Reading Meme for Jan 4 2023

What I've Read

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System ( Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 3 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - This seems to have been the end of the real arc of the story, and it landed in a good and very tropey place. 

if you were a mythical thing by Kangofu_CB - MCU and Marvel Comics (Hawkeye, mostly) - 74K - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42952029 - Bucky/Clint - This is pretty cute and fluffy. Werewolf au without omegaverse elements. Clint Barton, not a superhero, gets in trouble with the Ukrainian mob and flees to a small town where everyone is really, really nice and people keep sniffing him? The werewolf element is cute - I vaguely wanted a little more angst because I love angst related to keeping secrets and this fic was just like, Nah, that's not what we're here for. 

Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold - I am legitimately annoyed by how long this took me to read! I bought this book two years ago and just looked at in my stack and didn't read it! But someone on DW read it recently, mentioned that the dynamic between Penric and the demon that inadvertently comes to share his body is really similar to Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, and welp, here I am, I love this and I bought the next four novellas because my library system doesn't have them all as ebooks. (It was a gift card to Barnes and Noble and I want Lois to have some walkin' around money.) 

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers - Also a book that I had been sitting on. The first book with these characters, A Psalm for the Wild-Build,  came at a deeply needful time and was a great read for the book club. I have a vivid memory from the summer of 2021 of sitting on the back porch in the sun and feeling like the world wasn't doomed. I will love Becky Chambers forever for that book, and this one is a worthy successor. It's calm and introspective and gentle with the foibles of sentient minds. 

What I'm Reading

let the river run by Astolat - A Robb/Jaime/Brienne fic about finding a man worth fighting for. This is literally just pure fealty fic. 

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 4 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - I think this is a collection of short stories with main and side characters from the main series of this. It's goofy and fun. 

The World We Make by NK Jemisin (Great Cities 2) - I love this unabashedly so far. 

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - slightly on hold
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Slowly

What I'll Read Next
Gideon the Ninth

Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera - Will abandon, library called it back
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera - information I gathered from elsewhere suggests this is even gayer than I thought 

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love.

2022 year-end reading meme

Last year I started a book journal and I had some goals around how I was going to use it. I figured that I’d combine some of that thought process with this lovely Year End Reading Meme for 2022.

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/etc?
102 that I finished- overwhelmingly in fantasy!

What are your Top 3 books that you read this year?
Of the new books that I read, I think the top few are Some by Virtue Fall by Alex Rowland, The Past is Red by Catherynne Valente, and A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows. I like some angst in my romances.

What's a book you enjoyed more than you expected?
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki - that was just charming and did some fun things with making LA feel amazingly alien and amazingly wonderful.

Which books most disappointed you this year?
I tried to re-read a Kate Elliott book this year from about 20 years ago and it did not hold up.

Did you reread any old faves? If so, which one was your favorite?
I re-read all of the Murderbot Diaries and most of the Queen of Attolia series! I still need to finish that last one - I tapped out early because I didn’t realize there was another book beyond what I thought was the last one.

What's the oldest book you read?
I think technically I read parts of Dracula for the Dracula Daily project, but, honestly, I didn’t track this much and there wasn’t much in the way of older stuff in my books.

What's the newest book you read?
A lot of the fanfic and the books I read this year were in fact published this year! So, I will select for praise Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell as a great book that came out in Fall 2022.

Did you DNF (= did not finish) any books?
Oh, yes. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames has a fun premise and I thought I would love it but unfortunately, I have very low tolerance for dudebro/laddish stories, so I tapped out early. Also, Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott turned out to be a bummer and I did not finish it.

Did you read any books outside of your usual preferred genre(s)?
I think Battle of the Linguist Mages is not technically outside my genre but also kind of feels like the first of a genre I have never seen before.  Technically, Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera is outside my usual genres, but it was also slightly gay, so it's in the family. 

What was your predominant format this year?
Digital - I read at least 28 novel-length fanfic that I logged, which were all digitally published, and the majority of my reading is done via my Kindle.

What's the longest book you read this year?
Technically unfinished, Iridan’s a simple thing is over 808K words and would be about 3,500-4,000 pages in traditional publishing. It’s wonderful, read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099556

Of the traditionally published books, I finally finished House of Leaves in January of 2022, which I had started (this time) in August of 2021, and in fact actually started in 2006. It’s 703 pages in the version I have!

What books from your TBR did you not get to this year, but are excited to read in 2022?
The new Victoria Goddard book, At the Feet of the Sun, and Freya Marske’s new book, A Restless Truth - but also a fair few others that I have in a pile from a while back. Including The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery, my sister’s favorite book.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?
I refused to admit a goal and was just working on writing down all the books that I read and logging the novel-length fic. Of course, in practice, this meant that I wanted to get to 100 books and I did!

(Adding this question myself) What author did you read the most?
In terms of unique works, I know that it was almost certainly Blackkat (https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat) who is both incredibly skilled and incredibly prolific and has some wonderfully long works.

In traditionally publishing, it was Martha Wells - the Murderbot Diaries will do that for you!

Some reflections for my own sake

I had some ideas about what to track with this reading journal project back in 2022 and it’s worth reflecting on what did and did not work!

Worked:
-Storygraph as a secondary logging platform, especially once I figured out how to log “Not a Book” items for fanfiction
- Writing up the Wednesday Reading Meme
-Tracking pre-orders - kept me from buying the same book twice a few times. Did not save me from it every time.
-Reading list - I decided to read the whole Hugos nominee list and (while I did not actually get all of them) it was a wonderful expansion of my usual reading habits and I plan to do it again. 

What did not work:
-Pretending I did not have a reading goal - I wanted to read 100 books and I did.
-Keeping a paper list of things I wanted to read - I’m not sure this worked or not, but I tend to treat storygraph as my list of record for the TBR pile, with the Weekly Reading Meme as a close follow up.
-Continuous logging - I did end up deciding to start a new section of the journal for 2023.
-Reading with Friends - I don't actually keep up with a group book reading project if there are not scheduled dates to actually read the sections and talk about them.