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Wow, what a year 2015 turned out to be! Between gardening and planning/building for chickens in 2016 and my new passion for biking I am surprised I had much time to read at all. But I did! And I managed to read 75 books, the same number as I did last year. I think it helped that I read quite a few short books and graphic novels, but in the end it isn’t the number but the quality that matters and did I ever read some excellent books this year!
Here is how it breaks down:
Books read: 75
Fiction: 43
Nonfiction: 30
Plays: 1
Poetry: 1 (while I only read one complete book of poetry, I read lots of poems)
Breaking it down even further it was a good year for hybrid genres which is why the numbers don’t add up:
Number of authors whose books I read more than one of: 7 (Matt Fraction, Ann Leckie, Noelle Stevenson, Jo Walton, Kurtis Wiebe, G.Willow Wilson, Virginia Woolf)
In translation: 6 (French, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Dutch) this number is way down from last year, I really need to work on upping my in translation reading
Book Source:
ARCS: 15 (many of these were books for review for Library Journal and Shiny New Books)
Own: 11
Library: 49 (I am such a good library user!)
This is the first year I have ever kept track of how much biking I did, and frankly the first year I have ever done enough biking that I would want to keep track. Would you believe I pedaled 5,311 miles/8,511 kms? Holy mackerel! I did it over the course of 209 rides and 301 hours. Not all of those rides and miles were outdoors. Astrid and I covered 1,500 miles/2,414 kms together outdoors with our longest ride topping 70.6 miles/114 kms. The rest of the miles were on a stationery bike in the late winter/early spring, and with Astrid hooked up to a smart trainer since the end of October.
Using Zwift and a smart trainer, I have pedaled since October 23rd, 1,593 miles/2,564 kms in 88 hours 29 minutes climbing 86,873 feet/26,479 meters of virtual elevation and burning off 117 pieces of pizza (285 calories each). My longest virtual ride was 100.2 miles/161 kms.
Gardening
In the garden we had our 1 1/2 car garage torn down, built a shed, installed a chainlink fence and framed a chicken coop. In addition we had the pleasure of a family of hawks nesting in my nextdoor neighbor’s backyard. All but one ear of popcorn was stolen by squirrels. We grew potatoes for the first time. Also Brussels sprouts and amaranth. None of our lettuce seed sprouted but it was a great year for peas, chard, sorrel, basil and zucchini.
Thanks for sharing 2015 with me!
I hope you all have safe New Year’s celebrations. And may 2016 be filled with lots of good books and joy and all the things you love most.
I read 44 books in 2015, about the same as last year and still not where I'd like to be (I'm still working on what might yet be number 45, but I doubt I'll make it in the three hours and change I have left). About a third of the books I read were science fiction, a much higher proportion than usual due to Hugo reading and some other writing projects I'm working on. Though I've found some great
It's hard to believe, but another busy year at Oxford University Press has gone by. Join our music team as we take a look back at the year that was 2015, from new scholarship to new faces, with a combination of computers, cake, and chicken.
Last past year was pretty awesome. I feel like I’m starting to come into my own rhythm and really develop what my style of work means. Looking at where I was skill-wise last January and where I am today it’s a pretty big leap, and I’m super excited for what 2015 brings. Here are some highlights:
Michelle Can Draw Work: There were a few really big releases for me this year. In 2013 I had worked on product & package design for Spectrum Noir, and those products were released early 2014. It’s pretty exciting to pick up a marker and remember designing the curves and shapes of it! I participated in Moon Animate: Make Up, a fan animated full length episode of Sailor Moon, which anyone who knows me has witnessed this nerdy love of mine. It currently has over 1.4 million views, which is so awesome! In April an illustration of Ellie I had painted (with real paint!) was published in 1,000 Dog Portraits. She’s looking pretty refined in it (above). In June I completed a children’s book, Santa’s New Tradition, the first to come to publication which was released in September. It turned out super cute and I’m really proud of the finished work. The last big highlight was having my work featured in LTD Art Gallery in Seattle- which also ended up being the show poster. (see below). It was so exciting to have my work shown, hopefully 2015 has a gallery show in store for me too! (You can buy a print here!)
