pagesofjulia

Note: I’m out of pocket during my residency period at school. I love your comments! But it may take me several days or a week or more to respond.

This is a traditional annual post; you can see my past few years in review here: 2016; 2015; 2014; 2013; 2012; 2011.

For the very *best* books I’ve read this year, see last Friday’s post, best of 2017.

This year was markedly different than any that have come before, because I’ve been a full-time graduate student in creative writing, and my program is fairly reading-heavy. Unsurprisingly, my reading habits have changed a fair amount.

The biggest change: I’m down by nearly half in terms of the number of books I read, at only 70 this year. (There were a handful of individual essays in addition to what I added to the big list of “books read,” but that list also includes a few individual essays.) Of those 70 books:

• 76% were nonfiction (54% last year), plus a handful of poetry, for less than 20% fiction.
• an even 50% were written by female authors (40% last year); 40% were by men (51% last year), with the remainder being collections by multiple authors, or variously unidentifiable.*
• I normally analyze the novels I read by genre, but this is such a small sample size that I’ll just say there was a general smattering of historical fiction, misc. or contemporary fiction, fantasy, drama, and one lonely thriller–a far cry from previous years where thriller/mysteries have been a major component of my fiction reading.
• I read NO audibooks this year (last year, only 5 books out of 121, but in previous years a significant number).
• nearly 70% of my reading was assigned for school this year, which I think explains everything else I see here.
• corollary: the same 70%, almost precisely, I purchased. Another 25% I was sent for review, and those few left over were either sent to me in .pdf form (for school), or already owned. This is a big change, again, from last year, when 80% of the books I read, I read for paid reviews.
• again, the big one: I read 70 books this year, compared to 121 last year.

I am unsurprised that there are big changes, but I certainly hadn’t realizes how relatively few books I’d read this year. And to think it nearly made my brain explode all the same! I guess that’s just an indicator of how much brainpower (stress, angst, energy, time) went into writing–something not obvious to you, my faithful readers here, I’m afraid. I am ready to share very little of what I write for school with audiences outside that small trusted circle (my faculty advisor, a few classmates). It’s a tender time, and I appreciate your patience.

I’m glad that I’m doing better at reading male and female authors* in more-or-less equal numbers, and I’m glad to be reading a lot of nonfiction, although I confess at this point–overwhelmingly skewed in the nonfictional direction–I do miss the ease and joy of fiction. I also find novels so much easier to review (partly because of all that brainpower already working for school), and I’m going to try to keep that in mind when requesting books for review from the Shelf.

In 2018, I’m afraid we should all expect more of the same trends… I’m entering the third semester of my MFA program, which is the critical essay semester, which means critical writing about my reading, ad nauseum… we’ll see if I can pull it all off! It’s head-above-water time these days. In fact, it occurs to me as I write this that I may have to consider a further slackening of the pace here at pagesofjulia. I’m in the final year of school. How would you all feel about seeing me even less?

And what did 2017 hold for you, and what do you see looming ahead? I’m always glad to hear from you, even if I have little time to respond.

As 2017 closes, I wish us all calm, relaxed, pleasurable, entertaining, enlightening, and inspiring reading lives (maybe not all at once!) and I’m glad to have you here. Love.

*I need to work on this label for the sake of non-gender-conforming or non-gender-binary values, which I support, but I guess I’m still mulling over how to represent this while maintaining the point, which I think is to recognize that I’m not reading only dudes, or that I’m trying not to.

Filed under: musings | Tagged: lists, year in review |