Citizen Reader

I'm happy to report that my 2016 was roughly a million times better than my 2015.*

This was for many and various reasons, none of of which we will be discussing here. This, my friends, is a post about READING. So let's get to it.

WELL, LET'S START WITH THE BAD

The Reader's Advisor Online blog closed down, which was sad, because it was a great resource for readers and librarian types. Librarians, I'm sorry we couldn't keep it going for you. But this year also saw the conclusion of Bookslut and Gawker, so at least we were in hallowed company.

BUT KEEP IT MOVING RIGHT ALONG TO THE GOOD

I've just taken a quick toodle through the blog here, and through my new handy-dandy reading notebook, and it looks like I got through 70+ books this year. Sure, I had to not clean my house and ignore my kids a lot to get to that total, but I still feel good about it. And a lot of those books were so good. Here were some of my favorites from the year (links go to my reviews of them):

Avalanche, by Julia Leigh.

Patient H.M., by Luke Dittrich.

TV (The Book): Two Experts* Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time, by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seit

Alive, Alive Oh!, by Diana Athill.

Mama Tried: Dispatches from the Seamy Underbelly of Modern Parenting, by Emily Flake.

Not Pretty Enough: The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown, by Gerri Hirshey

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond

Deep South, by Paul Theroux

British Stuff: Life in Britain through 101 Everyday Objects by

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi (fiction)

I also read some books I did not like, at all, but they certainly made me think:

Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and Religious Obedience in the Bible, by Chester Brown.

And other books I didn't like didn't make me think at all:

Tracy Kidder's A Truck Full of Money

Let's not forget that I read at least one book that I really, really think you should read too. Immediately:

Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World, by Mark Goodman.

And, after years of fussing around with an Excel spreadsheet (that I hated) to track my reading, I gave up and went back to writing down my reading thoughts in a notebook. I'm really happy with this new (old) method and am glad to be back with it, even if I won't be able to speedily generate pie charts from its data. Pie charts suck anyway.

Happy (Reading) New Year!

*This is my wish for all of you: that your 2017s are roughly a million times better than your 2016s (however your 2016 was--there's always room for improvement, right?)