Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I didn't do the 2021 round-up, and I barely posted any reading posts at all in 2022. I've been doing just great.

According to goodreads right now I read 33 books in 2022. Now, I know I didn't add most of the rare books I consulted in the UK, and with goodreads having made it very difficult to add indie books I suspect I won't be able to add everything... but I'll add some of them and see how I go.

To the Meme!

2020 edition

( Memesheep )

This has been 2022 in books.

I suspect I ought to come up with a similar quiz/meme for podcast content, given how much I have consumed in the past two years...

2019 meme

How many books read in 2019: In an unexpected continued downward trend, a mere 83. Maybe it was that I listened to so many podcasts?

Fiction:Nonfiction:Other breakdown:
Nonfiction (both academic and otherwise): 43
Other (mixed content lit mags, lyric poetry, ??): 5
Fiction (novels, novellas, short stories, narrative poetry, playscripts): 30 - and absolutely none of them eaudiobooks (that's definitely where the podcasts won)

Demographic breakdown of authors:
15 by solo male authors/editors or collaborating all-male teams: 33
15 assorted (including mixed gender editing teams, nonbinary solo authors or editors, men editing medieval women authors, etc): 8
Which leaves works by solo or collaborating female authors, or headed up by female editors: 43 (some fuzziness as usual; I counted Bornstein her and Jack Monroe above, but conceivably they both might have preferred the other way around)

I did less well on POC/ethnic minority authors this year (under 20%), AND fewer authors I know to be trans/nonbinary/some flavour of genderqueer (the latter surprised me, but because I count stats by lead editor not contributing author for collections like QueerStories, that's how it shakes out).

Not a good year for reading goals or even vague intentions, all round. Ho hum.

Favourite Book Read, subdivided:

Non-fiction for personal interest: I only have five to choose from here, and none of them I utterly loved. I think Bornstein's 'Gender Outlaw' wins, because while the memoir/analytic parts weren't outstanding the playscript included WAS, absolutely.

Academic reading: That's a difficult choice, as I have a fair few Chaucer adaptations to deal with as well as secondary lit. I think Spengler's 'Literary Spin-Offs' book has the biggest impact on me, Harris' 'Obscene Pedagogies' was the most fun non-fiction, and 'Sometimes We Tell The Truth' the most fun adaptation.

Fiction for fun: Lots of things I liked but didn't astoundingly love, again. I think Nina Maclaughlin's Wake, Siren might have packed the biggest punch.

Least Favourite: Jost's 'Chaucer's Humour' was the most tedious, but it WAS useful. I think my final read of the year, Kwana Jackson's 'Real Men Knit' might be my lowest rated of the year, but it feels off to say it's my least favourite - I haven't sorted out my review yet because the warmth and draw-in factor was so strong compared to, well, the messy execution.

Oldest book read: Excluding primary sources for work, I guess that would be one of the Shakespeare plays for read-throughs hosted by wildeabandon. Excluding the early modern plays, it might have been Heidi.

Newest book read: I think that's Slippery Creatures, by KJ Charles. Seems to be the only 2020 release I read!

Longest Book Title: I think that's 'The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book'

Shortest Title: Seems to be 'Heidi'.

How many re-reads? Well, my books read count just went up when I discovered I hadn't logged a bunch of primary source re-reads, including the Canterbury Damn Tales themselves. Twelve re-reads, it turns out. Two of those were re-reads *within* the year (Ibn Battutah and Patience Agbabi).

Most books read by one author in the year?: That would be Geoffrey bloody Chaucer.

Any in translation? Only academic primary sources this year.

How many were from the library? 27, which is more than last year but also far fewer than I have actually BORROWED from the library.

It's that time again!

( Exactly the same meme as I've been doing forever )

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

"Well that’s fine
Cause I decline
Your narrow set of rules they just don’t work
These red lines
They’re not mine
And if you need me you can find me ironing my shirt"

I 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?

As a 'get to know the blogger' effort, let's play an icon meme!

Instructions:

1. Comment with 2-3 of my icons
   
2. I will talk about those icons and their descriptions
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit!

Meme provided by journalmemes via ladytharen.

