Year in Review 2013

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As I have for the past few years, I have spent the last few days reflecting on my reading year. This year wasn’t great. I didn’t meet any of my reading goals.

2012 Reading Challenge

2012 Reading Challenge
Dana has read 27 books toward her goal of 52 books.
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  • Total number of books read: 27.
  • Fiction books: 19.
  • Nonfiction books: 6.
  • Memoirs: 2.
  • YA books: 7.
  • Audio books: 2.
  • Digital books: 10.
  • DailyLit books: 0.
  • Books reread: 5.

Favorite Reads of the Year (in no particular order):

  1. Moloka’i, Alan Brennert
  2. Divergent, Veronica Roth
  3. The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
  4. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
  5. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
  6. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce
  7. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
  8. Smart Soapmaking and Milk Soapmaking, Anne L. Watson

Least Favorite Books (although this is relative because I didn’t have any less than 3-star books):

  1. Making Soaps & Scents, Catherine Bardey
  2. Delirium, Lauren Oliver

Favorite Book Meme of the Year: Top Ten Tuesdays.

Favorite Reading Challenge: The Mixing it Up Challenge (for at least making me thinking about going outside my usual reading comfort zones).

Favorite Blog Posts (again, in no particular order):

Here is my Where Are Your Reading 2012 Challenge map:


View 2012 Where Are You Reading Challenge in a larger map

I finished a re-read of Wuthering Heights recently, bringing my total to 27 books for the year. I don’t think I’ll finish anything else before the end of the year, so I’m calling it at 27. I have some hopes that if I buckle down, I can finish A Great and Terrible Beauty, but not high hopes.

In addition to not meeting my goal of reading 52 books, I also did not complete any of the challenges I set for myself. I think I over-committed myself on the challenges for sure, but I really did think I could meet the challenges. They didn’t seem onerous. I have decided to limit myself a bit more this year and just try to read things that look interesting.

I am also not going to host any challenges this year, as I find I am a terrible challenge host. I don’t think I peeked in after January, mainly because folks didn’t seem too interested in the challenge. I think I’d rather just participate in other challenges than host them.

There are good reasons for my failure to meet my reading goals. This year I moved and started a new job. I am not being too hard on myself because it was a huge adjustment. I moved 1000 miles from Roswell, GA (suburb of Atlanta) to Worcester, MA in central Massachusetts. We are all very happy in our new digs, and I love my new job.

In my previous job, I rode the bus to work, and my commute was typically 30 minutes each morning on the bus. I was able to get in a lot of reading that way, and I think my lack of commute now is a considerable factor in the number of books I was able to read. We moved here in June, and from that time onward, my commute was typically five minutes. The only way I could stretch it would be to walk, which I have done when the weather is nice, but it’s not conducive to reading. I actually can read and walk at the same time, but it’s better to have your wits about you. Even riding the bus, I only took about five minutes to get to work, but now that I’m carpooling with a coworker, it’s downright rude to think about. Essentially, one hour of reading time I used to have has been taken away. What I need to do is dedicate that reading time each day at home, even if I have to set a timer. I have often said that if something is important to you, you will make time for it. Well, reading is obviously important to me, but I have not been making as much time for it as I previously have done.

I’m looking forward to trying again to read a book a week this coming year.

2011: A Reading Year in Review


Catalyst
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Looking for Alaska
Misery
Twisted
Sense and Sensibility
On Writing
Bridget Jones's Diary
The Night Circus
The Man with Two Left Feet: And Other Stories
Those Across the River
The Ballad of Tom Dooley: A Novel
The Secret History
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
The Ballad of Frankie Silver
The Songcatcher
Adam & Eve: A Novel
A Room With a View
The Winter Sea

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This was my best reading year yet in terms of meeting my reading goals. Actually, it might have been the first year I actively set reading goals.

  • Total number of books read: 50.
  • Fiction books: 46.
  • Nonfiction books: 4.
  • YA books: 8.
  • Audio books: 3.
  • Kindle books: 14.
  • DailyLit books: 2.
  • Books reread: 2.

