Friday, January 01, 2016

2015: The Year In Books And Other Stuff

Happy New Year to all! I hope 2016 is bright and happy for all of you, and brings you many good things.

2015 was, I suppose, a messy, turbulent year for the world at large (although I'm not sure if there are actually any years that aren't), but, looking back, it seems fairly sedate for me, personally. The big event of the year for me was having family visiting and doing the Balloon Fiesta and various trips around New Mexico, in October. Well, that and rain flooding in through my floor again during the summer. Looking back over the blog, I'm not sure I even talked about that here... It was extremely annoying, although fortunately not too difficult to fix: I just had to caulk up a crack in the concrete slab floor. Also on the subject of water being where it's not supposed to be, I think my roof might finally be fixed for good this time, so that's definitely a plus for the year. I also got a new oven, a new dryer, and a new couch and loveseat, so my house is overall a nicer place to be now than it was at the beginning of the year, even if it is continuing to age. Oh, and, yes, I am going to brag about winning that Doctor Who trivia contest forever.

I also read a lot of books, as always. My total for the year was 137 books. Interestingly, 2014's total was 138, and I have no idea how the heck I manage to be that consistent about it. I'm not consciously trying to be! You can see my whole year's worth of reading here.

As is traditional, I include here a list of my favorite books of the year, or at least the ones I gave the highest star ratings to on LibraryThing. It's a pretty good list this year, I think:

Fiction

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise by Gene Luen Yang
Sweetland by Michael Crummey
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
Tenth of December by George Saunders
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan

Non-fiction

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M. E. Thomas
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thomspon
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis by Warwick Davis

A little of both

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 edited by Dave Eggers


We're not going to talk about how many books I acquired in 2015, though. Not at all.

3 comments:

  1. "I also read a lot of books, as always. My total for the year was 137 books. Interestingly, 2015's total was 138..."

    Was that meant to be "2014's total was 138"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. D'oh, yes it should. I'll change it.

      Man, I get so confused about numbers when the year changes...

      Delete
    2. Winning that Doctor Who trivia contest must have made your sense of time go all wibbly-wobbly.

      Delete

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