This year was very year-like.
I'm pretty over 2013 as a year, y'all. As the very wise evilsupplyco said, "If 2013 was an enemy, realize it is almost dead and you are yet alive. Show the corpse to 2014 as a warning."
/me shakes 2013 menacingly
/gives it a kick for good measure
Behold! A book meme! I would love it if y'all readers would do something similar on your journals, or just a list, or even just a brief interpretive dance expressing how you eschewed books for wolves and horses. I'm easy to please, man. And now I can post this because unlike back on 12/21 or whatever horrifying date it was that GoodReads emailed me all LET'S CELEBRATE YOUR YEAR IN BOOKS while there were still ten fine days left in December, I am finally ready to do my tally. Seriously GR, that was totally uncalled for.
Anyway!
Total # of books read: 110
Fiction: 98
Non-fiction: 12
Rereads: 19
Favorite book: Carol O'Connell's The Chalk Girl, a weird and creepy mystery set in NYC's Central Park, all about how middle school can be way more terrible than anyone could ever realize, this book was both awesomely funny and inexplicably gross. Which is a combination I'd be fine with having on my tombstone, really.
On the way home from school, we stop off for a slice of pizza -- Phoebe's treat. She says there's an upside to what they did to me today. I've marked my place in the annals of school history. She says, "They'll never get that bloodstain out."
Honorable mention to Michael Connelly's Angel Flight and Ian Rankin's Resurrection Men, both of which are chock-full of placeporn and demonstrate how to keep readers interested in really really long series.
Unexpected Pleasure: I went on a Xmas-themed mystery binge this year (like you do) and I'd been saving Murder Sets Seed all year for it because that is the color of my OCD. And it basically annihilated all the other Xmas books. So good. It's basically a Bechdel-test-passing crone-centric prairie gothic set in Missouri, and I loved the snot out of it. It has a huge run-down old house, a small town flower shop, eating your feelings, crazy snow pellets that people from California could never believe. All my boxes, neatly ticked.
Biggest Disappointment: I reread Man With a Load of Mischief as part of the Xmas binge, and just did not love it at all. I felt the whole thing would've gone a lot better if someone just put Jury over their knee. Whiny, whiny man.
Book Club Treasure: World War Z. I totally didn't imagine it would be as good as it turned out being. Hey look, I found a zombie book I really like. Although I also really dug Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, which is about as different of a zombie book as you can get. Maybe the undead are growing on me. :)
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Read Again: Talking to the Dead. First book in a Welsh crime fiction series with a protagonist who supposedly hears the dead and thus can communicate with them and-- whatever. The reality of it was way, way grosser, featured my number-one pet crime fiction peeve (hooker-in-a-box) and the last third of it turned into Rambo VI: Cardiff Blood Beach. So much grah.
Biggest over-sharer: I started reading Linda Fairstein's NYC sex crimes prosecutor series by just randomly leaping into the middle of it (thus proving little_tristan totally right about my lack of respect for reading series properly) with The Deadhouse, which concerned the entirely fascinating history of Roosevelt Island (spoiler: abandoned mental hospitals) and I liked it so much I skipped ahead to Death Angel, set in Central Park. Much less awesome mainly because for a good 3/4 of the book the protagonist ran around bemoaning her romantic life and other people's perceptions of her romantic life. Grr.
Best dramatic performance when faced with sure death: Linda Fairstein again. Her protagonist, when cornered by the SKOTW (serial-killer-of-the-week) morphs from incisive, steely-eyed lawyer person to Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. I guess it's a skill you develop over 16 brushes with death, but it's a little weird and definitely why I don't rate these books higher.
Did you run any books over with a car this year? *whispers* Mebbe.
If so, please list them. *whispers from behind hand* Mainly they were everything by Mo Hayder and everything by Carol O'Connell that was not Chalk Girl.
(Authors, is it really so hard not to whomp on dogs in your books? I'm genuinely curious.)