Life: Even though work has kept me busy, I still managed a couple trips in this year- first was to Georgia in the spring. I’m still in awe of how the moss grows off of the trees down there, and it was pretty nice to see Savannah and visit SCAD. Chad and I also went on a work & play trip to the west coast- Portland for Icon 8, the best conference I have ever been too. Icon was fantastic- there were so many illustrators there- talented and talkative and excited to share. I came back feeling so inspired and connected- I can’t wait for Icon9. While there we toured around Portland- it was a lot of fun to see and great spending time with friends and family who live out that way. We road tripped our way to Seattle- which was so great too, and we certainly got our exercise walking up those hills, hah. (See my terrible yoga above on Mt. St. Helens)! The last trip was to a SCBWI conference in Northern Michigan. I drove up with super awesome illustrator new friend Kirbi Fagan (check out her amazing paintings here) and really liked some aspects of this conference but I don’t think i’d attend another SCBWI event. I did really enjoy visiting Mackinaw and meeting some nice people.
Yeah Haus: has had a busy year- we worked with a few existing and several new clients creating some work that was more diverse then 2013. Some of the highlights were working on a children’s app (yet to come out but check out the cute fruit above!), releasing our short film Victor and having that be selected for multiple film fests, and my personal favourite- worked on a super short (5s) animation with a painterly style about a penguin. This has been a creative year for us at Yeah Haus and I couldn’t be prouder!
Other: The Olympics were so much fun to watch, my sister visited during the summer from England and we had a blast, I’ve really gotten into Yoga- and it’s almost healed my bent out of shape back, our 100 year old tree pulled up our somewhat new driveway during a tornado, cut off 13” of hair for children’s Alopecia, started working with ink, finally got our Yeah Haus reel and website up, and I got to work on a lot of personal work. 2014 has been great, but I’m really looking forward to 2015. Chad & I have got a lot of new things happening this year, and I think it might be the best yet!
Here we are on the last day of 2014 which means it’s time for me to look back over my year of reading. There was a bit of excitement with the Kindle Rebellion during which I killed two Kindles. Happily Kobo and I are living in peace if not harmony (it’s a good ereader but there are things about it that frustrate me). I also began doing reviews for Library Journal and did a review for Shiny New Books as well. I managed to read a little of everything — essays, history, gardening, poetry, short stories, plays, fiction of all kinds. Nothing to complain about there! I set no reading goals other than to read good books and I can report it was a success! I very much liked not having a list hanging over my head all year and simply making plans from month to month. I ended up reading a lot of just published books but I still read older books too, though admittedly there is an imbalance but is that really so bad? I wonder.
I had thought it was a record breaking year in terms of number of books read until just before I started writing this when I looked at past years. I completed 75 books in 2014. Last year I read 69 but the year before that I read 78. That year was the most read ever. So no record, but pretty close. Still, I try to always remind myself that it is not about the numbers but how much I enjoyed the books that matters most. And wow, were there some really good books! Let’s break it all down.
Books Completed: 75
Books begun but abandoned: 2
Fiction: 31(3 fewer than 2013)
Nonfiction: 31 (one more than 2013)
Poetry: 8 (twice as many as 2013)
Plays: 4 (3 more than 2013)
Breaking it down even further (there may be some overlap across genres)…
Essays: 5
Scifi/Fantasy: 6
Memoir/Biography: 6
Books about Books/Reading/Literature: 5
Science: 2
Social Science: 5
History: 1
Books about Gardening/Nature/Environment/Climate Change: 11
Childrens/Juvenille/YA: 1
Letters/Diaries: 1
Short story collections: 3
Graphic novels: 3
Books by women: 38
Books by men: 33
Multiple mixed authors: 3
Rereads: 5
Number of authors whose books I read more than one of: 6 (Euripides, Hilary Mantel, Bryan O’Malley, Claudia Rankine, Rebecca Solnit, Robin Wall Kimmerer)
In translation: 13 (French, Dutch, German, Japanese, Greek, Vietnamese)
Book source/Format
ARCS: 9
Ebooks: 10 (one of these was an ARC)
Library: 49 (several of these were ebooks)
Own: 11
Well, there it is, 2014. I am surprised by the number of rereads and the number of authors I read more than once. I am a bit startled by the number of books I borrowed from the library and the number that were published in 2014. I knew both would be big but I wasn’t expecting they’d be that big. The higher library count though also means I didn’t buy as many books as I might have. However, there were a couple of books I bought after borrowing them from the library.
