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2019 Reading Roundup (at last)
I made my Goodreads challenge of 96 books! More or less. Close enough, anyway. I saw a bunch of book/media wrap up templates going across my circle, but most of them were too hard, especially since it’s surprisingly difficult to get Goodreads to give me a good list of just books read in 2019.
I was hoping I would make it to 1000 books read marked in my Goodreads by the end of 2019, but I guess re-read weren’t counted, so I didn’t make 1000 until early January. Counting re-reads, that makes it an average of about 168 books a year since I started on Goodreads (during all of which I’ve had a full-time job.) If I do not buy any more books, or read any books I don’t own, or re-read any books, I will be 60 years old when I have read every book I own! Totally doable.
I've made my Goodreads challenge goal exactly half the years. Last year I set it ludicrously low, and then doubled it every time I met it until July. This year I’ve set it to last year’s total, but I think on the off chance I make it there by July I’ll just up it to that 168 average. (Having the Goodreads challenge really does help me; I know some people have been talking about how they need to let reading for fun be fun and not a chore, but if I don’t make it a chore I’m constantly telling myself I should be doing chores instead.)
Book 1000 was Baptism of Fire, one of the Witcher books which I am reading out of order. They are fine enough reads if you have missed reading quest fantasy that is really obviously based on someone’s tabletop rpg experience. Also a lot more canon f/f than I expected based on reading m/m fic for it: how did I make it that deep in the fandom without knowing Ciri was canonically into women? Anyway so far I mostly appreciate the total unwillingness to romanticize war even a little bit.
The first few books I finished this year went in the pattern: Comic book - library book - a book I’d been saving as a treat - a book I own - a book you do rather than read - a book that has been long-in-progress. That actually made a pretty good spread! I think I will try to use that pattern this year if I get stuck. (I am currently reading a library ebook about Margret the Adroit of Iceland; I'm not sure yet what the treat will be, maybe finally catching up on Golden Kamuy.)
- 28 novels, 21 nonfiction books 38 comic collections/trades, and 9 none of the above;
- 11 rereads, 7 that had been on my Currently Reading list for at least six months; 20 that I owned before 2019;
- 28 that I own; 43 from the library (4 were ILL); 5 that I read and then got rid of; 16 that were neither owned by me nor added to the library.
- I acquired 535 new books and got rid of ~100 ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- FMK books read: 0
- There are currently about 1.25m^3 of books I own that aren’t shelved.
- 11 of the not-owned books I read earned a spot on my want-to-own list; 48 did not (See! I am very selective!)
- I only added about 50 books to the to-read-not-owned lists, but that’s partly because I wasn’t curating it as well this year.
- The longest book I read was How Baking Works, which turned out to be a textbook for a commercial bakery course, but I found it both interesting and fascinating - I learned a lot about both the science behind baking, and the things (ingredients in particular!) that go into commercial baking that a basic hobby baker doesn’t generally hear about. I read it one chapter a day for a couple weeks (and skipped all the exercises!)
- The shortest book I read (not counting picture books) was Patrons are People, a book published by the Minneapolis Public Library in the 1950s as training for their staff. The illustrations are adorable, there’s advice that’s still good or easily adapted for current public library staff, and surprisingly little of it was completely out-of-date. Did you know there were self-check stations in public libraries in the 1950s? And patrons couldn’t figure out how to use them then, either?
- The last book I read in 2019 was One-Punch Man 17. The first book I read in 2020 was One-Punch Man 18. They continue to have too much punching and not enough Saitama, but they have just enough non-punch-based content to keep me reading.
