Entry tags:
books! with pages!
So at the beginning of 2011, I started a log of every book I finished, and somehow I've remained more or less on top of that? And I took notes along the way, and it's the end of the year, so, idk, here, have a list.
Books What I Read In 2011, complete with handwavey feelings:
1/6: Heart of Gold, Sharon Shinn. Reread, because I love me some cheesy SFF, and Shinn delivers in the best possible way. (1)
1/7: Night Watch, Terry Pratchett. Oh god, this is one of my BOOKS. I am frequently dubious in re: PTerry, but this one gets me in the good spots - the spots reserved for doing things not because they are easy but because they are necessary, and yes they are impossible but we're going to do them anyways, and try and risk and fail and try again and not give up. And stuff and things. (2)
1/7: Princess Academy, Shannon Hale. Recced by Erin - I enjoyed it greatly! The magic is of the quiet and useful sort, the villains are understandable, and the ending is satisfying all around. Might request this for Yuletide this year - I want to know about Miri, post-book. (3)
1/8: Naked, David Sedaris. Occasionally off-putting in that way that Sedaris has, but enjoyable! (4)
1/21: Into the Wild. For class. Hated it. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD BE CELEBRATING. (5)
1/23: Archangel, Sharon Shinn. Reread. Love it so much, still - Rachel and Gabriel and THEIRLOVEISSORIDICULOUS. Need to reread the other two now, because I love the worldbuilding in this. (6)
1/24: Jovah's Angel, Sharon Shinn. Another reread. DELIGHTFUL. (7)
1/28: The Alleluia Files, Sharon Shinn. GOD DAMN I LOVE THIS SERIES. (8)
2/9: Storm Front, Jim Butler. Who has two thumbs and .pdfs of the entire Dresden Files series? I like it a lot, so far - Harry is a basically good dude who is also a total shit sometimes, which I dig. (9)
2/13: Fool Moon, Jim Butler. Same same. (10)
2/21: Grave Peril, Jim Butler. ~~~~~drama! [NOTE: I have no idea what that was in re:, but apparently it made sense to me at the time?] (11)
2/21: Summer Knight, Jim Butler. Like butter, I am on a ROLL. (12)
2/25: Death Masks, Jim Butler. The one with the Shroud of Turin and Marcone and INSANITY ENSUING. (13)
3/2: Blood Rites, Jim Butler. The one with Thomas! and the porn stars, and OH HARRY DRESDEN YOU MORON. (14)
3/4: Dead Beat, Jim Butler. The one where there are necromancers and wardens and a liiiiiittle bit of lasciel and also Bob gets to ride a dinosaur. YEE-HAH. (15)
3/5: Proven Guilty, Jim Butler. The one with Molly coming into her own! And the horror-movie villains. And Lily and Fix and possibly Mab is crazy, but we don't know! And Harry makes up with Ebenezar. And Harry and Murphy don't get it on. And we first hear about the BLACK COUNCIL DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN. (16)
3/9: White Knight, Jim Butcher. The one where they're trying to take out the low-level practitioners, Harry is Thomas' gay boyfriend, Lash is maybe not so bad, and Marcone helps save the day. (17)
3/9: Packing for Mars, Mary Roach. SPACE PROGRAM EEEEEEE. (18)
3/11: Small Favor, Jim Butcher. The one where the denarians come back and steal Marcone and also the archive. AND SHIT GETS REAL. Michaelllllll. (19)
3/?: BONK, Mary Roach. I didn't initially tag this one, but I really loved it! OH SEXYTIMES, WHY SO WEIRD. I also loved how much of the "how sex works" stuff was just…totally unknown, initially, even the stuff that we all take for granted these days. (20)
3/15: Turn Coat, Jim Butcher. The one where Morgan is accused of shit, and Harry gets to go be awesome at Demonreach. Also there is a badass reveal at the end involving psychic paper basically. (21)
3/16: Changes, Jim Butcher. SHIT GETS INCREDIBLY REAL. Ummmm. Maggie as a pawn for the Red Court; Harry as Winter Night; Susan and Martin and the LONGEST OF LONG CONS GOOD GOLLY; the thing that nobody admits is happening. (22)
3/16: Side Jobs, Jim Butcher. I've been spreading this one out alongside the rest of the series, to avoid spoilers. OH MURPHY. (23)
4/19: The Losers 1-7. Oooooooh. I have a hard time with comics as a general rule - I follow the text, not the images, which tends to fuck with my understanding of what the hell is going on - but I like this!