All in all, a good year. Thank you for sharing it with me. I wish you a Happy New Year and I hope your 2015 is filled with oodles of great books!
I read 47 books in 2014, which, strangely enough, is exactly the same number as I read last year--not sure that's ever happened, and certainly not since I started keeping track. It was a very odd year too, reading-wise, with periods of intense and enjoyable reading alternating with long fallow stretches in which nothing appealed and the thought of concentrating on a single work was positively
What were the most popular books at the Google Play store? According to a post on the Official Android Blog, these bibliophiles “loved reading stories — real and imagined — of love, adventure, and, OK, sometimes lust.” John Green’sThe Fault in Our Stars was named number one on the “Books of the Year” list.
Veronica Roth captured two spots; Divergent landed at number three and Insurgent landed at number five. E.L. James’Fifty Shades of Grey came in second and Solomon Northup’sTwelve Years a Slave came in fourth. Below, we’ve collected free samples of all the books for your reading pleasure. (more…)
Fifteen writers have been working as contributors for the “Bookends” column at The New York Times. All of them have revealed the titles that gave them “their favorite reading experience of 2014.” Below, we’ve collected free samples of most of the books on the list for your reading pleasure. (more…)
New Year's Eve fireworks, 2012; photo by Matthew Cheney
I have a small contribution in the grand collage that is the Strange Horizons reviewers' "2012 in Review". Well worth taking a look at for the huge, wonderful variety of writers' interests and enthusiasms.
Happy new year!
0 Comments on Strange Horizons 2012 in Review as of 1/2/2013 12:07:00 PM
Friends, I have a sad confession to make: in 2012, I read all of 31 books. That's... pretty damn low, for me. It's roughly half the books I read last year, or the year before. It's probably the fewest books I've read in any year in the last decade, and certainly since I started keeping track. There are any number of reasons for this sudden drop: early in the year, the stress of scrambling for
I read 59 books in 2011, a bit of a drop from previous years which is mainly due to Strange Horizons and the SF Encyclopedia taking up a lot of my time, but also, as I mentioned yesterday, because commuting by car rather than pubic transport has cut into my reading time. Probably the most interesting thing about this year's reading is that for the first time since I've been keeping track, I've
Whatever the opposite of early adopter is, I'm it. I tend to stick with what works, and am rarely in a rush to discover how a new gadget might improve my life. I started this blog in 2005 when the format was already starting to get a bit stale (and am still plugging away at it going into 2012 when it's become positively antiquated). I've only had a Gmail account for a year. I got my first
I went back to January 2011 and picked one piece of art from each illustrator featured this year. It was a hard process and I am sure your choices would be different. Heck, if I went back in a few weeks my choices probably would not be the same, either. I loved so many of the illustrations, but I do have a Christmas tree to decorate and just this much was hours of work.
Below you will find one illustration from each Saturday, the name of the illustrator and a link to their featured page. Hope you enjoyed what the illustrators shared with you this year.
Wonderful illustrations all! Thanks for the gallery.
Rosi Hollinbeck said, on 12/17/2011 9:08:00 AM
Wow! What a treat! I don’t know how you could choose only one from each of these incredible artists, but great job on this.
Jeanne said, on 12/17/2011 3:59:00 PM
At the risk of repeating what Rosi said … Wow! Kathy, Thanks for putting these all together. I will bookmark the post and go back from time to time, re-looking at some of the many artists whose inspiring work is here. It’s a “Best Of … ” Gallery!
Jeanne
USA Today released its “Top 100 Books for 2010″ list this week, a bestseller list composed of 77 percent fiction. Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium series dominated the top three spots and George W. Bush‘s Decision Points occupied fourth place.
