2021 reading

[mellicious]

I've been making lists of the movies we've seen for years now, but I never tried to do books - at least, I haven't kept a list since I was in college, anyway, and that was long, long ago. From then until sometime last year, I hadn't been keeping lists of my reading at all, but then I started a reading journal. Part of that was keeping a list of what I was reading, what I finished and didn't, and out of that, what I read that is new to me, because I re-read a lot. I read so much that I really don't worry too much about numbers of books read, in general, but since I re-read so much, I decided that my goal should be to read at least two new books (new-to-me, I mean, not necessarily newly published) each month.

The full "new-to-me" list is below. It's pretty long - much more than two a month - but I got to reading a bunch of series mysteries, and some of those were very short, practically novellas. (There is a list of things that were officially called novellas, too, down at the very bottom.)

I didn't type out all the re-reading I did but here are some highlights:

• Lord of the Rings - and I took a crap-ton of notes, too, which is why it took me like two months
• the whole Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series
• Bruce Catton's two books about Grant (Grant Moves South and Grant Takes Command)
• the whole October Daye series
• a lot of Bujold - but only one Miles book (it was Captain Vorpatril's Alliance); other than that mostly the Five Gods stuff incl. Penric & Desdemona
• The Magicians trilogy
• the first trilogy of the Foreigner series
• Expanse 1-7 (I'm working on 8 now)
• the whole Graceling Realms series (including several re-reads of Winterkeep)
• a bunch of romance novels

You have to remember - or actually, you may not know, because I don't guess I've mentioned it here! that I had knee surgery over the summer and I had three weeks at home where I had nothing much to do but read and limp around the apartment. My handwritten list of what I was reading  in July and August - squeezed into the front of my reading planner - is so small it's barely legible.

Re fiction vs nonfiction: well, as I mentioned before, I've been working my way through the giant Shelby Foote trilogy, but I'm only about halfway through that and I imagine that will go on into 2022. Apparently I didn't read any long-form nonfiction at all this year that wasn't about the Civil War - or at least, if there was anything else, I didn't finish it!


New-to-me reading in 2021
(The boldface books are things that were previously on my to-read list.)

1. Winterkeep (Graceling Realms #4)
2. Star Wars Aftermath
3. Silent in the Grave (Lady Julia #1)
4. A Court of Thorns and Roses
5. Cocaine Blues (Miss Fisher #1)
6. Flying Too High (Miss Flisher #2)
7. Silent in the Sanctuary (Lady Julia #2)
8. Silent on the Moors (Lady Julia #3)
9. Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden #1)
10. Murder on the Ballarat Train (Miss Fisher #3)
11. Shakespeare's Landlord (Lily Bard #1)
12. Murder in the Heir (Violet Carlyle #1)
13. Kennington House Murder (Violet Carlyle #2)
14. Shakespeare's Champion (Lily Bard #2)
15. Murder at the Folly (Violet Carlyle #3)
16. A Merry Little Murder (Violet Carlyle #4)
17. Dark Road to Darjeeling (Lady Julia #4)
18. Murder Among the Roses (Violet Carlyle #5)
19. Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard #3)
20. Murder in the Shallows (Violet Carlyle #6)
21. Shakespeare's Trollop (Lily Bard #4)
22. Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard #5)
23. Gin and Murder (Violet Carlyle #7)
24. The Dark Enquiry (Lady Julia #5)
25. Night of a Thousand Stars
26. Obsidian Murder (Violet Carlyle #8)
27. Murder at the Ladies' Club (Violet Carlyle #9)
28. Wedding Vows and Murder (Violet Carlyle #10)
29. The Magic of Found Objects
30. An Untimely Death (Anna Fairweather #1)
31. An Unfortunate Demise (Anna Fairweather #2)
32. What the Dead Leave Behind (A Gilded Age Mystery #1)
33. An Uninvited Corpse (Anna Fairweather #3)
34. An Unexpected Misfortune (Anna Fairweather #4)
35. Shadow Hunter (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill #1)
36. Strange Practice (Dr Greta Helsing #1)
37. The Schoolmistress of Emerson Pass (Emerson Pass #1)
38. An Unhappy Murder (Anna Fairweather #5)
39. An Untidy End (Anna Fairweather #6)
40. Lock In (Lock In #1)
41. Blue Midnight (Blue Mountain #1)
42. Austenland
43. A Rogue By Any Other Name (Rule of Scoundrels)
44. Head On (Lock In #2)
45. When Sorrows Come (October Daye #15)
46. A Heart So Fierce and Broken (Cursebreakers #2)
47. Love at First
48. News of the World
49. Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)
50. Vanished (McLand & Callahan #1)
51. The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple #1)
52. The Other Bennet Sister
53. If Ever I Should Love You (Spinster Heiresses #1)
54. A King of Infinite Space (Long Beach Homicide #1)
55. The 7-1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
56. The Pain Scale (Long Beach Homicide #2)
57. A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (Long Beach Homicide #3)
58. Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales #1)
59. Come Twilight (Long Beach Homicide #4)
60. A Deal with the Elf King (Married to Magic #1)
61. Bridge to Terabithia
62. Ten Thousand Stitches (Regency Faerie Tales #2)
63. Someone Perfect (Westcotts)
64. The Assassins of Thasalon (Penric & Desdemona) (I originally had this in with the novellas, but apparently it's too long for that and is actually a novel!)

novellas:

• Midsummer Night (Lady Julia)
• Silent Night (Lady Julia)
• Twelfth Night (Lady Julia)
• Bonfire Night (Lady Julia)
• All Systems Red (Murderbot)
• Knot of Shadows (Penric & Desdemona)
• The Lord Sorcier (Regency Faerie Tales)

Comments

[wheresmyplan]

Quite a list! I just discovered Bujold a year or two ago. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. I read Curse of Chalion YEARS ago but didn't follow up. Now I've read all the Vorkosigan books, all the 5 Gods stuff (just read the most recent Pen and Desdemona a week or so ago) and all the Sharing Knife books. Not sure why it took so long, I've only been reading fantasy for 30-ish years.

How did you like Ancillary Justice? I remember liking the whole series quite well but it's been just long enough that I'm not sure I could say five intelligent words about it.

[mellicious]

I read the first half of Ancillary Justice going, what the hell is going on? but it was interesting enough that I didn't lose faith it would start making sense eventually. And it did. I liked it a lot in the end. I know there's sequel(s?) and I'm interested in reading those later on, too.

I read Cordelia's Honor years ago, and eventually I read all the Miles books. And I read The Sharing Knife books soon after they came out, I think. But I didn't get into the Five Gods stuff until fairly recently. And now they're my favorites!