2019 in Books

[starlady]

How to sum up this year except to say, the curse is upon us. Things were okay for me personally, though my ongoing despair about the state of the world also made it hard to make forward progress on my personal creative endeavors. I'm going to change that this year because I do want to publish my book. But it's damn hard, friends.

2019 Reading Stats

• Books read: 141, an all-time high, of which 7 (5%) rereads
• By gender: 50 (35%) by men, the rest by women or non-binary authors
• By race: 40 (28%) by authors of color, the rest by white authors
• In translation: 4 (3%) in translation, plus 7 (5%) in Japanese
• New books: 56 (40%) published in 2019 or 2020
• Books owned before 2016: 7
• New-to-me authors: 41

…versus 2018 resolutions

1. Read 110 books ==> Success! 141/110
2. Read 25 physical books owned since 2016 or earlier ==> Fail, 7/25. Doing better than last year.
3. Read 25 books by authors of color ==> Success! 40/25
4. Read 10 books in translation ==> Fail, 4/10. Better than last year.
5. Read 15 books in Japanese ==> Fail, 7/15. Better than last year.
6. Read all the comics bought before 2019, both physical and digital ==> Fail, but making progress.

General Comments
I did manage to complete the Sirens reading challenge this year, which was gratifying. I've also gotten slightly better at sending books out the door once I'm finished with them, which is useful. Other than that, I would say that many of the 2019 books I read this year were really great. The SFF field definitely seems to be getting stronger and stronger.

I want to try to finish the Kate Elliott backlist bingo soon, this year if possible; I currently only have eight of her books left to read (six Crown of Stars, Black Wolves, and the triple author standalone). I'm also planning to do a reread of at least some of the Michelle West books--I don't have all of the House War with me, but I do have The Sacred Hunt and The Sun Sword. Plus finishing my His Dark Materials reread.

Best of 2019

• Michelle West, Firstborn and War
• Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House
• Dorothy Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles
• Seanan McGuire, Middlegame
• Laurie Marks, Air Logic
• Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War
• Tim Maughan, Infinite Detail
• Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth
• Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
• Jason Aaron et al, Mighty Thor
• Gillen and McKelvie, The Wicked and the Divine
• Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night
• Gillen and Hans, Die vol. 1
• Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill

2020 Reading Resolutions

1. Read 125 books
2. Read 25 physical books owned since 2016 or earlier
3. Read 30 books by authors of color
4. Read 10 books in translation
5. Read 15 books in Japanese
6. Read all the comics bought before 2020, both physical and digital

Finally, if you give me a number between 1 and 141, I can tell you about what book that was and what I thought of it.

Comments

[everchangingmuse]

Middlegame was so, so good! I had to go back and reread bits sometimes, just to make sure I was understanding some of it correctly, but it was definitely worth it.

How about number 42?

[starlady]

Middlegame is very good! But the part where she vividly described an earthquake happening in the building on the Cal campus that is twenty feet from the building where my department is was a little hair-raising.

42 is The Wicked and the Divine book 3, which is the bind-up of volumes 5 and 6. This is the volume where it started to become clear where things were going and it was wild. It took me a couple volumes to decide that I liked this comic, but once I did I liked it quite a lot.

[skygiants]

I will give you number ... 78!

Also, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on the Lymond Chronicles.

[starlady]

78 is War by Michelle West, the final volume of the current epic fantasy sequence she's been working on since…2008? Anyway West is excellent and if you like epic fantasy I recommend her books very highly, though I can't say too much about this one because dire spoilers. Suffice it to say that a lot of interesting things happened to a lot of the characters and she managed to tie it up in very satisfying fashion while leaving the door open for the next and final sequence of books.

I really really loved the Lymond Chronicles! The first book felt like Scottish history was punching me in the face, but when I decided to stop trying to make sense of everything and just go with it the experience improved considerably, and that really was the nadir of not knowing what the hell was going on. I wanted to shake a lot of people in Checkmate (mostly Lymond, but sometimes Philippa too), which is the one that I finished this year, but it was so great overall. I think my favorite is still either book three or book four, though all of them are extremely good. I also had the additional fun of noticing which set pieces C.S. Pacat was referencing in her books, and the influence on other writers.

[skygiants]

Oh, I really need to catch up on that Michelle West series! I started reading it when it was coming out and then fell way, way behind. Someday I'll go on an enormous binge-read, though.

The best part about reading the Lymond books is for SURE seeing the model for all the other Lymond-descendants scattered through twentieth and twenty-first century fiction. Dorothy Dunnett haunts so many brains (including mine.)

[via_ostiense]

21

[starlady]

21 was ODY-C vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and Christian Ward. I thought it was awful, tbh! The first volume was a trippy gender-flipped take on the Odyssey in space, but this volume triples down on the sexual violence and gets in a cul-de-sac with its take on Menelaus and Helen. Definitely made me put both books in the resale pile, and I don't regret it.