My Year in Books

OK, I read a lot this year! I actually had a goal to read slightly less this year than last, but here it is, more than 200 books, versus my goal of 150. Last year was 185, and 2020 was 180. The reason I set a lower goal is because I believeI spend way too much time on the couch reading. I do some listening to books which allows multi-tasking, but more than 2/3 of these books were read, not listened to. And, most evenings end up with me on the couch playing idle nonverbal games on my ipad while listening, so not so much multi-tasking going on. I've got to get some new hobbies, or sign up for additional volunteering!

I read most of these books on the kindle (70%) and when I finish it, it posts automatically to GoodReads, simplifying the keeping track. I manually enter hard copy and audio books, though I'm not so accurate in getting that right. Still, I think this is pretty good. (Actually, I just found a half dozen Audible books I hadn't added but I just did; not reflected in these totals!) And, of course, GoodReads makes the graphic, and also allows exporting to excel to make your own statistics. 

Folks, I only acquired and read less than twenty books on my own this year - all the rest were library books or audio books! Let's hear it for the library! Especially because my habit is to find an author I like, and then read my way through the entire oeuvre. The digital service my library uses tends to have all-or-none of authors I stumble across. With ten spots for checking out books, and another 10 to join waitlists, I keep them coming. 

I grade on a curve, and I think that makes me a harder grader than many others. In fact, a quick scan shows my score is higher than average for only six books this year. I assume a book will have three out of five stars, and it needs to be very good or very bad to deviate from that. So the graphic above shows the only three five-star books of the year. Here is a quick recap of them:

The absolute BEST indoor plant book! And Christopher Griffin, the Plant Kween, is the cutest guy I know - I found him on Instagram before I bought the book. So this book is luscious in its photography, but serious in its plant information. Latin names, proper botanical terminology, very precise notes about care. But luscious! (Bonus for Brooklyn readers: It contains portraits of the best plant shops to be found in the borough.)

Written entirely in the first person, this is a sprawling and moving book. VERY faithful to David Copperfield, which I read as a child. I had to get a plot synopsis of the original, which was fun then to figure out the modern characters, though it did result in hints of spoilers. Most of the books I read this year, the typical mystery, takes maybe five hours to read. This was more like fifteen! But worth it!

The story of a woman enslaved by her father, and how her life evolves as her circumstances change. Very moving depictions of the compromises made to survive. There is an historical note at the end, showing how this is closely based in reality. Not so very far from here, in place or time. It really gripped me.

 

 

 I rated just two books at two stars. One was really a short story; it seemed to me to be just exploiting the popularity of a series and squeezing some extra and unnecessary and not very entertaining mileage out of it by tossing in this story. The other was an historical mystery set in England in the early nineteenth century, the first of a series. I didn't even finish it - very rare for me - because I couldn't handle the historical anachronisms and inaccuracies, right down to rich people routinely drinking water. (Water wasn't safe to drink.) When I checked reviews on GoodReads, it turns out many others also noted these problems.

 My book count is up this year partly because I read more books written for children and teens. They go quickly, and can be very engaging. The bulk of these were fantasy novels. I raced through a series, The Ranger's Apprentice, that basically eschewed magic for craft and skill to create fantasy adventures in a imaginary medieval world (with a million anachronisms). With two offshoot series (new characters, same world, some overlap) there were a total of 25 of them! 

I whiled away much of my Covid isolation by re-reading a fantasy series by Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen's Thief. The big idea is a world much like Greece in the sixteenth century, but with different geography and a different pantheon of gods. I had read all six books a while back (written from 1996 to 2020), but downloaded them to the kindle to take along with me to Greece. There are conflicts ranging from families to nations to international dynamics, as the "Medes" (think Ottoman Empire) continually try to take over the Greek pennisula, with the (European analogue) "Great Powers" on the other side maybe or maybe not helping out the three squabbling Greek kingdoms. Nothing is as it seems in any of these books, told from different points of view. I hadn't read the last book, and the others had been read so long ago I had forgotten a lot. (Hey! In double checking the dates, I just discovered a new book out this year! A collection of related short stories and trivia to supplement the series. Happy Christmas to me!)

Nearly half the books I read this year were mystery novels, many of those in series. (I don't distinguish between mystery, thriller, suspense, spy, and related concepts, just lump them all as "mystery"). There was a charming and lighthearted series by Rhys Bowen called "Her Royal Spyness". Our heroine, when we meet her, is 25th in line for the British throne, but penniless and having to survive by her wits. Downton Abbey meets Dorothy Sayers in the 1920s, with fifteen books in the series so far. The author is prolific beyond this series, but I've not really sampled her other stuff. A more hardboiled series I'm nearly caught up with is the Walt Longmire set, by Craig Johnson. He is a sheriff in the least populated county in Wyoming. The descriptions of the physical landscape are gripping, and many of the characters are Native Americans, as there are a lot of tribal lands around. There is a TV series out, Longmire, inspired by these books but not at all a literal translation to the screen. I watched just the very first episode, and put it on my ever growing "to watch when I have time" list. My favorite mystery writer ever, Louise Penny, had a new volume out from her Inspector Gamache series which I devoured in previous years. The latest is one of the best ever. There is also a brand new television series, Gamache, out as of early December, again inspired by the books but not a literal translation. I've watched the first two episodes, and will watch the rest of the 8-episode season soon. 

There isn't a clear line always between fantasy and science fiction, but I do try to break them apart. I'm drawn to these genres because, as long as you are making things up, you can create a really appealing world, one I might like to visit. Many of my science fiction reads come from John Scalzi's blog, where he devotes space to allow authors to promote their books by talking about what they were trying to convey in the book ("The Big Idea"). An author I stumbled onto from the blog, Becky Chambers, is fabulous. The first book of hers I read is set in a universe she uses for several other books, but she focuses on different characters in wildly different settings. My favorite of this year (4 stars!!!!) is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. The story takes place in a hospitality rest stop for interstellar travel, where a half dozen characters from different species from different planets are stuck together during an unexpected delay of undetermined length. Complex tensions and interactions ensue, but they all pull together in the end to save an endangered child.

An unusual book I read (also tipped off by Scalzi's blog) might be in the mystery genre or in the fantasy genre. The Peacekeeper, by B.L. Blanchard. It is set in an alternate world where the Americas were never colonized, and the Ojibwe nation surrounds the Great Lakes. There are crimes and mysteries, but "justice" is different in a society where restoring harmony is the main role of peace keepers. The physical description of an Objibwe Shikaakwa (Chicago) reminded me of the Afro-futurist vision of Wakanda, but with a Native American orientation. Refreshing! And a very good contemporary novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, by Angeline Boulley, is also set in Ojibwe culture, but in our world. Another hat tip to Scalzi's author's platform.

I read four books by Connie Willis, which share a common plot device - time travel is possible and Oxford University sends back scholars and historians to view historic events. Two are WWII in England books, one mixes WWII with a lighthearted take on Victorian England based on the Victorian book Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and one takes us to the Black Death. They are entertaining in different ways, and transporting a contemporary observer to these settings makes for interesting situations. Recommended.

OK. Time to investigate new hobbies, other ways to spend my time.