The newspaper also noted: “Stephenie Meyer‘s popularity began to cool off. She accounted for 4% of best sellers the list tracked, down from 11% in 2009. The vampire and paranormal craze among readers isn’t dead, but it’s fading, accounting for just 9% of best sellers, down from 17% in 2009.”
The article also noted that books with movie adaptations do particularly well. It’ll be interesting to see if adaptations (like Kathryn Stockett‘s The Help) will boost sales next year.
It’s always nice on the first day of a new year to look ahead and think of the possibilities for the coming months. My 2009 reading plan was pretty simple, read some good books. And I did. But I found in the middle of summer that I felt completely without direction and a bit unmoored. I assembled a quick short list of books from several of your suggestions and had a string of marvelous reads (Enchanted April and Rebecca among them). It is clear to me that I need a plan more specific than read some good books but maybe not as specific as these are the books I am going to read this year.
The pile I assembled for the TBR Challenge and my vacation reading binge has turned out to be working wonderfully for the past month. There is enough variety of material in it that I don’t feel constrained, but there is not so much that I feel overwhelmed with choice. So here is my plan. I will continue reading from the pile until I have read all of the books in it with allowances for whims of course. Then, when the pile is read or almost completely read, I will assemble another pile of 20 or so books, and so on throughout the year. In this way the year will get divided into smaller reading chunks that will provide a loose plan coupled with variety so I don’t feel as though I am forcing myself to read from a particular list and then feel guilty when I don’t.
As for blogging, I am still mulling over the things I wrote about back in October when I was thinking about blogging and reading and writing. I am not completely certain what being a better reader means and how that translates to blogging. I had hoped to have some inspiration from the How to Read Literature Like a Professor book but that didn’t work out. I don’t want to read like a professor, I want to figure out what it means to be a thoughtful reader. Is there a book called How to Read Literature Thoughtfully and Then Blog About It?
Then there is library school which always has to get figured into the picture. I started one class at a time in September of 2007 and the end of it all is just appearing on the very edge of the horizon. 2010 will be my last full year of school. Saying I graduate in May of 2011 doesn’t seem as far away anymore, why it’s next year! What a relief. This year I will get to take some elective classes instead of only required classes that I hope will prove useful and a little more relaxing than the required classes I’ve been having to take.
Monday I start a required course for my Digital Libraries concentration. It is called Human-Computer Interaction. I’ve had the professor before and he was great, one of those professors that really makes you think deeply about a subject. So I am expecting this one to be challenging but ever so fascinating. I will definitely share things I learn that you also might find interesting.
Welcome 2010! I hope it is a year of good books, good reading, and other good things for everyone.
As if my lack of enthusiasm for even the year's best books weren't bad enough, 2009 was also a year in which, unlike 2008, I was very much not stumped for choice when the time came to choose the year's worst reads. Looking at this list, which contains two Hugo nominees and one of the most talked-about genre books of the fall, it's hard not to draw conclusions about at least some of the reasons
June 2009 began with that special GalleyCat video of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison defending books against censorship at an intimate Free Speech Leadership Council event.
In sad news, Ann Arbor's Shaman Drum Bookshop closed in June. Chris Anderson's admitted to lifting Wikipedia passages in his book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price."
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section...
In May's biggest headline, a blogger spotted similarities between one paragraph of NY Times columnist and author Maureen Dowd's weekend column and a post by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Dowd corrected the mistake, and no disciplinary action was taken.
The literary blogosphere buzzed about a sequel to J.D. Salinger's famous novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," but GalleyCat had some doubts. Finally, Alice Munro (pictured, via) won the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize.
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section...
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series scored the biggest headline of April 2009, as the series ruled the top four bestselling books for the first quarter of 2009--16 percent of all books sold during that period.
That same month, Amazon.com bought Lexcycle, the company that made the Stanza Digital Reader AppAIn addition, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. Creating endless anxiety for publishers, Amazon eBook customers begin to boycott books priced over $9.99. In a calculated response to #queryfail day, hundreds of writers pooled agent complaints in a #agentfail day. Finally, GalleyCat landed in The Wall Street Journal.
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section...