I have a lot of icons, and most of them have been attached to this account for a very long time. I would be delighted to answer questions about my icons!

watersword gave me five questions

1. What was your worst vacation? The vacation I enjoyed least was probably one of the trips to podunk nowhere, northern nsw, to watch my brother compete in athletics competitions. But perhaps instead you would prefer what was probably the worst vacation event, except that I was young enough and my parents cunning enough that I didn't realise at the time.

Scene: you are my mother, a twenty-something mother of two, military wife, living in Perth. You are travelling with your family on your husband's designated annual Return Trip Home. It is Christmas. It is probably the 24th of december? Maybe the 23rd. It is, I think, 1991. (I've have determined this by going through Wikipedia's '199X in australia' pages and looking for a year when parliament was batshit right before Christmas. If this was 1991 then at least it wasn't the same trip that laid the seeds of my phobia of bushfires).

At this point in the RAAF's history, there are SO MANY servicemen and their families needing Christmas trips back to Sydney from Perth that they run a special flight. So you, that is my mother, turn up to Air Movements, aka the dinky passenger terminal on the air base, with your family. Your family consists of: husband, one, prone to airsickness. Eleven-month-old, one, with inner ear trouble, notable for refusing to be separated from you by more than 50 cm, ever, without screaming. Four-year-old daughter, one, melodramatically emetephobic. You know about this, because the baby has been ill a lot, and the daughter has been Melodramatic (in my defense, I think I learned early on that 'brother sick = we panick and wonder if he NEEDS AN AMBULANCE = the four year old gets deposited with friends at weird hours of the night and everything is Rong'. Ergo, people are sick? Time to Screm).

The plane is a 707. You have hyped your daughter up to be excited about going on a Real Plane (you drove to perth, in a car, when you moved) and borrowed a walkman and your husband is dosed to the gills with airsickness tablets. Everything is FINE. Except the plane is late. Hours late. You call your sister in Sydney to say you might arrive around midnight instead of at a sensible hour - you can get a taxi to her house. She insists she'll come and wait.

The plane, you see, is the Prime Ministerial jet. And Parliament is still sitting at mid-afternoon in the eastern states on Xmas Eve.

Eventually, the plane turns up, because Parliament is going to be sitting through the night. It gets refuelled. Your husband explains the intricacies of refuelling to the four year old. You get given your little cardboard meal boxes and get on the plane.

Everything is mostly okay. You sit with the baby, who proceeds to be violently ill; husband is dosed to the gills and distracts the four year old. Everything is fine, until the plane diverts course and deposits you, and an entire jet full of families with under-fives, in Canberra airport, at 10.30, because the PM needs his jet back.

You are there for three hours. Canberra airport in 1991 is not noticeably better equipped than Air Movements back on the base - in fact, worse, as it doesn't even have a vending machine, not in the holding area you're in. Because you're not in the passenger terminal, you're in the private jet and military nonsense terminal. You and this aeroplane full of over-tired, hungry families.

Then they put you, and your ear-trouble-afflicted child, and your airsick husband, and your emetephobic child, in a Hercules troop carrier for a trip to Sydney. (A Herc, for those not familiar with troop carriers, is one of the ones with webbed seats in the back, no soundproof insulation, etc. Also, basically wallows in the sky. Very sway, much bounce.)

Somehow, miraculously, the emetephobic child grows up remembering this as a great adventure, the baby doesn't remember any of it, and only major nuisance is having to wait for a taxi because your sister had given up waiting and gone home.

Many years later, when you are once again living in Perth with a toddler, you are relieved to find the RAAF now just gives employees vouchers for commercial flights.

(An Almost-Ran here was The Time A Freak Storm Shredded The Ancestral Tent (in which i still insist I was conceived), but tbh that was fine for ME, my geodesic dome tent stayed standing, and my brother evacuated to higher ground with my parents so I had the dome all to myself.)

2. What's your least favorite food, ever, the food you could not be paid to eat? I mean.... how much are you paying me? I've adjusted to a LOT of food over the years. You'd have to pay me a lot to eat oysters, though, or spearmint anything. So, oysters with spearmint sauce?

