What I Read in 2009

1. Knockout Mouse by James Calder
2. Happy Hour at Casa Dracula by Marta Acosta
3. Nisi Shawl Filter House
4. Ernest J. Eitel What is Feng Shui?: The Classic Nineteenth-Century Interpretation
5. Midnight Brunch Marta Acosta (2nd Casa Dracula novel)
6. Bride of Casa Dracula Marta Acosta (3rd Casa Dracula novel)
7. About Face James Calder (2nd Bill Damen mystery)
8. In A Family Way James Calder (3rd Bill Damen mystery)
9. The Plain Janes Cecil Castelucci and Jim Rugg
10. Jonathan Lethem's The Disappointment Artist
11. The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch
12. Type O Negative by Joel Tan
13. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
14. Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper series, Bloodhound
15. The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti
16. Gifts by Ursula Le Guin
17. Voices by Ursula Le Guin
18. Powers by Ursula Le Guin
19. The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor
20. Distances: A Novella by Vandana Singh
21. The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor
22. Dilek Güngör Unter Uns
23. L. Timmel Duchamp's De Secretis Mulierum: A Novella
24. L. Timmel Duchamp's Alanya to Alanya
25. Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth
26. Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens
27. Epileptic by David B
28. Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible
29. China Miéville's The City and the City
30. the first Buffy comics omnibus
31. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
32. We3 by Grant Morrison
33. Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey
34. Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede  
35. the fourth Buffy Season 8 Omnibus.
36. Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin
37. Friend's MS
38. (re)Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin
39. Girl in the Arena Lise Haines
40. Liar Justine Larbalestier
41. Exclusively Chloe J.A. Yang
42. The Child Garden Geoff Ryman
43. Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602
44. Cory Doctorow's Little Brother
45. His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik
    
46. Throne of Jade Naomi Novik
47. Black Powder War Naomi Novik
48. Empire of Ivory Naomi Novik
49. Victory of Eagles Naomi Novik
50. Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book Tamora Pierce
    
51. Circle of Magic: Tris' Book Tamora Pierce
52. Circle of Magic: Daja's Book Tamora Pierce
53. Circle of Magic: Briar's Book Tamora Pierce
54. Magic Steps Tamora Pierce
55. Street Magic  Tamora Pierce
56. Cold Fire  Tamora Pierce
57. Shatterglass Tamora Pierce
58. The Will of the Empress Tamora Pierce 
59. Slumberland Paul Beatty
    
60. Flygirl Sherri L. Smith
    

So this year I've conveniently color-coded these books so I can see myself what I've read:

• YA books
• Genre books (any genre)
• Lit fic or mainstream fic, can have speculative elements, but more likely to be taken seriously by snobs
  

So. The stats:

• 60 books total. That's 1.15 books per week or 0.16 books per day.
• 27 YA (nearly half)
• 20 authors were women and 20 were men (!)
• 10 authors of color (out of 40)
• 45 had speculative elements or were outright speculative fiction
• 4 were outright mysteries (among other things)
• 6 graphic novels
• Only 6 were re-reads (for a change)
• 24 had been published in the past two years.
• 1 book in a foreign language

In addition, as usual, there were a number of books I didn't complete. I don't count fiction/narrative that I don't complete, since you haven't really read a narrative until you've read the whole thing. But I do have a strong tendency, since I left college, to never read a book a poetry all the way through unless I'm reviewing it. So I have a couple of poetry books that I've been walzing around and digging through without, probably, having read the whole things. I'll consider whether or not to include those in 2010.

As usual, the books from the beginning of the year feel like I read them decades ago. And even though slightly less than half of my reading was YA, a good three quarters of it was SF, and most of the YA was SF, so I feel a continuum there, and I feel like 3/4 of what I read was YA. Funny that I still feel guilty about that, as if I should be reading "more serious" books. Fuck that. One thing to go on my resolutions list: stop taking YA not seriously.

I went and underlined the books I felt were really good or from which I learned a positive writing lesson (as opposed to books that were so bad that I learned what not to do from them.) Nothing this year really blew me away, but as you can see, I didn't hit pretty much ANY "lit fic" this year AT ALL, not that lit fic would necessarily blow my mind. I don't know. I guess I wasn't going for my mind to be blown. I think I should do that in 2010 as well: look for books that will blow my mind.

Comments

[Jason Lundberg]

What did you think of The Child Garden? That book just destroyed me when I read it.

[clairelight]

I thought Child Garden was like Air probably among his best. I've read those two and also Was. Wasn't as impressed with Was.

Basically, I think he writes a mean novel, but has no idea how to end them. All three novels I've read start out strong, get complex, and then spin off into meaninglessness because he can't bring the whole mess back down to a satisfying or necessary ending.

I'd say it was too bad, but then, the first two thirds of his brilliant novels are like nothing else in this world, and if you have to have a non-ending to get the beginning and the middle, so be it.