Happy New Year! Oh my goodness, happy new year 2021, sheesh.
I am not much of a blogger (to say the least…), but every year, I compile and publish a list of the books I read over the past year. I keep track of them in a spreadsheet but don’t tally it up till New Year’s Day, so I never know exactly what I’m going to find.
Even so, of course, I always have a sense of where things might be going. And 2020 was…a weird year, I think we can all agree.
I don’t have a month to write about all the reasons 2020 was weird (and you all know at least as much about that as I do), so I will just tell you about my year in reading.
To begin with, I only read 86 books all year: 61 for work, and 25 for leisure. (Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the vast majority of my editing books–I love my job, I truly do.) For comparison, in 2019 I read 112 total, 86 for work; 2018, 148 total, 84 work; 2017, 115 total, 92 work; 2016, 107 total, 80 work, and 2015, 63 total, 38 work.
Except for 2018 (another weird year, due to different circumstances), my leisure reading in 2020 was about in line with past years–around 25 books, give or take. But my work reading went way down, for a couple reasons.
The first was intentional: I had been working way too hard, and at the beginning of the year, I began making an effort to take actual days off every now and then, and to stop working at 6pm no matter what time I started for the day.
But this was also unintentional, in that there was just less work to be had. One longtime, very regular client (a small press) hasn’t sent me any new work since the beginning of the pandemic, and a few other regular return clients have let me know they cannot afford to have their work edited right now. I get it. Folks are hurting, and though what I do is important, if you have to choose between having your book edited and buying groceries or paying rent, well, that’s a no-brainer.
“Fortunately” (I say in scare quotes), Mark and I are in a financial position to weather a reduced income, due to an inheritance earlier this year. I would so, so much rather have a living mom and stepdad; but since I don’t, I am going to make the best and most responsible use of their money as I can. I also raised my rates a bit, so our income hasn’t fallen quite as far as the raw numbers would imply. We’re doing all right, as far as money goes.
Anyway, without further ado, here is the list of books I read for fun. I don’t publicly list the books I edited, because I’m never quite sure if I’m giving away secrets–I did so, one year early on, so now I am more careful. (I don’t want to lose any more clients!) 🙂
- Elizabeth Berry, Inn Sight
- Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War
- Emma Newman, Planetfall
- Tim Powers, The Drawing of the Dark
- Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
- Stephen King, Insomnia
- Mur Lafferty, Six Wakes
- Melanie Hobson, Summer Cannibals
- Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber
- Diana Gabaldon, Voyager
- Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief
- Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter
- Martha Grimes, The Old Fox Deceiv’d
- Martha Grimes, The Anodyne Necklace
- Martha Grimes, The Dirty Duck
- Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn
- Allie Brosh, Solutions and Other Problems
- Martha Grimes, Help the Poor Struggler
- Martha Grimes, The Deer Leap
- K. J. Parker, My Beautiful Life
- James Patrick Kelly, King of the Dogs, Queen of the Cats
- James P. Blaylock, The Gobblin’ Society
- Charles Frazier, Nightwoods
- Sonia Orin Lyris, Unmoored
- Sonia Orin Lyris, Maelstrom
Well, that’s about all the blogging I have in me for now! Whew. Thanks for reading! And let’s all hope 2021 goes MUCH better than 2020 did. I know I’ll be cooking my black-eyed peas later today…fingers crossed they actually work this time…
On my list, in the earlier part of this winter, I read your 3 Orcas books, your 2 witchkind books, & reread, “Our Lady of the Islands”, which was the book that added you to my literary map in the 1st place.
I heartily enjoyed your 2 series & am looking forward to the next installments. “Our Lady of the Islands”, delighted just as much, if not more. Been meaning to tell you, so, this comment space under what you have been reading is perfectly inviting!
A theme I love, that runs through all your above writings, is female friendship.
Oh, yes, I started the foray with your collection of essays. I had read most of them previously, on Medium, but putting them all together gave me an autobiographical cohesiveness. So, yay, dark November was Shannon Page month for me. Fitting, I guess, for the Scorpio season…
I notice you read some of the Outlander series, which is a huge favorite of mine, & which I reread last summer, in preparation for #9, which I thought would be published by now…
Now, I am wishing I had kept record of all I read in 2020! What a good idea. (Resolution for ’21 😊)
Oh, I am honored and delighted (and a little shy) that you read and enjoy so much of my writing! 🙂 Thank you, thank you! I will be rereading Our Lady soon myself…because reasons…which you will hear about soon… 🙂
And yes, I did get into the Outlander series; I loved the first book so much, and was astonished that I hadn’t read it before. I bought the next several and read them (as you saw), but then felt sort of bogged down…I have the next book on my shelf (I guess #4?) but I haven’t started it yet. We did start the series on TV and got I think into the second season, but then Mark’s mom came to stay with us, and, well, there’s kind of too much blood and boobs to watch with a nearly 88-year-old, so, we’ve switched to tamer TV watching while she’s here. Ha.
Yes, keep track of your reading! I do it because I keep track of All The Things, it’s just a little obsession of mine, but it’s really fun to look at trends over time. Also I have a terrible memory, so it’s really helpful to be able to go and look up “Have I read this book? When?” I used to even track which bookshelf the book was stored on, but then I moved, and then I moved again, and so that never got updated. Oh well.