3. What would you cook for an unexpected guest? Because I live alone, but cook in batches, the answer is probably 'whatever i was gonna batch cook for myself anyway'. Failing that: if I can lay hands on tomatoes, though, some simplified version of this roast tomato pasta; otherwise, high likelihood of risotto.

4. What's the weirdest gift you've ever received? Not exactly a weird gift, but a weird gift experience: a prof once gave me 'all my books about women', price of, listening to him complain for 30 minutes about the tedium of being forced to put Token Women Week in his courses and how much he hated the topics. That I had written essays for every time I took his classes. Which he knew, because he was giving me all the secondary sources.

5. Describe your favorite outfit. It's a suit, cut like pyjamas, made of fabric that looks like it might be a couch or 1890s wallpaper. People keep disappointing me by saying it's not as hideous as it sounds: these people should shhh. It is striking, certainly, and it's in that cut that is Good For Large Ladies, so between the pattern (many people admire it) and the fact that women size 16 or over want to know where I got it, it's the most useful networking tool since flourescent hair. (My current lack of hair is /memorable/ but not as good an icebreaker as pink hair)

Here is a photo of it, albeit not with the top I would normally prefer. I was handing in my PhD, I'd run out of normal clothes:



Shout if you want me to ask you questions!

is a bit late, because the Xmas-New Year period was kind of overwhelming in some ways. 2016 edition


1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?

Saw a LIVE opera? (My 2016 response was 'saw an opera but not live so not sure if that counts). Organised and moderated a conference panel session. Solo lit a theatrical show. Did microphone amplification on a different show. Followed A Sport. Plus, ah, a number of entertaining sex life things?

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

The closest thing I had to a resolution was 'I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me', and I did, it didn't kill me, and I think I renew that resolution!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

UK (just England), Australia, the Netherlands, France, the US. (Oh, yeah, that's another thing I'd never done before: set foot in the Americas.)

6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?

Last year I jokingly said 'a sex life' and, well. Erratic, but yes. This year... well obviously I need 'an idea of what I'm doing after my PhD', but there was no way I was going to get that until 2018 anyway. Now I'll either plan it or crash into it headlong.

7. What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Regret to report that I did not remember the date I thought I would from 2016 (I mean, I remember the events, but not the date). Possibly I will remember the 18th or 19th of december 2017 because of TRAVEL FUCK UPS. But perhaps not.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I think both the theatrical lighting and sound things, perhaps?

9. What was your biggest failure?

A couple of teaching-related fuckups.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

As per 2015 and 2016, 'brains'. Also whatever travel sickness/bug/horror thing got the better of me in transit between London and Hereford.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

SOME REALLY COOL SHIRTS from TM Lewins.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

My new officemate, I think. She's super awesome!

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Basically everyone involved in the Australian marriage survey. Ugh. Also me, vis-a-vis girlfriend and travel anxiety, in the last couple of weeks of december.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Rent, air travel. More of it than is probably wise went on just... buying miscellaneous stuff, which habit I need to curtail with a view to probable unemployment later in the year.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

FIGURE SKATING, APPARENTLY

16. What song will always remind you of 2017?

Possibly Sia's 'The Greatest', for reasons.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? happier, but i think also more anxious, so.
ii. thinner or fatter? about the same size
iii. richer or poorer? Maybe marginally richer, but not by much.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Diligent footnoting. Going to the gym.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

you know, aside from perhaps having bought too many books / clothes / ephemera i will only have to jetttison in the coming year, I don't really wish I'd done less of anything.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

COOKING at my gf's sister's place in London.

21. How will you be spending/ did you spend New Year's?

Same place, less cooking, more watching QI and avoiding parties.

22. Did you fall in love in 2017?

Maybe. Probably. Yes?

23. How many one-night stands?

Uh, one, actually.

24. What was your favorite TV program(s)?

Do 'various broadcasts of international figure skating, pirated to youtube' count?

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

I'm not sure 'hate' is quite right, I don't have the energy to put into hating people, but there's one person I resent and have lost even more respect for than previously supposed possible.

26. What was the best book you read?

A BOOK ABOUT MEDIEVAL BEDS by Hollie S Morgan.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Oooh, hard to say - i acquired so much new music. I think I'm going to vote for the cellist Zoe Keating, who I had never heard of before 2017, and who is also generically very different to most of the other stuff I acquired this year.

