Books in 2015!
Here we go... Some reflections on a huge year of reading:
I did this meme for the first time last year; in 2014 I'd made a conscious effort to step up my reading of books again; I used to be a voracious book reader, but discovering fanfic sidetracked me for a bit. I still enjoy fanfic too, but I wanted to make a deliberate return to books.
I read 38 books in 2014, and was pretty pleased with myself - that's everything from fairly light reads to massive tomes, and it was on top of working and also traveling a lot (and still reading and writing a lot of fic), etc., so that actually felt like quite a few. (Averaging out to 3 or more novels a month.)
In 2015, though, I was really pushing myself to expand my reading - reading authors from many different backgrounds, reading some classics, working my way through some of the books that had been on my "recommended" list for ages - and I also had a lot more time to read, since I was between jobs for part of the year. So as the end of 2015 drew near, I decided to see if I could hit double my previous year's total, i.e., at least 76 books.
I'm pleased to report I read 79 books in 2015! (For an average of 6 to 7 books a month??) I also did quarterly round-ups of what I'd most enjoyed during each three-month chunk of the year (findable under the "books" tag), which was fun.
Here are some reflections on my year in books:
BOOKS MEME
How many books read in 2015?
79 books
How many fiction and nonfiction?
67 fiction, 12 nonfiction
How many male authors, female authors or books written by both?
IF COUNTING BY TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS:
42 books by women
36 books by men
1 book by both
IF COUNTING EACH AUTHOR ONLY ONCE, NO MATTER HOW MANY OF THEIR BOOKS I READ:
27 women
29 men
1 both
A question I’m adding to this, because I think it’s so important:
How many books by people of color?
11
(11/79 = ~14% - it’s not a great ratio, but at least it’s a start)
Favorite books of 2015?
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers
Among Others - Jo Walton
Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Better Nate Than Ever - Tim Federle
followed by:
Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales, ed. Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt
The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L. Sayers
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Because of Winn-Dixie - Kate DiCamillo
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Fortunately, the Milk - Neil Gaiman
Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman
The Complete Stories - Dorothy L. Sayers
Oldest book read?
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (by far! written somewhere between 1599 to 1602)
closest runners-up: a couple of E. M. Forster novels (The Longest Journey (1907), Howards End (1910))
Longest and shortest book titles?
LONGEST:
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
SHORTEST is a tie between:
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Fences - August Wilson
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Longest books?
The Complete Stories - Dorothy L. Sayers (796 pages)
Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman (608 pages)
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers (501 pages)
Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) (497 pages)
etc.
Any translated books?
This is pitiful! Apparently this is a category I need to work on next year, because, only 1: Ronja Räubertochter (Ronja Rövardotter) by Astrid Lindgren (I figured, hey, if I’m going to read it translated from Swedish anyway, I might as well read it in German. At this point I associated Lindgren more with Germany than the US, anyway, because her books are so beloved there.)
Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?
by far, Dorothy L. Sayers - 7 books (I was deliberately filling in the gaps until I’d read everything she’d ever written!)
runners-up: Jo Walton, Muriel Spark, Douglas Adams, and Gail Carson Levine, all with 3 each
Any re-reads?
-Did a reread of the first three Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books (to compare, because I was also listening to the original radio plays)
-reread “Lolita” because my book group was reading it; also read a couple of books of criticism about it, and wow did I get more out of it this time!
-A bunch of things I re-“read” because I stumbled across the audiobooks of them, and it was fun to revisit a familiar book in a new medium (mostly shorter, lighter stuff like “Ella Enchanted,” “Lyra’s Oxford,” “Fortunately, the Milk,” “The Witch of Blackbird Pond”; but also “Strong Poison” by Dorothy L. Sayers)
-“Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang” by Mordecai Richler because, awww. (I was sorting through my childhood bookshelf and re-found it.)
-“The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” - I’m pretty sure this is one of Sherman Alexie’s books I also read in high school, but it had been a long time.
Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?
Oh, practically all of them!
-I wouldn’t have ended up reading my way through Dorothy L. Sayers’ entire canon if a friend hadn’t recommended the books to me years ago, telling me they had the best-developed characters in all of detective fiction. (The same friend is now a children’s book buyer, so a bunch of other YA/middle grade I’ve read have been her recommendations.)