2011 Reading Challenge

2011 Reading Challenge

Dana has completed her goal of reading 50 books in 2011!

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I recently posted my list of favorite books, but here is a quick list:

  1. Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly
  2. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
  3. On Writing, Stephen King
  4. The Songcatcher, Sharyn McCrumb
  5. The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
  6. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
  7. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
  8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
  9. Passion, Jude Morgan
  10. The Kitchen Daughter, Jael McHenry

Least favorite books of 2011 (no one-star books this year!):

Favorite book meme of the year: Top Ten Tuesdays.

Favorite reading challenge: The R.I.P. Challenge. Again.

Just a couple of days ago, I posted a list of my favorite blog posts for this year.

My Where Are You Reading 2011 reading challenge map (you can open it up and look all over):


View 2011 Where Are You Reading Challenge in a larger map

Favorite Posts of 2011

My Work Desk

Over the course of the year, I have written more posts in this blog than I have in my more popular one. For one thing, I think I was more focused on reading, and this blog proved to be a sort of refuge. I think I could branch out and write about other things here now. It feels like a more comfortable place, and I can’t explain why. I have had a really difficult time thinking of things to write about on my other blog, but I have had no such trouble with this blog, at least not this year. Before the year ends, I thought I would share some reflections about my favorite blog posts (and, of course, invite you to read them for the first time, or reread them if you choose).

January

  • Do You Hate Holden Caulfield?: This post grew out of a post and some of its comments I read over at Forever Young Adult, and it’s mainly a reflection about how we are entitled to the reactions we feel to books, and that sometimes those reactions change over time. In it, I examined how my own feelings changed for Holden Caulfield. However, the reason it’s one of my favorites is the comments received, particularly one from a student who was more or less asking me if it was OK to hate Holden Caulfield—he wondered because the reaction from his teacher made him feel like there was something wrong with not liking Holden. For what it’s worth, I gave him my permission.
  • Mary Novik: Author Interview: Mary was so kind, and I loved her responses to my questions. Mary Novik made me look at John Donne in a new way.
  • Byron was a Bad, Bad Boy: I was on a real Byron kick this year. He was undoubtedly one of the most interesting figures of the Romantic era. He’s so endlessly fascinating that you can even read an entire blog devoted to him.

February

  • Dearest Cassandra: This creative writing piece was written as part of a model project for my students. I wrote a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra detailing the events that happened after Jane inexplicably traveled forward through time to the year 2010. It was a lot of fun, and an edited version of the letter wound up in a book I’m currently writing.
  • Fanny Brawne: This post is all about my girl-crush on Fanny Brawne, John Keats’s fiancée.
  • Passion, by Jude Morgan: My enthusiastic review of the novel. It was a long book, and I felt accomplished after I finished it. I can’t wait to read Jude Morgan’s next one. He’s one of my new favorites.

March

  • Reading Update: Wolfe and Lovelace: I had just finished reading the story of how James Wolfe won a major battle in Quebec during what us Americans call the French and Indian War, and I recounted the story here.
  • Nostalgia: This post is more about where did all the time go? rather than books, but I like it, and I love the song in the video I embedded into the post.

April

May

  • Teaser Tuesdays—May 17, 2011: The most accurate and hysterical definition of criticism (in the sense of analyzing art or literature, not “finding fault with”) I’ve ever read. God love Jasper Fforde. He always makes me laugh. Also, I need to do Teaser Tuesdays again. If I do, I’m changing the post title construction (for Musing Mondays, too). These titles I’m using are not descriptive enough.
  • Historical Crushes: A longish post about all the historical figures I have historical crushes on. I want to write one about literary crushes (fictional characters), but it’s been in the draft stage for a while. I need to return to it.

