This entry is actually less relevant than it was a year ago when I first talked about writing it - in 2014, if you include kids' and YA books over 200 pages, I read a total of 15 novels, a third of which were Yuletide canon review. Which was still better than 2013, during which I read Les Miserables. And some Daniel Pinkwater rereads for Yuletide. (I wasn't tracking them as carefully then, but durned if I can remember any more.) And granted if you're going to read one novel over the course of a year, Les Mis is a good one to pick, but compare that to when I was in high school and reading, conservative estimate, 350 books a year.

This year I have managed 31 novels (11 of them YA) and if I really push to make my goodreads challenge by the end of this month, I'm on track for at least 36 this year. Which is, I guess, good by most folks' standards, but 16-year-old me is looking at my overloaded bookshelves and shaking her head sadly. And adult me is looking at the library patrons who go through ten a week with abject jealousy.

I still read a lot! I read 160 adult nonfiction books in that year, plus comics, picture books, poetry, some novellas and short stories, and this and that other things. Not to mention fanfic - some judicious sampling of my AO3 page says I've read about 9,000,000 words of fanfic this year, an average of 25,000 words a day. And I still read quickly - I can read a 350-page novel in four or five hours tops, with no interruptions. It's just that I seem to have to make a deliberate effort anymore to sit down and read a novel, when it used to be like breathing.

So, what changed? I've made a bunch of attempts to write this post out, and it keeps being an incoherent mess, but I think, honestly, what it comes down to is: ( Because reasons )

I'm going to keep trying to push to read more novels (I'm really enjoying reading more of them, even if it seems to be coming down to 'Sunday mornings and waiting rooms only'). I want to at least have a good enough list that I feel ok about nominating for the Hugos. I think next year I'm going to try to push harder for pro short fiction, though. And catching up on my shelves at home rather than new stuff.