4/20: The Losers 8-32. Mmmmmmm. It did get progressively more ridiculous, but, you know what? I loved it. Although I totally called the ~big spoiler~ about Max from the first hint. (I'm going to count those all together, so, um, 24?)
5/7: Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, Patricia C Wrede. Many of her opinions are terrible, but god damn I love these two books. (26!)
5/17: To Teach: The Journey, Bill Ayers. Interesting look at reasons behind teaching. I like the comparison of teaching to a friendship - not something you learn how to do and then are done learning about, but something you are continually practicing and perfecting. (27)
5/30: The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman. I love the worldbuilding of this, still, even after all these years. Another one that gets me where I live. (28)
7/17: Kraken, China Miéville. Weird and wondrous and hitting a lot of my buttons. I need to reread this one in one fell swoop, because I feel like I missed some with my stop-and-start. (29)
7/18: The Ugly Dachshund, GB Stern. Absolutely adorable, and so much fun! Very quaint and silly and charming. (30)
7/20: Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey. UGH I LOVE THIS BOOK. Brb buying a million copies. (31)
7/21: Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery. It's funny - when I was a kid, I read Anne of Green Gables and identified more with kid!Anne (although I prided myself that I was less silly); now I identify more with adult!Anne (and I realize that oh yes, I was exactly that silly). (32)
7/28: Ghost Stories, Jim Butcher. OH HARRY DRESDEN. (33)
7/29: Embassytown, China Miéville. JFC, I loved this. It is weird and foreign and confusing and I just - ugh, LOVE. (34)
8/2: Blackout, Connie Willis. Reread, because I'd bought the sequel and I knew there was no way I'd remember everything from the first book. A good choice, and Blackout was pretty much as I'd remembered it: long, and intricate, and enjoyable, but with an overall sense of "right, okay, AND THEN?" (35)
8/4: All Clear, Connie Willis. Man, I really wasn't that impressed with this at first. It's a lot like Blackout, in that it's well-written and engaging and the characters are compelling and whatever, but it didn't seem to GO anywhere at first. BUT THEN, about…maybe halfway in? there's a series of OH SHIT OH SHIT moments, where you realize that all of these tiny little things are incredibly important, and interconnected, and so fucking clever it pretty much makes your teeth ache, and basically it was all worth it in the end. I still kind of feel like the books together could have been about 400 pages shorter, but then again with the level of detail and the insanely intricate plotlines, maybe not. (36)
8/11: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon. OH MY GOD THIS BOOK. It took me a little bit to get into it, but it is SO good, and SO smart, and just—there are so many things that this book says that I love, about what fantasy is for, about why we read and write things that we know could never be, and then there's a whole separate thing, the Sam-Rosa-Joe thing, the found family and the love that passeth all goddamn understanding, and, just. Family, and the choices we make, and the things we want from life and the things we get, and who it all works together, and, just. AUGH. Also the writing basically blew my fucking face off, jfc Michael Chabon, how are you so amazing. (37)
8/12-8/26: Felix Castor series, Mike Carey. Like Jim Butcher, but less reliably misogynist! and also craaaaazy. (five of them for a total of 42)
8/26: The Fourth Way, Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley. For school; made me angry from a deficit of useful suggestions. (43)
8/30: The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox. Weird and adorable and slow and sweet. I love a lot of the relationships in this one, and again, the writing is just amazing. (44)
9/4: Night Watch, Terry Pratchett. YES, AGAIN. They did the job they didn't have to do, because it was a job that needed to be done. I just - ugh, this BOOK. (45)
9/19: Anne of Avonlea, LM Montgomery. OH ANNE. (46)
10/19: One Teacher in Ten, Kevin Jennings. Essays from queer teachers. Heartbreaking and also inspiring. (47)
11/7: Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling. Talks about how gender, sex, sexuality are all more complicated than we like to think - how the political influences the scientific, and how the choices scientists make (wrt nomenclature, categorization, standardization, etc) can influence the conclusions they draw. I really liked the first few chapters (on intersexuality and how it's determined/discussed/studied), but found the rest a little slower. (48)