28. What did you want and get?

Lease renewed on my flat.

29. What did you want and not get?

A particular friend's grant proposal to be accepted, which would then have employed me. We're trying again!

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

You know, I'm not sure. I kind of disengaged from films this year, I think. Moonlight didn't come out here until 2017, so I think that was my favourite?

31. What did you do on your birthday?

Double-booked myself drinks with colleagues AND improv theatre class. Only went to the former.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I feel like being on the same continent, possibly even in the same country, as my gf, would improve things. The cross-global LDR is... not optimal.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?

DRESS LIKE A COUCH, OR POSSIBLY LIKE 1890s WALLPAPER

34. What kept you sane?

But am i sane, though?

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I don't think I really did celebrity perving this year? I want to pinch the cheeks of many figure skaters, but that's not the same thing.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

GIVE YOU THREE GUESSES.

37. Who did you miss?

As usual, mostly people whose names begin with K.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Couple of new fandom buddies, again.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017:

If your breakfast tastes sort of grassy, there is a problem, and it's probably mould.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I really can't. Unless possibly the refrain from one Carbon Leaf song, 'And if i face indecision don't let me face it alone'?

1. What did you do in 2016 that you'd never done before?

... saw an opera? Not live, though, so I'm not sure if that counts. Co-wrote an article. Oh, and visited Africa! (Morocco only, but it's a new continent for me).

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I'm pretty sure I didn't make any, and don't expect to make any more. Unless muttering I am gonna make it through this year counts as a resolution.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

UK (both Scotland and England), France, the Netherlands, Morocco, Australia. I think that was it.

6. What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

Last year I said motivation, and I *did* get some of that! Rather erratic, but it happened. If I say 'a sex life' will I get an erratic one of those this year?

7. What date from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

The actual *date*? I am probably going to remember the 21st of December, for ridiculous fandom reasons. Also we had an awesome work party.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I can now SEE the end of my thesis ahead of me. I have to actually DO it but I can SEE it. Also I co-wrote an article on gifsets.

9. What was your biggest failure?

As for 2016: don't even. I don't wanna talk about it. Everything. Nothing.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Brains, so much brains. (As per 2015, then) Also I had too many colds.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Hmm. A new camera? A fair bit of new music?

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

My boss has been pretty awesome this year, actually!

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

THE GLOBAL VOTING POPULATION. Except for Austria, you go, Austria.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Rent and living expenses. Burgers and air travel.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

STAR WARS. And the ice skating anime!

16. What song will always remind you of 2015?

A *lot* of songs, because this year was the year I suddenly cared about music. Stevie Nicks and Don Henley's 'Leather and Lace' might be the stand-out, though. Or Halsey's 'Hold Me Down'.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier, but only because I had a slightly better time with winter depression and then I came home to the sun for christmas.
ii. thinner or fatter? fatter
iii. richer or poorer? Richer, but i have more large expenses coming up.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Cooking actual food instead of eating out.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Having controversial opinions on Tumblr

20. How did you spend Christmas?

ON A PLANE.

21. How will you be spending/ did you spend New Year's?

At the parental abode. We had one of Mum-s friends for dinner, and went to see the local kiddie fireworks, and then I stayed up doing memes.

22. Did you fall in love in 2015?

Ask me that in five years.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

24. What was your favorite TV program(s)?

SO HAVE I MENTIONED YURI!!! ON ICE? Because suddenly I care about anime now. This is the first time in a very long time that I've consumed a media where I have no genre knowledge and no access to the source language. It's been a wild ride.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No, but I like some people less.

26. What was the best book you read?

I think that might be Hutcheon & Flynn, 'A Theory of Adaptation'.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Gillian Welch, perhaps? I didn't fixate on one of her songs, but I acquired and loved several albums.

28. What did you want and get?

The sense that I can finish my PhD.

29. What did you want and not get?

Magic brain cures.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Uhmm... Carol, perhaps?

31. What did you do on your birthday?

Nothing much, except for being annoyed that so many people thought doing nothing much on my birthday was sad.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Aside from magic brain cures, nothing much. Perhaps a really good housemate/cohabitation buddy, but being solo is better than having miscellaneous housemates.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013?