...And I had a set of overdue book reviews I was going to put in this post but I think I will put them off for later. Instead, have a to-read/watch/play list based on this year’s Yuletide collection (which I have still barely read in.) It's only about 1/10 of the fandoms in the collection! It's up to you to guess if any given fandom isn't on there because I've already started it or because I have no interest in it. :D
This is a poll just because I like ticky-boxes
A Memory Called Empire
13 (40.6%)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
5 (15.6%)
American Girls: Kit
4 (12.5%)
Astreiant Series
3 (9.4%)
Atomic Blonde
3 (9.4%)
Author of the Acacia Seeds
5 (15.6%)
Bartimaeus
3 (9.4%)
Black Sails
6 (18.8%)
Bojack Horseman
3 (9.4%)
Books of the Raksura
10 (31.2%)
Bruno and Boots movies
2 (6.2%)
Carmen Sandiego 2019
3 (9.4%)
Carrie
2 (6.2%)
Children of the Star
3 (9.4%)
Code Name Verity
8 (25.0%)
Crazy Rich Asians
5 (15.6%)
Crimson Peak
6 (18.8%)
Dark is Rising
9 (28.1%)
Derkholm Series
11 (34.4%)
Detective Pikachu
5 (15.6%)
Die Hard
8 (25.0%)
Dirty Dancing
4 (12.5%)
Doctor Who (13)
6 (18.8%)
Dublin Murder Squad
1 (3.1%)
Enola Holmes
1 (3.1%)
Fingersmith
3 (9.4%)
Fire and Hemlock
8 (25.0%)
Galavant
7 (21.9%)
Gargoyles
6 (18.8%)
Gentleman Jack
7 (21.9%)
Ghost Soup Infidel Blue
3 (9.4%)
Giant Robo
0 (0.0%)
God's Own Country
1 (3.1%)
Graveyard Book
1 (3.1%)
Guardian (Webnovel)
2 (6.2%)
Hard Core Logo
3 (9.4%)
Haunting of Hill House
3 (9.4%)
Hornblower (TV)
3 (9.4%)
Jeeves & Wooster (TV)
5 (15.6%)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
12 (37.5%)
Jurassic Park
4 (12.5%)
Kim
2 (6.2%)
Kim Possible
0 (0.0%)
Legally Blonde
6 (18.8%)
Legends of Tomorrow
2 (6.2%)
Les Misérables (Dallas 2014)
3 (9.4%)
Lion in Winter
5 (15.6%)
Lois Lane: Fallout
1 (3.1%)
Lost Boys
2 (6.2%)
Lymond Chronicles
4 (12.5%)
Men in Black International
3 (9.4%)
Moby Dick
6 (18.8%)
Mulan
8 (25.0%)
My Hero Academia
3 (9.4%)
Nero Wolfe
3 (9.4%)
Newsflesh
3 (9.4%)
Ocean's 8
8 (25.0%)
Outbound Flight
3 (9.4%)
Oxford Time Travel
5 (15.6%)
Point Break
1 (3.1%)
Poirot
4 (12.5%)
Raffles
0 (0.0%)
Ramayana
3 (9.4%)
Red White & Royal Blue
2 (6.2%)
Samurai Champloo
1 (3.1%)
Sapphire and Steel
1 (3.1%)
Sense8
6 (18.8%)
Shazam!
1 (3.1%)
Singin' In The Rain
11 (34.4%)
Sky High
0 (0.0%)
Slings & Arrows
6 (18.8%)
Some Like it Hot
5 (15.6%)
Spinning Silver
9 (28.1%)
Steerswoman
11 (34.4%)
The Breakfast Club
1 (3.1%)
The Bright Sessions
1 (3.1%)
The Comfortable Courtesan
6 (18.8%)
The Culture Series
3 (9.4%)
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
5 (15.6%)
The Dream-quest of Vellitt Boe
2 (6.2%)
The Eagle
4 (12.5%)
The Expanse
2 (6.2%)
The Good Place
6 (18.8%)
The Greatest Showman
1 (3.1%)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
0 (0.0%)
The Mummy
3 (9.4%)
The Queen's Thief
9 (28.1%)
The Shape of Water
6 (18.8%)
The Terror
0 (0.0%)
The Three Musketeers
2 (6.2%)
The Tick
1 (3.1%)
The Untamed
6 (18.8%)
the View from Saturday
3 (9.4%)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
3 (9.4%)
Toilers of the Sea
2 (6.2%)
Top Gun
2 (6.2%)
Treasure Planet
4 (12.5%)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
4 (12.5%)
Untitled Goose Game
7 (21.9%)
Urusei Yatsura
0 (0.0%)
Victor Victoria
4 (12.5%)
Wellington Paranormal
2 (6.2%)
What We Do in the Shadows
6 (18.8%)
Wild Wild West
1 (3.1%)
Getting my end-of-year summary in by the end of January counts, right? Anyway the Chinese new year celebration isn’t even half over.
Also, I have a short-notice week off starting today due to building construction at work, and a ludicrous to-do list for it. So I think I’m going to try to post here once a day while I’m off to track that I am actually accomplishing things.
- Worked on ongoing art/craft/repair projects
- Got the broken electronics out of the car, and returned the bins from them to work
- left the house
- cooked dinner with an actual recipe, only burned it a little
- worked on clearing email
- worked on getting caught up on tag wrangling
- finally posted my books round-up to DW *...and will hopefully finish off by putting laundry away and reading more library book.
..that actually reads like more than it felt like. Go me? Tomorrow's big task is finally buy a long-overdue new laptop and smartphone, so I'll have the week off to mess with them. Not looking forward to it!
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Good luck with whatever you launch into.
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I use source (library, my book, etc) but that's it other than the default. I like micro-cataloging things, but gr's system is super frustrating to use.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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Have you played the third game? There's a quest in which Ciri is the player character where she is in a sauna with a NPC named Astrid and her mother. Astrid asks Ciri if she likes her brother (who rescued her when Avallac'h brought her, unconscious, to Skellige) and you have the option to choose "Actually, I prefer women." Alas, nothing interesting happens in-game if you say that, but I ship it (and have written it).
(Also if you choose to go without a towel covering into the sauna, it's revealed Ciri has a tattoo which she gets along with Mistle in the books, and she can answer "I got it for someone special who's dead now".)
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Coffee table photo books of Saturn?
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When in doubt, ask a librarian