11/7: Unmasking Identities, Jenna Jackson. I WANT TO BE HER FRAAAAAAND. talks about queerness and teaching as two intersecting processes, which resonates enormously for me - I feel like "queer" and "teacher" are two defining parts of my identity, two things that I maybe resisted for a while but ultimately came into / came out as. SMRT THINGS R SMRT. (49)
Somewhere in here I read the first two books from NK Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy, but I forgot to log it - then I started reading the third book and got swamped by stupid school stuff. /o\ Although one of those stupid school things was The Mindful Teacher, which I read for school and yet actually quite enjoyed, so. (Call it 52)
12/15: Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold. CORDELIAAAAAAAAA omg. I have been resisting this series for a million years, it feels like, but then I just - broke down! And now am reading them! ell oh ell oh ell never gonna finish them ever. (53)
12/15: Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold. Cordelia in the caves! ilherface. (54)
12/18: Warrior's Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold. MILES OH MY GOD YOUR FACE. The Dendarii mercenaries reminded me of the Night Watch a good bit. (55)
12/30: The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold. I was reading this right after the other one! just, um, there was a yuletide. BUT MIIIIIIILES omg your face. I also pretty much love Gregor and his stupid everything, negl. (56)
If I just finish the 3rd Jemisin book, I will be ahead of J! …but yuletide. /o\ Still, I feel pretty damn good about the number of books-with-pages I have managed to read this year (although I did technically read most of the Butcher and a good bit of the Bujold on the computer...still, those books are all published! I could have read them in dead-tree form!).
(Looking back, it's incredibly obvious when my life got stupid busy on me: April (exams), June (camp), and September/October/November (school again) are all fairly bare.)
Goal for next year: keep on keeping on! Maybe read more nonfiction - I really enjoyed a lot of the stuff that I read on my own for school, and I loved Packing for Mars. More of that! Maybe some biographies! Also generally I want to use BPL more, because it is THERE. ...also I should maybe finish the MOUNTAIN OF BOOKS I have checked out from the school library, idk /o\.
IN CONCLUSION, books are great! You should feel free to come and talk with me about these books or other books that you think I should read.
Books What I Read In 2011, complete with handwavey feelings:
1/6: Heart of Gold, Sharon Shinn. Reread, because I love me some cheesy SFF, and Shinn delivers in the best possible way. (1)
1/7: Night Watch, Terry Pratchett. Oh god, this is one of my BOOKS. I am frequently dubious in re: PTerry, but this one gets me in the good spots - the spots reserved for doing things not because they are easy but because they are necessary, and yes they are impossible but we're going to do them anyways, and try and risk and fail and try again and not give up. And stuff and things. (2)
1/7: Princess Academy, Shannon Hale. Recced by Erin - I enjoyed it greatly! The magic is of the quiet and useful sort, the villains are understandable, and the ending is satisfying all around. Might request this for Yuletide this year - I want to know about Miri, post-book. (3)
1/8: Naked, David Sedaris. Occasionally off-putting in that way that Sedaris has, but enjoyable! (4)
1/21: Into the Wild. For class. Hated it. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD BE CELEBRATING. (5)
1/23: Archangel, Sharon Shinn. Reread. Love it so much, still - Rachel and Gabriel and THEIRLOVEISSORIDICULOUS. Need to reread the other two now, because I love the worldbuilding in this. (6)
1/24: Jovah's Angel, Sharon Shinn. Another reread. DELIGHTFUL. (7)
1/28: The Alleluia Files, Sharon Shinn. GOD DAMN I LOVE THIS SERIES. (8)
2/9: Storm Front, Jim Butler. Who has two thumbs and .pdfs of the entire Dresden Files series? I like it a lot, so far - Harry is a basically good dude who is also a total shit sometimes, which I dig. (9)
2/13: Fool Moon, Jim Butler. Same same. (10)
2/21: Grave Peril, Jim Butler. ~~~~~drama! [NOTE: I have no idea what that was in re:, but apparently it made sense to me at the time?] (11)
2/21: Summer Knight, Jim Butler. Like butter, I am on a ROLL. (12)
2/25: Death Masks, Jim Butler. The one with the Shroud of Turin and Marcone and INSANITY ENSUING. (13)
