garth Nix
September:
Call Me American - Abdi Nor Iftin
You All Grow Up and Leave Me - Piper Weiss
The Inner Life of Animals - Peter Wohlleben
Evalina - Fanny Burney
The Kindness of Enemies - Leila Aboulela
The Search for Modern China - Jonathan D. Spence
Oceanic - Aimee Nezhukumatahil
Pandemic - Sonia Shah
Six Days in Cincinnati - Dan Mendez Moore
Wounded in the House of a Friend - Sonia Sanchez
Small Country - Gael Faye
The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama - Carl Barks
Angelica - Sharon Shinn
Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo
October:
Summer for the Gods - Edward J. Larson
Zami: A New Spelling of my Name - Audre Lorde
Comics For Choice - Hazel Newlevant, Whit Taylor, OK Fox
The Course of Honour - Lindsey Davis *
And Be a Villain - Rex Stout *
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Overture to Death - Ngaio Marsh
MEM - Bethany Morrow
I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong
Unpunished - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Picking Cotton - Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton
A Vietcong Memoir - Truong Nhu Tang
Hypercapitalism - Larry Gonick and Tim Kasser
The Silver Pigs - Lindsey Davis *
Unnatural Death - Dorothy L. Sayers *
The Lightless Sky - Gulwali Passarlay
Belle - Paula Byrne
Foxmask - Juliet Marillier *
Astrid the Unstoppable - Maria Parr
The Empire Striketh Back - Ian Doescher
Five Children and It - E. Nesbit
The Chessmen of Doom - John Bellairs *
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
The Secret of the Underground Room - John Bellairs *
November:
Operation Nemesis - Eric Bogosian
Red Winter - Anneli Furmark
Coming of Age in Mississippi - Anne Moody
Angel-Seeker - Sharon Shinn *
Farthest North - Fridtjof Nansen
Lincoln's Melancholy - Joshua Wolf Shenk
The Man Who Wasn't There - Anil Ananthaswamy
Rez Life - David Treuer *
The Three Caballeros Ride Again - Don Rosa
The Old Castle's Other Secret - Don Rosa
Maskerade - Terry Pratchett *
Spilt Milk - Chico Buarque
The Almost Sisters - Joshilyn Jackson
Saturnalia - Lindsey Davis *
Newt's Emerald - Garth Nix
The Other Side of Paradise - Staceyann Chin
The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters
Heart Berries - Terese Marie Mailhot
Dread Nation - Justina Ireland
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States - Sarah Vowell
Thinking in Pictures - Temple Grandin
No God but God - Reza Aslan
December:
Red Azalea - Anchee Min
The Polish Boxer - Eduardo Halfon
The Wife - Sigrid
The Cross - Sigrid Undset
Talking to my Daughter About the Economy - Yanis Varoufakis
Gender Outlaw - Kate Bornstein
Dear America - Jose Antonio Vargas
Daughter of the Forest - Juliet Marillier *
The Library Book - Susan Orleans
Girl at War - Sara Novic
Son of the Shadows - Juliet Marillier *
Natasha's Dance - Orlando Figes
Child of the Prophecy - Juliet Marillier *
The Hogfather - Terry Pratchett *
Archangel - Sharon Shinn *
Freedom Hospital - Hamid Sulaiman
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
I read 261 books, by authors from 57 unique countries.
38% of my reads had authors with maximum privilege (in the big five anglophone countries, who were white, cis, straight, and abled). Given that I had to do a lot of comfort reading by those privileged authors, I'm proud this percentage still stayed that low. Having the W1 privilege notation on my reading spreadsheet really helped keep it front and center in my brain (though at times this pressure was difficult, given how hard a year it's been).
57% of my reads were by women. 63% of authors were from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Book I expected to love but didn't, Barkskins by Annie Proulx. She tried to wrap the modern bits waaay too quickly and I don't know, it all felt too impersonal somehow?
Top few fiction and non-fiction, Circe by Madeline Miller, Lotus by Lijia Zhang, Dread Nation by Justina Ireland, The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein, I am I am I am by Maggie O'Farrell, and Zami by Audre Lorde.