tsundoku love in 2017
2016 wasn’t a great year by any standard. I am not going to dwell on that here and now. I’m ready to move forward. I can say that I didn’t read as much as normal, I only completed 102 titles! I closed out 2016 by finishing one I thought I had read years before, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. It’s a book E read shortly after it was published and we discussed at the time. Then it landed in my TBR pile and well, I think most titles abandon all hope when they enter that black hole.
Do I have a best book of 2016? I can’t choose one! I composed the following list by thinking of ones I want to keep talking about. Many I’ve already written about and have provided links where they exist. They include:
- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
- Summerlong and In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle
- Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
- The Invisible Library and The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman
- The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
- March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin (Co-writer), Nate Powell (Artist)
- H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
- Yarnitecture: A Knitter’s Guide to Spinning: Building Exactly the Yarn You Want by Jillian Moreno
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
- Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World by Clara Parkes
- Breaking Breads: A New World of Israeli Baking–Flatbreads, Stuffed Breads, Challahs, Cookies, and the Legendary Chocolate Babka by Uri Scheft
- Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
- The Rucksack Universe Series by Anthony St Clair
See? I told you it would be a challenge for me! Are there more titles I enjoyed? Yes!
Changes for 2017?
I’m being more mindful of the time I spend in front of a screen and trying hard to read more books in the coming twelve months, who knows, maybe I’ll finally make a dent in my tsundoku. My other plan is to once again attempt to write more reviews. I am visiting my public library at least once a week and I found that having my hands on the physical copy of a book I once had an e-ARC for, I’m more likely to finally work on the review. I’m trying harder to read more titles by and about women and minorities. I think I did okay last year, I take joy that I first became aware of N.K. Jemisin’s work in 2008.
On Tuesday I finished The Glass Universe and highly recommend it along with Hidden Figures for the extreme contrasts in just about everything, and for the still existing similarities. I’ve almost finished Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History by Sam Maggs, and will read The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher and My Life, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King next.
What are your 2017 reading goals?
Reader interactions
4 Replies to “tsundoku love in 2017”
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Hi Penny, Not surprisingly we have only one overlap on your short list. I just read an article which has inspired me to make space for reading books other than before I fall asleep and in the bathtub. I tend to get more from fiction, but I want things that feed my creativity. Yay books (in whatever form)!
I made space last month to read during lunch and that definitely improved things on many levels. Since I want to read, but frequently forget lunch when I’m working alone at home, I see it as a double win. I have books I read only in the bathtub, I dropped a book once. ;) Yay for reading and fueling creativity!
Deep work–which I haven’t finished!
My mom, a librarian, was constantly returning books slightly swollen on the bottom.