I know I set out to do more awards but I've totally lost my train of thought and whoo-doge is this entry ever long enough already. So. Here's to the new year (*looks askance at 2013*). May it be healthy, productive, a little more balanced, and filled with good books.
/me shakes 2013 menacingly
/gives it a kick for good measure
Behold! A book meme! I would love it if y'all readers would do something similar on your journals, or just a list, or even just a brief interpretive dance expressing how you eschewed books for wolves and horses. I'm easy to please, man. And now I can post this because unlike back on 12/21 or whatever horrifying date it was that GoodReads emailed me all LET'S CELEBRATE YOUR YEAR IN BOOKS while there were still ten fine days left in December, I am finally ready to do my tally. Seriously GR, that was totally uncalled for.
Anyway!
Total # of books read: 110
Fiction: 98
Non-fiction: 12
Rereads: 19
Favorite book: Carol O'Connell's The Chalk Girl, a weird and creepy mystery set in NYC's Central Park, all about how middle school can be way more terrible than anyone could ever realize, this book was both awesomely funny and inexplicably gross. Which is a combination I'd be fine with having on my tombstone, really.
On the way home from school, we stop off for a slice of pizza -- Phoebe's treat. She says there's an upside to what they did to me today. I've marked my place in the annals of school history. She says, "They'll never get that bloodstain out."
Honorable mention to Michael Connelly's Angel Flight and Ian Rankin's Resurrection Men, both of which are chock-full of placeporn and demonstrate how to keep readers interested in really really long series.
Unexpected Pleasure: I went on a Xmas-themed mystery binge this year (like you do) and I'd been saving Murder Sets Seed all year for it because that is the color of my OCD. And it basically annihilated all the other Xmas books. So good. It's basically a Bechdel-test-passing crone-centric prairie gothic set in Missouri, and I loved the snot out of it. It has a huge run-down old house, a small town flower shop, eating your feelings, crazy snow pellets that people from California could never believe. All my boxes, neatly ticked.
Biggest Disappointment: I reread Man With a Load of Mischief as part of the Xmas binge, and just did not love it at all. I felt the whole thing would've gone a lot better if someone just put Jury over their knee. Whiny, whiny man.
Book Club Treasure: World War Z. I totally didn't imagine it would be as good as it turned out being. Hey look, I found a zombie book I really like. Although I also really dug Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, which is about as different of a zombie book as you can get. Maybe the undead are growing on me. :)
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Read Again: Talking to the Dead. First book in a Welsh crime fiction series with a protagonist who supposedly hears the dead and thus can communicate with them and-- whatever. The reality of it was way, way grosser, featured my number-one pet crime fiction peeve (hooker-in-a-box) and the last third of it turned into Rambo VI: Cardiff Blood Beach. So much grah.
Biggest over-sharer: I started reading Linda Fairstein's NYC sex crimes prosecutor series by just randomly leaping into the middle of it (thus proving little_tristan totally right about my lack of respect for reading series properly) with The Deadhouse, which concerned the entirely fascinating history of Roosevelt Island (spoiler: abandoned mental hospitals) and I liked it so much I skipped ahead to Death Angel, set in Central Park. Much less awesome mainly because for a good 3/4 of the book the protagonist ran around bemoaning her romantic life and other people's perceptions of her romantic life. Grr.
Best dramatic performance when faced with sure death: Linda Fairstein again. Her protagonist, when cornered by the SKOTW (serial-killer-of-the-week) morphs from incisive, steely-eyed lawyer person to Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. I guess it's a skill you develop over 16 brushes with death, but it's a little weird and definitely why I don't rate these books higher.
Did you run any books over with a car this year? *whispers* Mebbe.
If so, please list them. *whispers from behind hand* Mainly they were everything by Mo Hayder and everything by Carol O'Connell that was not Chalk Girl.
(Authors, is it really so hard not to whomp on dogs in your books? I'm genuinely curious.)
I know I set out to do more awards but I've totally lost my train of thought and whoo-doge is this entry ever long enough already. So. Here's to the new year (*looks askance at 2013*). May it be healthy, productive, a little more balanced, and filled with good books.