-A friend who used to run a comic book shop once recommended Craig Thompson’s memoir “Blankets”; I found it on the shelf of the friend I stayed with when I first landed back in the US in January, and nabbed it to read during my visit
-Junot Díaz’s books because everyone says he’s amazing AND a friend of mine got to take a writing class with him this past year (jealous!!) and told me constantly how awesome he is
-Sandra Cisneros because Junot Díaz mentioned her
-A literature-buff friend led me to Shirley Jackson (wow!) and also to “Because of Winn-Dixie” (well, actually she mentioned “Because of Winn-Dixie” in the context of saying what my own writing is not like, but that made me think I ought to read it)
-stereolightning pointed me to various things, including “Better Nate Than Ever,” “Writing Magic” (Gail Carson Levine’s book on writing), Kelly Link’s stories and possibly also “Akata Witch”? At this point I can’t remember which of us told the other about that first!
-shimotsuki recommended “Black Is the Colour of My True-Love’s Heart”!
-Captain Awkward once had a great open thread where people recommended their favorite books; I’m still working my way through all the recommendations I found there, but in this year’s reading they included for example “Among Others” and “Code Name Verity”
-somebody must have recommended “A Slight Trick of the Mind” to me (this was way before it became a movie) and also “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” - but who?
-All the books my book group read: “Lolita,” “Bad Feminist,” “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” “Oryx and Crake,” “Mating in Captivity,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”
-Speaking of book groups, I read the oft-recommended “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” now (rather than getting to it later) because gracerene’s online book club was reading it…but I didn’t finish in time to participate in the discussion
-the owner of the English language secondhand bookstore back in Berlin told me about “Numbers” (he’d read it to his kid, but ended up being more into it than the kid was!) …Too bad I didn’t actually like it when I got around to reading it :-(
-I read the “Rags and Bones” story collection because Neil Gaiman’s “Sleeper and the Spindle” was in it; then I read “The King of Elfland's Daughter” because it was mentioned in “Rags and Bones”
-“Composing a Life” was recommended by a woman I housesat for when I first moved back to the US - one of many older-middle-aged women who have taken me under their collective benevolent wings since I came back here to start trying to figure out this next phase of my life (the book is a reflection on how women balance their creative lives with the rest of their lives)
Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
FINALLY read Junot Díaz (2 books); also Margaret Atwood (2 books), James Baldwin, Muriel Spark (3 books). Also finally tried out a Wodehouse book and a Pratchett book.
.
I did this meme for the first time last year; in 2014 I'd made a conscious effort to step up my reading of books again; I used to be a voracious book reader, but discovering fanfic sidetracked me for a bit. I still enjoy fanfic too, but I wanted to make a deliberate return to books.
I read 38 books in 2014, and was pretty pleased with myself - that's everything from fairly light reads to massive tomes, and it was on top of working and also traveling a lot (and still reading and writing a lot of fic), etc., so that actually felt like quite a few. (Averaging out to 3 or more novels a month.)
In 2015, though, I was really pushing myself to expand my reading - reading authors from many different backgrounds, reading some classics, working my way through some of the books that had been on my "recommended" list for ages - and I also had a lot more time to read, since I was between jobs for part of the year. So as the end of 2015 drew near, I decided to see if I could hit double my previous year's total, i.e., at least 76 books.
I'm pleased to report I read 79 books in 2015! (For an average of 6 to 7 books a month??) I also did quarterly round-ups of what I'd most enjoyed during each three-month chunk of the year (findable under the "books" tag), which was fun.
Here are some reflections on my year in books:
BOOKS MEME
How many books read in 2015?
79 books
How many fiction and nonfiction?
67 fiction, 12 nonfiction
How many male authors, female authors or books written by both?
IF COUNTING BY TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS:
42 books by women
36 books by men
1 book by both
IF COUNTING EACH AUTHOR ONLY ONCE, NO MATTER HOW MANY OF THEIR BOOKS I READ:
27 women
29 men
1 both
A question I’m adding to this, because I think it’s so important:
How many books by people of color?
11
(11/79 = ~14% - it’s not a great ratio, but at least it’s a start)
Favorite books of 2015?
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers
Among Others - Jo Walton
Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Better Nate Than Ever - Tim Federle
followed by:
Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales, ed. Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt
The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L. Sayers
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Because of Winn-Dixie - Kate DiCamillo
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Fortunately, the Milk - Neil Gaiman
Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman
The Complete Stories - Dorothy L. Sayers
Oldest book read?
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (by far! written somewhere between 1599 to 1602)
closest runners-up: a couple of E. M. Forster novels (The Longest Journey (1907), Howards End (1910))
Longest and shortest book titles?
