windup award stats

I like to track lots of things, it’s probably why I keep updating this site. No, not because I track everything here, but for some reason public disclosure of my lack-of writing skills fascinate me. For the most part I still track many things with pen(cil) and paper.

One place where I’ve largely abandoned paper and pencil and moved to digital is in tracking books I want to read, books I’m reading, and books I’ve read. Not only does GoodReads accomplishment this feat with flying colours, but it lets me share anything I wish to with the world. For example, my to-read list is–right now–over 290 books longs.

Recently, they added a new feature, a pretty graph that shows either the number of books read at a certain time, or, with a metric more fascintating to me, the total number of pages.

To the right is a screenshot of what my stats looked like last week. The numbers are not wholly accurate because I used to use a WordPress plugin to track this and abandoned when I reached my tipping point with goodreads.

I didn’t complete many books these two weeks, nor have I taken time to record which short stories I’ve read or listened to. If I’ve not been working or reading articles I’ve been asleep or trying to keep up with house/yard work.

I did, however, finish one and scribbled a few thoughts:

The Windup Girl
by Paolo Bacigalupi

I discovered this title when it was listed as a candidate for the Hugos awards, having totally missed that it won a Nebula. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, but bioterrorism+robotics thriller set in an alternate Thailand? Awesome, you know I have a soft-spot for this sort of biotech catastrophic event thriller. It’s not perfect, but don’t ask me to explain why. I’d need to reread it and who really has time for that? So many books, so little time. It brought me in by developing characters and environment and — for me at least — assuming quite a bit of background knowledge surrounding the plot. No, not science or Ag or genetic knowledge. No no, just about what was going on. In the first few chapters, I felt as if I started a 500 page book on page 250. It took a bit for me to settle in and not feel disorientated by the way scenes were written. It’s been two weeks since I finished this book (I finished it late that Monday night), and the characters, at least some of them, are still with me. I am surprised about this as I expected their path crossing to be as fleeting as the library loan period. Bacigalupi is an interesting author and I hope to explore more his work.

• Category: books