My Year in Books
Dec. 31st, 2018 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricI have achieved several things today, including finishing the remaining 300+ pages of a 460 page book, but I have not yet put the sheets back on my bed. That's my least favourite chore, so obviously this is a good time to do the end of year book meme.
2017 meme
How many books read in 2018: 122 by Goodreads count (so I exceeded my GR challenge by 20 books. And yet somehow did not end the year with fewer unread books than I began. Sigh).
Fiction:Nonfiction:Other breakdown:
23 Non-fiction (both academic and non-academic- as usual I haven't logged all my academic reading, just the ones I lived with for weeks in a row)
14 other (including poetry, lit mags with mixed content, and plays)
Ergo 86 fiction or other narrative form (including editions of medieval poetry)
Demographic breakdown of authors:
27 by solo male authors/editors or collaborating all-male teams
8 assorted (including mixed gender editing teams, nonbinary solo authors or editors, one cookbook with no identified author, and an edition of a classic male premodern author by a female scholar)
Which leaves 87 works by solo or collaborating female authors, or headed up by female editors
I've also been paying attention this year and note five of the authors I either know to be trans or reasonably deduce are (non-binary) trans by the way they phrase their bios. That's... not much. (There may, of course, be other authors I'm reading who are trans and do not make this known to the reading public). Most of my reading from trans authors comes in the forms of articles or pieces in edited collections, and only one of those (an edition of Archer Magazine) is headed up by a trans editor.
Similarly, 16 books by authors I know to be non-white/ethnic-minority-in-the-est (for various reasons, mostly to do with not prioritising US authors, POC does not work as a catch-all). This year involved fewer authors in translation than the past couple of years. (There may be some authors who i haven't clocked because it's not a topic of their writing and they have a european surname.) That's the exact same number as last year, despite having read more books overall. I feel like 'A Fine Balance' should count for at least three, given how long it took me to finish, but that's not how raw numbers work. I think I will make a concerted effort on this count next year.
Favourite Book Read, subdivided:
Non-fiction for personal interest: Oh, okay, wow. I can't think of anything. Maybe Archer Magazine Issue 9? Huh. I did not expect to find that the consequence of my PhD year was an erosion of my non-fiction non-work reading, but it seems to have been so.
Academic reading: I think Rita Felski's 'The Uses of Literature', which I read over the Dec-Jan period last winter. I GROK IT SO HARD.
Fiction for fun: I think it might be a tie between 'The Widows of Malabar Hill' and 'The Night Tiger', but I just finished the latter so maybe I'm over-rating it. I also really loved my LOTR re-read.
Least Favourite: Last year I nominated a Jenny Frame novel, and this year I made the mistake of reading another, which I must ALSO nominate. Hot tip: using BDSM to bring people to god is neither sexy nor holy. NOT ROMANCE NOVEL MATERIAL, ffs. I didn't actually finish that one, though.
Oldest book read: Excluding editions of premodern things, I think it's Charlotte Bronte's Villette, which I loved a lot.
Newest book read: This year, I read books that don't exist yet! I think G Willow Wilson's The Bird King releases the latest in 2019 (March 12; do recommend)
Longest Book Title: Including subtitles, that would be 'The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE', by William M. Reddy
Shortest Title: I think it was 'Elmet'
How many re-reads? By goodreads count, 11 (counting the Malory Towers books as 3, due to weird recording choices), one of which was a second read of something I read for the first time this year. I feel like 12, given I read two different editions of the Robin Hood ballads, but the second one I was reading mainly for its French translation.
Most books read by one author in the year?: excluding lit mags by the same editor, I think... it was Enid Blyton. I've got three books logged, and between them they account for 6 Malory Towers stories, and I think there was no other author I more than doubled up on. So here we are, I'm 31 years old, I just finished a PhD, and the author I read the most of this year was Enid Blyton.
Any in translation? Jonathan Fruoco's translation of the Robin Hood ballads and plays. Robert P. ap Roberts and Anna Benson's translation in the Garland // edition of Il Filostrato. Poor showing, Highly, poor showing.
How many were from the library? Ten, I think. Definitely not enough. As usual, that in no way covers my total academic borrowing record for the year (I maxed out my 40 book limit multiple times!)
I don't normally do this, but I think I need some reading... not resolutions, but intentions, for 2019.
Academically: I need to both maintain a regular academic reading habit, and... actually log it? That would help.
Practically: I intend to make a concerted effort to chew through my hardy copy unreads before mid-March. Somehow I've ended the year with as many as I had at the beginning *despite an international move and immense book-sloughing*
Content wise: I do seriously want to read more by non-white/ethnic minority authors. In part, just chewing through the hard copy will help: I keep buying books and then not reading them because I don't have spare brain. So obviously I either need to find more brain space, or find non-white authors of romance/light genre fiction, because the dense stuff is where the problem lies. I should probably also address the fact that most of my reading of articles and short stories comes via lit mags edited by white people (the fact I cancelled my Archer subscription one issue into Adolfo Aranjuez's tenure is unfortunate here!).
Related, while I greatly enjoyed the 'wheee, free content!' of the first few months on NetGalley, I need to me more judicious in what I request, because a lot of it has disappointed me lately, and been time I could be spending elsewhere. The secret to getting good stuff on Netflix as a non-famous internet person appears to be to request books by non-white authors (that says disappointing things about either how publishers value the likes of Yangsze Choo, or how popular their books are, but it works in my favour).