LONGEST:
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
SHORTEST is a tie between:
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Fences - August Wilson
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Longest books?
The Complete Stories - Dorothy L. Sayers (796 pages)
Shadow Scale - Rachel Hartman (608 pages)
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers (501 pages)
Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) (497 pages)
etc.
Any translated books?
This is pitiful! Apparently this is a category I need to work on next year, because, only 1: Ronja Räubertochter (Ronja Rövardotter) by Astrid Lindgren (I figured, hey, if I’m going to read it translated from Swedish anyway, I might as well read it in German. At this point I associated Lindgren more with Germany than the US, anyway, because her books are so beloved there.)
Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?
by far, Dorothy L. Sayers - 7 books (I was deliberately filling in the gaps until I’d read everything she’d ever written!)
runners-up: Jo Walton, Muriel Spark, Douglas Adams, and Gail Carson Levine, all with 3 each
Any re-reads?
-Did a reread of the first three Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books (to compare, because I was also listening to the original radio plays)
-reread “Lolita” because my book group was reading it; also read a couple of books of criticism about it, and wow did I get more out of it this time!
-A bunch of things I re-“read” because I stumbled across the audiobooks of them, and it was fun to revisit a familiar book in a new medium (mostly shorter, lighter stuff like “Ella Enchanted,” “Lyra’s Oxford,” “Fortunately, the Milk,” “The Witch of Blackbird Pond”; but also “Strong Poison” by Dorothy L. Sayers)
-“Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang” by Mordecai Richler because, awww. (I was sorting through my childhood bookshelf and re-found it.)
-“The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” - I’m pretty sure this is one of Sherman Alexie’s books I also read in high school, but it had been a long time.
Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?
Oh, practically all of them!
-I wouldn’t have ended up reading my way through Dorothy L. Sayers’ entire canon if a friend hadn’t recommended the books to me years ago, telling me they had the best-developed characters in all of detective fiction. (The same friend is now a children’s book buyer, so a bunch of other YA/middle grade I’ve read have been her recommendations.)
-A friend who used to run a comic book shop once recommended Craig Thompson’s memoir “Blankets”; I found it on the shelf of the friend I stayed with when I first landed back in the US in January, and nabbed it to read during my visit
-Junot Díaz’s books because everyone says he’s amazing AND a friend of mine got to take a writing class with him this past year (jealous!!) and told me constantly how awesome he is
-Sandra Cisneros because Junot Díaz mentioned her
-A literature-buff friend led me to Shirley Jackson (wow!) and also to “Because of Winn-Dixie” (well, actually she mentioned “Because of Winn-Dixie” in the context of saying what my own writing is not like, but that made me think I ought to read it)
-stereolightning pointed me to various things, including “Better Nate Than Ever,” “Writing Magic” (Gail Carson Levine’s book on writing), Kelly Link’s stories and possibly also “Akata Witch”? At this point I can’t remember which of us told the other about that first!
-shimotsuki recommended “Black Is the Colour of My True-Love’s Heart”!
-Captain Awkward once had a great open thread where people recommended their favorite books; I’m still working my way through all the recommendations I found there, but in this year’s reading they included for example “Among Others” and “Code Name Verity”
-somebody must have recommended “A Slight Trick of the Mind” to me (this was way before it became a movie) and also “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” - but who?
-All the books my book group read: “Lolita,” “Bad Feminist,” “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” “Oryx and Crake,” “Mating in Captivity,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”
-Speaking of book groups, I read the oft-recommended “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” now (rather than getting to it later) because gracerene’s online book club was reading it…but I didn’t finish in time to participate in the discussion
-the owner of the English language secondhand bookstore back in Berlin told me about “Numbers” (he’d read it to his kid, but ended up being more into it than the kid was!) …Too bad I didn’t actually like it when I got around to reading it :-(
-I read the “Rags and Bones” story collection because Neil Gaiman’s “Sleeper and the Spindle” was in it; then I read “The King of Elfland's Daughter” because it was mentioned in “Rags and Bones”
-“Composing a Life” was recommended by a woman I housesat for when I first moved back to the US - one of many older-middle-aged women who have taken me under their collective benevolent wings since I came back here to start trying to figure out this next phase of my life (the book is a reflection on how women balance their creative lives with the rest of their lives)
Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
FINALLY read Junot Díaz (2 books); also Margaret Atwood (2 books), James Baldwin, Muriel Spark (3 books). Also finally tried out a Wodehouse book and a Pratchett book.
.