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BOOKS MEME

How many books read in 2018?

128 books (!!!)

How many fiction and nonfiction?

116 fiction, 12 nonfiction

How many male authors, female authors or books written by both?

IF COUNTING BY TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS:

87 books by women, 40 books by men, 1 book by both

IF COUNTING EACH AUTHOR ONLY ONCE, EVEN IF I READ MULTIPLE OF THEIR BOOKS:

75 female authors, 36 male authors, 1 book by both

How many books by people of color?

41 books (32% of total – increasing each year, which is the aim!)

Favorite books of 2018?

Uhhhh, even though this meme is something I impose on myself, when I reach this question I always find myself kind of affronted that anyone could possibly ask me to pick favorites. I read 128 books! I loved almost all of them! Don’t make me choose! And yet…nonetheless, I’ll attempt to name some standouts.

an almost impossible attempt at a top ten:

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman (YA/adult)
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (nonfiction)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (adult)
The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley (YA)
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (adult)
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (memoir)
The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit (nonfiction)
The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin (adult)
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia (YA)
Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos (YA)

and a few more because I can:

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi (adult)
Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie (adult)
Chime by Franny Billingsley (YA)
The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork (YA)
A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl (adult)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (adult)

Ha, I’m surprised to see so many of my top books this year were actually adult, rather than YA. :-) As always, see my quarterly book posts for so much more about these, and many other books!

Oldest book read?

Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen by Heinrich Heine (1844). Followed by Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847) and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (1879).

I also ended up reading a number of 1930s books, e.g. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Rebecca, Sunset Song, and, adjacently, Mrs. Dalloway from the 1920s.

Longest and shortest book titles?

longest: Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World edited by Maria Tatar

shortest: a not particularly exciting tie between the 5-word titles: Smoke by Dan Vyleta, Chime by Franny Billingsley, and Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu.

Longest books?

Rowling does it again… By far the longest was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (870 pages), and the second longest was ALSO J. K. Rowling with Lethal White (656 pages).

Runners-up are a tie between Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman and Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (both 536 pages), closely followed by Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (531 pages.)

Any translated books?

5 books: 1 from Finnish, 1 from Swedish, 1 from Icelandic, 1 from Norwegian, 1 from French. (Still on a Nordic roll, I guess!) Plus 1 book in the original German, and 1 book that’s a mix of English and Spanish (though I can’t claim to have understood much of the Spanish).

But I feel like I should point out that just because these are mostly English-language books, doesn’t mean they’re as hegemonic as it sounds… The authors of the English-language books are from, let’s see, the US, the UK, Ghana, the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Pakistan, Nigeria, Australia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Mexico, South Africa, Afghanistan, Denmark, Syria, Palestine…

But, yes, I should read more books in translation. :-)

Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?

3:
• The Folk Keeper, Chime and Well Wished by Franny Billingsley (I can’t believe I discovered the fantastic Franny Billingsley, and read her entire canon, all in one year! She’s one of those writers who publishes books so frustratingly slowly, and yet you can’t be mad about it, because she’s clearly taking time to make them really good.)
• The Upside of Unrequited, Leah on the Offbeat and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (Because I reread Simon after seeing the movie, plus read Albertalli’s new books.)

Any re-reads?

A bunch this year, actually! Some favorites I revisited out of love, like Exit West, or Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda; some classics that I wanted to revisit now that I’m an adult and actually understand what I’m reading, like Jane Eyre or Rebecca. :-)

Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?

…Yeah, basically all of them. I keep a big, big list of book recommendations, and I’m always working my way through it.

Did you read any books you’ve always been meaning to read?

…All of them?

Maybe especially some of the classics I’d long been meaning to get to, like Mrs. Dalloway, Their Eyes Were Watching God, A Doll’s House, The Bell Jar, The Remains of the Day, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.

And some of the authors who'd been long and highly recommended to me, like N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Franny Billingsley (omg, all the Franny Billingsley!), Tana French, and Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle.

And that's a wrap! Here's to an equally delightful, but maybe somewhat less frenetic, reading year in 2019.