I also want to read at least one thing that's in French and only French! I have both the novel and the graphic novel of L'enigme des Blancs-Manteux, to this end. The graphic novel should work as crib for the novel, right?
2017 meme
How many books read in 2018: 122 by Goodreads count (so I exceeded my GR challenge by 20 books. And yet somehow did not end the year with fewer unread books than I began. Sigh).
Fiction:Nonfiction:Other breakdown:
23 Non-fiction (both academic and non-academic- as usual I haven't logged all my academic reading, just the ones I lived with for weeks in a row)
14 other (including poetry, lit mags with mixed content, and plays)
Ergo 86 fiction or other narrative form (including editions of medieval poetry)
Demographic breakdown of authors:
27 by solo male authors/editors or collaborating all-male teams
8 assorted (including mixed gender editing teams, nonbinary solo authors or editors, one cookbook with no identified author, and an edition of a classic male premodern author by a female scholar)
Which leaves 87 works by solo or collaborating female authors, or headed up by female editors
I've also been paying attention this year and note five of the authors I either know to be trans or reasonably deduce are (non-binary) trans by the way they phrase their bios. That's... not much. (There may, of course, be other authors I'm reading who are trans and do not make this known to the reading public). Most of my reading from trans authors comes in the forms of articles or pieces in edited collections, and only one of those (an edition of Archer Magazine) is headed up by a trans editor.
Similarly, 16 books by authors I know to be non-white/ethnic-minority-in-the-est (for various reasons, mostly to do with not prioritising US authors, POC does not work as a catch-all). This year involved fewer authors in translation than the past couple of years. (There may be some authors who i haven't clocked because it's not a topic of their writing and they have a european surname.) That's the exact same number as last year, despite having read more books overall. I feel like 'A Fine Balance' should count for at least three, given how long it took me to finish, but that's not how raw numbers work. I think I will make a concerted effort on this count next year.
Favourite Book Read, subdivided:
Non-fiction for personal interest: Oh, okay, wow. I can't think of anything. Maybe Archer Magazine Issue 9? Huh. I did not expect to find that the consequence of my PhD year was an erosion of my non-fiction non-work reading, but it seems to have been so.
Academic reading: I think Rita Felski's 'The Uses of Literature', which I read over the Dec-Jan period last winter. I GROK IT SO HARD.
Fiction for fun: I think it might be a tie between 'The Widows of Malabar Hill' and 'The Night Tiger', but I just finished the latter so maybe I'm over-rating it. I also really loved my LOTR re-read.
Least Favourite: Last year I nominated a Jenny Frame novel, and this year I made the mistake of reading another, which I must ALSO nominate. Hot tip: using BDSM to bring people to god is neither sexy nor holy. NOT ROMANCE NOVEL MATERIAL, ffs. I didn't actually finish that one, though.
Oldest book read: Excluding editions of premodern things, I think it's Charlotte Bronte's Villette, which I loved a lot.
Newest book read: This year, I read books that don't exist yet! I think G Willow Wilson's The Bird King releases the latest in 2019 (March 12; do recommend)
Longest Book Title: Including subtitles, that would be 'The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE', by William M. Reddy
Shortest Title: I think it was 'Elmet'
How many re-reads? By goodreads count, 11 (counting the Malory Towers books as 3, due to weird recording choices), one of which was a second read of something I read for the first time this year. I feel like 12, given I read two different editions of the Robin Hood ballads, but the second one I was reading mainly for its French translation.
Most books read by one author in the year?: excluding lit mags by the same editor, I think... it was Enid Blyton. I've got three books logged, and between them they account for 6 Malory Towers stories, and I think there was no other author I more than doubled up on. So here we are, I'm 31 years old, I just finished a PhD, and the author I read the most of this year was Enid Blyton.
Any in translation? Jonathan Fruoco's translation of the Robin Hood ballads and plays. Robert P. ap Roberts and Anna Benson's translation in the Garland // edition of Il Filostrato. Poor showing, Highly, poor showing.
How many were from the library? Ten, I think. Definitely not enough. As usual, that in no way covers my total academic borrowing record for the year (I maxed out my 40 book limit multiple times!)
I don't normally do this, but I think I need some reading... not resolutions, but intentions, for 2019.
Academically: I need to both maintain a regular academic reading habit, and... actually log it? That would help.
Practically: I intend to make a concerted effort to chew through my hardy copy unreads before mid-March. Somehow I've ended the year with as many as I had at the beginning *despite an international move and immense book-sloughing*
Content wise: I do seriously want to read more by non-white/ethnic minority authors. In part, just chewing through the hard copy will help: I keep buying books and then not reading them because I don't have spare brain. So obviously I either need to find more brain space, or find non-white authors of romance/light genre fiction, because the dense stuff is where the problem lies. I should probably also address the fact that most of my reading of articles and short stories comes via lit mags edited by white people (the fact I cancelled my Archer subscription one issue into Adolfo Aranjuez's tenure is unfortunate here!).
Related, while I greatly enjoyed the 'wheee, free content!' of the first few months on NetGalley, I need to me more judicious in what I request, because a lot of it has disappointed me lately, and been time I could be spending elsewhere. The secret to getting good stuff on Netflix as a non-famous internet person appears to be to request books by non-white authors (that says disappointing things about either how publishers value the likes of Yangsze Choo, or how popular their books are, but it works in my favour).
I also want to read at least one thing that's in French and only French! I have both the novel and the graphic novel of L'enigme des Blancs-Manteux, to this end. The graphic novel should work as crib for the novel, right?