MORE STAR WARS T-SHIRTS.

34. What kept you sane?

Did fandom keep me sane or make it worse? Who knows.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Oscar Isaac, apparently. Not sure how that happened.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Oh god don't EVEN.

37. Who did you miss?

Kayloulee. Katie. Kristen. People whose names begin with K, apparently. (I said this last year and it still stands)

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Maybe some of my new fandom buddies - deputychairman and bomberqueen17 both stand out. Or new academic twitter pals - the individual known as T.S. Wingard is pretty spiffy.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016:

All those years of obscure nerding pay off. I mean. Most of the great academic stuff I did this year is just repurposed fannishness; and half the things my boss asked me to add to my work were things I already know of as fandom phenomena.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
This is pretty hard to do - it feels like the first half of 2016 is so sharply divided from the second.
Try the Mountain Goats: "People might laugh at your tattoos; when they do get new ones in completely garish hues"

For some reason I feel like books read were even bigger figures than usual in my life this year. Possibly because I have really struggled to care about my thesis. Maybe because I didn't really go head over heels for any media fandoms until Star Wars in December. Maybe because I spent a lot of time on planes. Who knows?

Anyway, I swear I used to do a book meme, but I can't find it, so I've taken a list of qs from Catherine Pope.

How many books read in 2015? According to goodreads, 87 books. Well, it says 86 but I only just filed one of my academic books, it hasn't updated yet. I don't file all my academic reading on there, but that's a good enough barometer.

Fiction:Nonfiction ratio: Huh, I'll have to count this one up. 71:16, but again, I don't log all my academic non-fiction. And some which I do I haven't read cover-to-cover, so that's a bit fuzzy.

Male:Female author ratio: 20 male : 2 m&f coauthored : 65 female (of which one now IDs as genderqueer, but was IDing as a butch woman at time of publication; three are woman-edited collections including work or substantial interview material from some men, all of which I think were likely queer men, and some non-binary people)

I... had not realised my reading list is so heavily skewed to women! That makes me want to track my academic reading more assiduously, as it would tip the balance back - but I'm not sure it would be enough to produce the usual majority of dudes.

On the other hand I only counted five authors I know to be non-white (six if you include Melina Marchetta, which for this purpose I reckon you should, because of how race politics in Australia are not the same as the US), plus two or three who I have a feeling might be Jewish but don't know for sure.

Favourite Book Read:
Ooohkay let's subdivide this:

Non-fiction for personal interest: Maybe Polikoff, 'Beyond Straight (and Gay) Marriage' - it put into (now slightly out of date) words a lot of things qualms I have with the marriage movement.
Academic reading: hum. Rosenwein, 'Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages', maybe? I didn't even list that one on goodreads until I was answering this. Oops.
Fiction for fun: I think the two Renaults from the Alexander trilogy, Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, take the biscuit.

Least Favourite: Dawn French's 'Dear Sylvia' is an awful book that should feel bad.

Oldest book read: Excluding various medieval primary sources, you mean? Looks like it was Emily of New Moon, pub 1923.

Newest book read: If you mean read most quickly on the heels of its publication date, that would be the two New Smut Project compilations in early April (publ late March). The book released latest in the year was... I was going to say The Shepherds Crown (publ August, read October), but, embarrassingly, it was one of the Riptide romance e-books, Stuck Landing. It was a pretty good read, too. Totally worth the nine dollars or whatever it cost.

Longest Book Title: I had thought this would be academic, but no, it was The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window And Disappeared.

Shortest Title: David Auburn, Proof

How many re-reads? Sixteen, plus I think I mustn't have logged my audiobook re-read of Wolf Hall.

Most books read by one author in the year? This was the year of Kerry Greenwood, apparently. Ten all up, most of them while travelling.

Any in translation? I think only The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared.

How many were from the library? Not enough. Plenty of the not-logged academic reading, of course. Of the ones I logged, only three, and one of those I subsequently purchased. The uni's english lit collection does not meet my requirements for leisure reading, I'm afraid, and I refuse to pay to use the American church's library (I could spend that eighty bucks on, oh, books!)