Category: reading
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Ceci n’est pas Graham Greene—a mystery solved
About four months ago, I stumbled across a picture which was incorrectly identified as being Graham Greene. I recently had someone (via Hacker News, of all places) identify the mystery individual as Artur Lundqvist, a member of the Swedish academy. Now, this is especially ironic given Greene’s storied history with his non-receipt of the Nobel…
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My favorite reads of 2021
I’m going to do something a bit different this year. Much less on the numbers other than the top line of 85¹ books read this year with 50.1% by women and 38.6% by non-white authors. I’ve been a bit better about finding time to read without my commute by “L” to give me the time…
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Wait, What?
I’ve grown accustomed to odd things popping up in my Goodreads recommendations, but this is a weird one: Because I’ve begun reading Stephanie (Stephen at the time of publication) Burt’s Close Calls with Nonsense, Goodreads has recommended not one, but two books about Jeffrey Dahmer. There’s no index in the book, but a glimpse over the…
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2020 in reading
2020 was, of course, a strange year. My reading habits were severely disrupted when I lost my 60–90 minutes a day of commute time on the “L” which had in previous years been a bastion of protected reading time. Like last year, I aimed to read 100 books and, like last year, I fell short,…
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2019 in reading
I had set a goal for 2019 of reading 100 books and nearly made it with 95 books. I’ll aim again this year. My favorite reads for the year, in alphabetical order, were: Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath The Best American Essays 2019 edited by Rebecca Solnit and Robert Atwan…
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2018 in reading
I’ve noticed that over the past few years, the number of books I’ve read each year has been in steady decline. This year I read just 67 books (which, I suppose is still a fair amount). My favorite reads for the year, in alphabetical order, were: Best American Short Stories 2018 edited by Roxane Gay and…
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2017 in Reading
My favorite reads of the year, in alphabetical order by title. I read some damned good shit this year with one re-read in the list (Run) The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise by Georges Perec Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler Cake Time by Siel Ju Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey Fountain…
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2016 in reading
My diversity report for the year: Women authors 48% (down from 51.4% last year). Non-white authors were 16.4% of my reading (up from 14.8% last year). I chose my book to hit diversity targets 25% of the time, down from 37.5% last year. I think part of that is that I’ve been more reluctant to…
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2015 in reading
Continuing my goal of last year to diversify my reading, I’ve boosted the goals for reading women writers and non-white writers. My statistics improved in both categories, with women accounting for 51.4% of my reading (compared to 39.6% last year and a target of 50%) and non-white authors accounting for 14.8% of my writing (compared…