I read 35 books totaling 14,856 pages last year, and I wrote up a few thoughts on all but one of them here on my blog, so my devoted reader will already be familiar with them. The many reviews can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Those totals are slightly higher than last year and are both records over the last 5 years that our family has been tracking every single book we read.
On the family level, we also had a record year as Team Blockburger (I'd call us Team Bookburger, but apparently but that name is already taken) combined for 606 books and 130,331 pages. Julia was actually down slightly from last year (though still topping 70,000 pages), but Ella doubled her output (after quadrupling it the year before) to top 32,000 pages read.
Next, a pie chart:
I don't generally like to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. They're both stories that couldn't happen in the world as we know it, but for some reason swords and magic means fantasy, while space ships and warp drives means science fiction. But isn't the Force magic? So Star Wars is fantasy, right? Same for Star Trek and it's mind reading (those crazy Betazoids) and the godlike Q. And since any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic ... well, there we are. But for the sake of having a pie chart with more than 3 categories, I split them up. I also take issue with the classification of any book as "Non-Fiction". Let's describe things for what they are, and not for what they are not.
Now let's hand out some fictional awards that I'm thinking up right on the spot.
Shortest book: The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell, 195 pages. (close second, Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald, 197 pages)
Longest book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling, 759 pages, First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher, 759 pages (tie). (close third, The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher, 751 pages)
Longest review: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, 2008 words. Yes, I got too worked up over that one.
Shortest review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling, 79 words. Probably 79 words more than were needed.
[aside: My review of Fletch was 82 words, I really wanted Things to Make and Do in the 4th Dimension: A Mathematician's Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity and More by Matt Parker to win, simply because the title of the book is 26 words itself, but even without counting the title, I managed to write 105 words about it.]
Most Read Authors
1. Jim Butcher, 7 books, 4346 pages. (Codex Alera, one Harry Dresden, and that Aeronaut book)
2. Orson Scott Card, 3 books, 1006 pages. (Apparently he still gets #2 on my list after all these years. he had a co-author on one of those books though.)
3. John Scalzi, 3 books, 943 pages. (Old Man's War trilogy)
4. JK Rowling, 2 books, 1411 pages. (I guess we're going by number of books, not pages?)
5. Brandon Sanderson, 2 books, 678 pages. (I request that he write faster.)
Now for what you're really excited for, the best and worst books of the year. For my initial sorting of the books, I just divided them into thirds – I'm not interested in ranking all them, just finding the best and the worst. So, I attempted 3 groups of roughly 12. Instead, I ended up with 4 in the lowest category, 11 in the middle and 20 in the top group. (The top group comes down to a more manageable 13 if I collapse each series into a single entry.) So, let's start with the bad:
Worst Books of the Year
4. The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell – Young man "finding himself" in Ireland. Yawn.
3. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett – A very silly fantasy book. Maybe if I was in the right mood ....
2. Children of the Fleet by Orson Scott Card – Orson mails another one in.
1. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen – The rise of the Nazis through the lens of a boring diplomat.
Best Books of the Year
5. The Girl in the Spiders Web by David Lagercrantz. Book 4 in the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series (officially called the Millennium books) which was started by Stieg Larsson who died after completing the first 3 books. This is the only book from 2017 that I haven't reviewed, because apparently I forgot. The weakest of the 4 books thus far, but still good.
4. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. As a collection of his writings and not an intentionally written cohesive book there are some weaknesses to this book jumping from section to section. It also doesn't cover many aspects of his life at all. However, the importance and power in his writings about equality and non-violence cannot be understated.
3. Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery. Old lady goes on a walk – a long walk. But this was one of those books that made me want to go out and do it. And if a grandma can do it in a pair of Keds and a homemade canvas bag over her shoulder, why can't I?
2. How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg. An excellent example of the importance of mathematical thinking in nearly every aspect of our lives.
1. The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher. The Fury series, starting with Furies of Calderon. This is 6 books which sucked me in pretty good. It's a relatively typical fantasy series, but well written. This made it to the number one spot primarily because of how much I wanted to keep reading while I was in the middle of the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment