I have read more books this year than any past year in recent memory1. My long commute is a mixed blessing and the upside is definitely my evening reading time.
At my library we have two staff members who are known for reading voraciously. One of the adult librarians thought it would be fun to have a competition with the entire adult departmentment pitted against these two individuals2. To assure victory3, the librarian conscripted every librarian scheduled to sit on the reference desk for the adult team. I do one Sunday shift every 8 weeks and thus was considered eligible to join the adult librarian group. The competition started in April and goes till the end of the year. To count, a “book” must be at least 100 pages long.
I finished one last book today so it looks like I’m going to be at 66 books since April. It’ll be interesting to see what the final numbers for the two teams will be 4. Regardless, I’m happy with the number of books I managed.
I read a lot more novellas than usually which is one reason my numbers are so high. For some reason I’ve always had trouble getting into shorter fiction. The Hugo Awards contain many contegories and I always felt bad that I wasn’t well read enough to contribute to the shorter categories. I’m still lacking in the Best Novelette and Best Short Story categories. However, I’ve read 13 novella length stories5, published in 2017, which is significantly better than normal.
Here’s my favorite 2017 stories so far (in random order):
Novels
- Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee
- Phantom Pains by Mishell Baker
- The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden
- Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore
- Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
- All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
- The Strange Case of the Alchemists Daughter by Theodora Goss
- The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
Novellas
- All Systems Red by Martha Wells
- Snowspelled: The Harwood Spellbook, Volume 1 by Stephanie Burgis
- Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor
- The Red Threads of Fortune by Jy Yang
- Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
For 2018 . . .
I stumbled across the website for the Sirens conference. It sounds really fun. I need to figure out logistics but am hoping I can make it there by myself, no kids attached. We’ll see. However, even if that doesn’t work out, I think I’m going to try their 2018 Reading Challege. In addition, I’ll be reading all the Hugo nominees for this coming year as well as trying to keep tabs on the 2018 interesting science fiction and fantasy. Hopefully 2018 will be another year full of good books6.
- Probably more than any year since I started working and certainly than any year since I had children. ↩
- Contrary to certain stereotypes, not all librarians love to read. Librarianship is really more about information finding than reading skills. ↩
- Because yes, there was definite doubt whether the entire department could read more than 2 people. ↩
- For comparison, one of the librarians in the other team was at 264 books so victory is definitely not assured for the adult team. ↩
- I think they’re novella length based on pages but I don’t know what the word count for each one is. ↩
- And while we’re handing out wishes, let’s hope 2018 is a happier year for our country . . . ↩