3/2: Blood Rites, Jim Butler. The one with Thomas! and the porn stars, and OH HARRY DRESDEN YOU MORON. (14)
3/4: Dead Beat, Jim Butler. The one where there are necromancers and wardens and a liiiiiittle bit of lasciel and also Bob gets to ride a dinosaur. YEE-HAH. (15)
3/5: Proven Guilty, Jim Butler. The one with Molly coming into her own! And the horror-movie villains. And Lily and Fix and possibly Mab is crazy, but we don't know! And Harry makes up with Ebenezar. And Harry and Murphy don't get it on. And we first hear about the BLACK COUNCIL DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN. (16)
3/9: White Knight, Jim Butcher. The one where they're trying to take out the low-level practitioners, Harry is Thomas' gay boyfriend, Lash is maybe not so bad, and Marcone helps save the day. (17)
3/9: Packing for Mars, Mary Roach. SPACE PROGRAM EEEEEEE. (18)
3/11: Small Favor, Jim Butcher. The one where the denarians come back and steal Marcone and also the archive. AND SHIT GETS REAL. Michaelllllll. (19)
3/?: BONK, Mary Roach. I didn't initially tag this one, but I really loved it! OH SEXYTIMES, WHY SO WEIRD. I also loved how much of the "how sex works" stuff was just…totally unknown, initially, even the stuff that we all take for granted these days. (20)
3/15: Turn Coat, Jim Butcher. The one where Morgan is accused of shit, and Harry gets to go be awesome at Demonreach. Also there is a badass reveal at the end involving psychic paper basically. (21)
3/16: Changes, Jim Butcher. SHIT GETS INCREDIBLY REAL. Ummmm. Maggie as a pawn for the Red Court; Harry as Winter Night; Susan and Martin and the LONGEST OF LONG CONS GOOD GOLLY; the thing that nobody admits is happening. (22)
3/16: Side Jobs, Jim Butcher. I've been spreading this one out alongside the rest of the series, to avoid spoilers. OH MURPHY. (23)
4/19: The Losers 1-7. Oooooooh. I have a hard time with comics as a general rule - I follow the text, not the images, which tends to fuck with my understanding of what the hell is going on - but I like this!
4/20: The Losers 8-32. Mmmmmmm. It did get progressively more ridiculous, but, you know what? I loved it. Although I totally called the ~big spoiler~ about Max from the first hint. (I'm going to count those all together, so, um, 24?)
5/7: Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, Patricia C Wrede. Many of her opinions are terrible, but god damn I love these two books. (26!)
5/17: To Teach: The Journey, Bill Ayers. Interesting look at reasons behind teaching. I like the comparison of teaching to a friendship - not something you learn how to do and then are done learning about, but something you are continually practicing and perfecting. (27)
5/30: The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman. I love the worldbuilding of this, still, even after all these years. Another one that gets me where I live. (28)
7/17: Kraken, China Miéville. Weird and wondrous and hitting a lot of my buttons. I need to reread this one in one fell swoop, because I feel like I missed some with my stop-and-start. (29)
7/18: The Ugly Dachshund, GB Stern. Absolutely adorable, and so much fun! Very quaint and silly and charming. (30)
7/20: Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey. UGH I LOVE THIS BOOK. Brb buying a million copies. (31)
7/21: Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery. It's funny - when I was a kid, I read Anne of Green Gables and identified more with kid!Anne (although I prided myself that I was less silly); now I identify more with adult!Anne (and I realize that oh yes, I was exactly that silly). (32)
7/28: Ghost Stories, Jim Butcher. OH HARRY DRESDEN. (33)
7/29: Embassytown, China Miéville. JFC, I loved this. It is weird and foreign and confusing and I just - ugh, LOVE. (34)
8/2: Blackout, Connie Willis. Reread, because I'd bought the sequel and I knew there was no way I'd remember everything from the first book. A good choice, and Blackout was pretty much as I'd remembered it: long, and intricate, and enjoyable, but with an overall sense of "right, okay, AND THEN?" (35)
8/4: All Clear, Connie Willis. Man, I really wasn't that impressed with this at first. It's a lot like Blackout, in that it's well-written and engaging and the characters are compelling and whatever, but it didn't seem to GO anywhere at first. BUT THEN, about…maybe halfway in? there's a series of OH SHIT OH SHIT moments, where you realize that all of these tiny little things are incredibly important, and interconnected, and so fucking clever it pretty much makes your teeth ache, and basically it was all worth it in the end. I still kind of feel like the books together could have been about 400 pages shorter, but then again with the level of detail and the insanely intricate plotlines, maybe not. (36)
8/11: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon. OH MY GOD THIS BOOK. It took me a little bit to get into it, but it is SO good, and SO smart, and just—there are so many things that this book says that I love, about what fantasy is for, about why we read and write things that we know could never be, and then there's a whole separate thing, the Sam-Rosa-Joe thing, the found family and the love that passeth all goddamn understanding, and, just. Family, and the choices we make, and the things we want from life and the things we get, and who it all works together, and, just. AUGH. Also the writing basically blew my fucking face off, jfc Michael Chabon, how are you so amazing. (37)
8/12-8/26: Felix Castor series, Mike Carey. Like Jim Butcher, but less reliably misogynist! and also craaaaazy. (five of them for a total of 42)
8/26: The Fourth Way, Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley. For school; made me angry from a deficit of useful suggestions. (43)
8/30: The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox. Weird and adorable and slow and sweet. I love a lot of the relationships in this one, and again, the writing is just amazing. (44)
9/4: Night Watch, Terry Pratchett. YES, AGAIN. They did the job they didn't have to do, because it was a job that needed to be done. I just - ugh, this BOOK. (45)
9/19: Anne of Avonlea, LM Montgomery. OH ANNE. (46)
10/19: One Teacher in Ten, Kevin Jennings. Essays from queer teachers. Heartbreaking and also inspiring. (47)
11/7: Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling. Talks about how gender, sex, sexuality are all more complicated than we like to think - how the political influences the scientific, and how the choices scientists make (wrt nomenclature, categorization, standardization, etc) can influence the conclusions they draw. I really liked the first few chapters (on intersexuality and how it's determined/discussed/studied), but found the rest a little slower. (48)
11/7: Unmasking Identities, Jenna Jackson. I WANT TO BE HER FRAAAAAAND. talks about queerness and teaching as two intersecting processes, which resonates enormously for me - I feel like "queer" and "teacher" are two defining parts of my identity, two things that I maybe resisted for a while but ultimately came into / came out as. SMRT THINGS R SMRT. (49)
Somewhere in here I read the first two books from NK Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy, but I forgot to log it - then I started reading the third book and got swamped by stupid school stuff. /o\ Although one of those stupid school things was The Mindful Teacher, which I read for school and yet actually quite enjoyed, so. (Call it 52)
12/15: Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold. CORDELIAAAAAAAAA omg. I have been resisting this series for a million years, it feels like, but then I just - broke down! And now am reading them! ell oh ell oh ell never gonna finish them ever. (53)
12/15: Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold. Cordelia in the caves! ilherface. (54)
12/18: Warrior's Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold. MILES OH MY GOD YOUR FACE. The Dendarii mercenaries reminded me of the Night Watch a good bit. (55)
12/30: The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold. I was reading this right after the other one! just, um, there was a yuletide. BUT MIIIIIIILES omg your face. I also pretty much love Gregor and his stupid everything, negl. (56)
If I just finish the 3rd Jemisin book, I will be ahead of J! …but yuletide. /o\ Still, I feel pretty damn good about the number of books-with-pages I have managed to read this year (although I did technically read most of the Butcher and a good bit of the Bujold on the computer...still, those books are all published! I could have read them in dead-tree form!).
(Looking back, it's incredibly obvious when my life got stupid busy on me: April (exams), June (camp), and September/October/November (school again) are all fairly bare.)
Goal for next year: keep on keeping on! Maybe read more nonfiction - I really enjoyed a lot of the stuff that I read on my own for school, and I loved Packing for Mars. More of that! Maybe some biographies! Also generally I want to use BPL more, because it is THERE. ...also I should maybe finish the MOUNTAIN OF BOOKS I have checked out from the school library, idk /o\.
IN CONCLUSION, books are great! You should feel free to come and talk with me about these books or other books that you think I should read.