June

  • Booking Through Thursday: Interactive?: I get tired of the doom and gloom posts about how the Kindle is killing books. We’re in the midst of a reading renaissance!
  • Best Dads in Literature: This post was surprisingly hard to write because there aren’t a huge number of great dads in literature. Sad.
  • Teaser Tuesday and Top Ten Tuesday—June 21, 2011: See what I mean about these titles? Anyway, this post has a great quote from Paula McLain’s [amazon_link id=”0345521307″ target=”_blank” ]The Paris Wife[/amazon_link] and a list of ten reasons I love book blogging.
  • Sunfire Romances: In which I describe my affection for the YA Sunfire Romances published in the 1980’s. Think less successful American Girls books for teenagers.
  • Music and Reading: A discussion of two of my passions.

July

August

September

October

  • Music: A kind of revealing post in which I discuss music. Note: I would change #3 now to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails.
  • Surprise Endings: A discussion of the top ten endings that shocked me. Caution: here be spoilers!
  • Musing Mondays—October 17, 2011: More book cover porn!
  • Planning My NaNo Novel: In this post, I shared my process for preparing for NaNoWriMo using Scrivener, which is my new favorite piece of software. Scrivener put this post on their Facebook fan page, too.

November

  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King: Perhaps the single most influential book I read this year and the best book of writing advice I’ve ever read. Inspirational!
  • I Won NaNoWriMo!: I was so proud of “winning” NaNoWriMo this year. It was my second time, and I think it was even sweeter than the first because I learned that the first time wasn’t a fluke. This was the year I finally felt like a writer. I am currently wearing my Winner’s Circle tee-shirt, which for some reason I felt compelled to order this year when I didn’t the other year I won. Go figure!

December

  • Sunday Salon: The Shelf Awareness Interview: In this post, I share my answers to the standard questions Shelf Awareness asks of authors they interview.
  • Writing Dreams: I had tea with the Romantic poets in April, and here in this post, I describe how Joe Hill and Stephen King gave me writing advice (except, I didn’t actually get the advice).
  • Top Ten Books of 2011: I enjoyed thinking about which books made my list of the year’s best.
  • 2012 Obscure Books Challenge: After I said I wouldn’t, I had an idea for challenge to host and threw up some pages inviting participation. God help me.

photo credit: DeaPeaJay

Reading Year in Review

Mr. FezLast year, I reflected on my year in reading, and I felt it appropriate to do so this year as well. If I were feeling really ambitious, I would reflect on the decade, but I’m frankly not feeling that ambitious—well, other than to say my favorite reads of the decade are J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

This year I read or listened to 29 books (six more than last year), the first of which was The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, my favorite new author discovery of the year. I read the following books (my reviews are linked if I wrote one; if not, the link will take you to the Amazon page for the book):

Not that plowing through books in order to increase your book count is the most important thing about reading, but I have discovered three new ways to pack more reading in: 1) audio books in the car (I may be the last person on earth to figure this out); 2) reading two or three books at at time, which is weird, but does help me read more than I would if I did one at a time (must be the way my reading habits work); and 3) books on the iPhone (Stanza, Classics, Kindle, or the like). When the lights have to go out at night or when I’m stuck somewhere, I have my phone with me (my iPhone has an alarm clock on it, and I set it to wake me up—works even if the power goes off, so yes, I guess I’m paranoid), so I can get some reading done. The iPhone book reader apps are backlit, which means I can read even in the dark without disturbing my husband.

Some thoughts:

  • Jim Dale is an excellent reader of J.K. Rowling’s books. I haven’t listened to too many audio books. As I said, they’re a new discovery, but he is excellent.
  • Possibly my favorite book in this bunch (that I read for the first time) is The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.
  • Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was an exceptionally good biography and the best nonfiction I read this year.
  • I read five classics this year (and one book that is becoming a classic—Grendel). Not too bad as getting through some of the classics is a goal of mine.
  • Six Jasper Fforde books and seven J.K. Rowling audio books make series fantasy the dominant genre this year.
  • Best villain: Count Fosco in The Woman in White. Much more likable and well-developed than Voldemort, not as heinous and over-the-top as Black Jack Randall.
  • Best protagonist: Thursday Next in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.
  • I didn’t finish any book challenges this year. Let’s hope I do better next year. 😉

photo credit: quinn.anya