I was going to post about Proust and the Squid today but I got to working on my reading stats and couldn’t stop so the book review will have to wait until tomorrow
My reading plan for 2009 was simple, “read some good books.” I did a fair job of it. Maybe it was because for the first time in a long time there was no plan and so I was more relaxed. Or maybe it was because of the time carved out in every day to read on public transit to and from work. It could also quite probably have to do with the TV no longer working since we chose not to get a converter box and don’t subscribe to cable. There was also an almost continuous low-level fear that I carried through the year that school was eating away all my time so the time I did have to read was fully committed and focused on reading. And it helped that I tended to choose shorter books, at least it seems to me like they were shorter. Whatever it was, 2009 wasn’t a bad year for reading but given the average rating, it could have been better. That, however, is to be worked out in 2010.
Here are some statistics:
Books Completed: 61
Fiction: 31
Nonfiction: 26
Poetry: 1
Plays: 3
From the above:
Graphic novels: 4
Short stories: 2
Essays: 2
Books in translation: 13
Published BCE: 3
Before 1900: 8
1900 – 1999: 21
2000 and after: 29
Books by women: 26
Books by men: 31
Books by multiples authors: 4
From the library: 26
Borrowed from a person: 3
Kindle: 4
Own: 28
Average rating on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being excellent: 3.9
Highest score: 5
Lowest: 1
Re-reads: 3
Books begun but abandoned: 2
Five Books I liked Best (in no particular order):
Moo Pak Gabriel Josipovici
The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson vols 1 & 2
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Honorable Mentions:
Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf
Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
Burial at Thebes (Antigone) by Seamus Heaney and Sophocles
A lot of bloggers and reviewers have been posting their decade's best lists, but I'm sticking with the end of year format. On the whole, I've found most of the best of decade lists I've seen rather samey. Past a certain resolution, one loses sight of the interesting, idiosyncratic choices that make best-of lists so much fun. Besides, after blogging for nearly half the decade (a scary thought,
In better news, Fictionwise announced that they had sold five million eBooks, another milestone for digital readership. A few agents launched #queryfail day on Twitter, publishing bad query excerpts and dishing out pitching advice in 140-character bursts. The SXSW Festival's "New Think for Old Publishers" panel discussion generated controversy and dialogue online.
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section...
February 2009 brought a fake Twitter feed and a major horror author's endorsement of a digital reader.
Early that month, a Citi Investment Research analyst made headlines by estimating that Amazon.com (AMZN) had sold 500,000 Kindles. Within days, we interviewed novelist Stephen King at the launch of Kindle 2.
The comic book world celebrated at a sold-out NYC Comic-Con, and GalleyCat scored interviews with publishing innovators about their work in comics, videogames, and graphic novels. In addition, an early Twitter book deal was signed and a fake Maya Angelou Twitter feed was exposed.
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section...
January 2009 dawned with a flurry of layoffs and closures around the industry, but a few happy stories broke that cold month as well. An accidental book trailer for an out-of-print book scored 30 million views on YouTube. The iPhone digital reader Stanza counted one million downloads, making headlines for a scrappy start-up.
Welcome to GalleyCat's annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It's a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009.
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What were the most popular books at the Google Play store? According to 
Fifteen writers have been working as contributors for the “Bookends” column at The New York Times. All of them have revealed the titles that gave them “.jpg?picon=160)
USA Today released its 
In May's biggest headline, a blogger spotted similarities between one paragraph of NY Times columnist and author 
March 2009 opened with a bang as disgraced governor 
February 2009 brought a fake Twitter feed and a major horror author's endorsement of a digital reader.
January 2009 dawned with a flurry of layoffs and closures around the industry, but a few happy stories broke that cold month as well. An accidental book trailer for an out-of-print book
Wonderful illustrations all! Thanks for the gallery.
Wow! What a treat! I don’t know how you could choose only one from each of these incredible artists, but great job on this.
At the risk of repeating what Rosi said … Wow! Kathy, Thanks for putting these all together. I will bookmark the post and go back from time to time, re-looking at some of the many artists whose inspiring work is here. It’s a “Best Of … ” Gallery!
Jeanne