Year 4: An Update (And Giveaway!)

Today, I'm 34. When I turned 30, I set some goals for myself for the next decade. One of those goals was to read at least 50 books per year, or 500 total, so I started this blog a couple months later to hold myself accountable and have a place to talk about all those books! Since my reading years begin and end on my birthday, I like to do a check-in post every year to look back on the year that was, both in books and life. Without further ado:

In Reading

• Books read (this year): I've finished 79 books since my last birthday! This is actually my lowest year since I started the blog, which is probably mostly because of session.
• Books read (total): I've finished 345 books since I started the blog! I am obviously very very far ahead of my goal at this point, which would have been 200. I just own so many books that I want to read them as fast as I can! And who knows, I might have a reading slump one of these days.
• Male/Female Authors: I read 42 books by men this year, and 37 by women. This isn't too far away from even, and it actually was neck and neck for much of the year, but the last month and a half or so has been a lot of books by dudes.
• Most Read Genres: My balance between fiction and nonfiction was better this year! I tend to prefer about 2/3 to 1/3 (respectively), and with 55 fiction books this year and 24 nonfiction ones, I came pretty close. For fiction, my most read sub-genres were again contemporary fiction by leaps and bounds, followed by historical and fantasy. For nonfiction, they were biography, followed by medical and history.
• Kindle/Hard Copy: I read more than twice as many books this year in hard copy (54) than on my Kindle (25). My Kindle is great, don't get me wrong. It's easy to use, super portable, very convenient. But the more I read, the more I just like the feeling of a book in my hands!

In Life

• Minnesota trip with Drew: My husband has been talking about wanting to see a Vikings home game for approximately forever, so we finally made it happen last October! We stayed at a great little AirBNB in the trendy, brewery-heavy area of Minneapolis and even though the good guys didn't win, we had an amazing time. I was reading: Seduction
• Girls trip to New Orleans: For my annual trip with my best friends, we went to New Orleans! I'd been very briefly once before, but really enjoyed getting the chance to actually explore the city, relished every delicious thing I ate/drank, and of course, cherished spending time with two of the people I love the most. I was reading: Once Upon A River 
• Work trip to Las Vegas: This year's annual work trip was to Las Vegas, where (of all dorky things), I stopped off to get a library card at the Clark County Library. They have a better selection of audiobooks on Overdrive than my home library! I was reading: Bad Blood
• Beginning of my fourth legislative session: This has been the worst session weather-wise I've ever seen, which isn't saying much, but my bosses, who have been making the commute much longer than I have, totally agree. I didn't even go down for the first two days, and there were some white-knuckle drives even after that. I was reading: The Mind's Eye
• Jeopardy taping: In the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, I was lucky enough to be chosen to be on Jeopardy! Which meant a whirlwind (literally 36 hours) trip to LA to tape and then back to work the next day. Totally worth it! I was reading: Forest Dark
• My Jeopardy episode aired: It was shocking how little I actually remembered of what had happened by the time it aired...I remembered pretty much nothing from the first half of the show at all! Some family and friends came out to a local brewery where we had a viewing party and it was super fun. And now I have my own IMDB page! I was reading: The Fever (review to come)
• End of my forth legislative session: I took on more responsibility this session, and it definitely took me a while to figure out how to balance the new work load. So it was a stressful session, but I got the chance to grow professionally and already know what I need to do better next time around! I was reading: Good Riddance (review to come)
• Summer holidays in Michigan: I hadn't been back for two years! Considering how much I still love the mitten, this was definitely an overdue week of vacation. And it was a hot and humid one, but I got to see family and friends and eat SO MUCH FOOD that I can't get out in Reno! I was reading: The Man in the High Castle (review to come)
• Girls trip to San Francisco: We moved the 2019 edition of our annual escape up a couple months, so that's why there's two of these on this year's update! We spent a lovely weekend in the Bay Area and had a great time exploring the city (especially the Mission District)! I was reading: Death Prefers Blondes (review to come)
• Long weekend at Lake Tahoe: As usual, I accompanied my husband to his annual work event at the lake, during which he worked and I was spectacularly lazy. I was reading: Seeing (review to come)

The Giveaway

Every year, I give away a copy of the book I loved the most out of the ones I've reviewed on the blog over the past 12 months. I reviewed some fantastic books this year, but the one that captured my heart most of all was Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It's sweeping and epic and beautiful and everyone should read it. If you haven't, and would like to, here's your chance! Just enter via the Rafflecopter below during the next week and this book could be yours! Apologies to my international friends, but this giveaway is US-only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Year 4: An Update (And Giveaway!)

A Month in the Life: September 2019

And somehow now it's fall! After a long, hot August, the return of a little bit of crisp to the air has been very welcome. It even snowed enough for chain controls to be issued on some of the roads at higher elevation in the middle of the month, and it's been in the 50s and 60s for the past several days now. It's hard to believe the end of the year is just around the corner, but October is my favorite month of the year so I'm excited to be heading into it.


In Books...

• Tower: An interesting look at the history of a very important building...the Tower of London. It's served as a fortress, a palace, a prison, an executioner's grounds, and even a zoo! A little too detailed/fact-dense for the kind of popular fiction it seems like it's trying to be, though, and it never really grabbed me.
• Seeing: It's hard to tell at first that this is a sequel to Jose Saramago's Blindness, a book that is incredibly bleak and that I devoured. It takes place in the capital city of an unnamed country, where one election day, voters suddenly turn in blank ballots in overwhelming numbers. The government goes into crisis, searching for answers...which leads them back to four years previous, when everyone went mysteriously blind. This is only slightly less bleak, but takes a while to get going and generally felt less strong.
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation: This is an odd book, about a young woman in millennium-era New York City who decides that the cure for what ails her is to sleep as much as possible. There's not really a central conflict driving the narrative and pretty much everyone in the book is varying degrees of unlikable, but Ottessa Moshfegh's skill with storytelling renders it strangely compelling. 
• Empire Falls: I feel like if I'd read this Pulitzer-Prize winner several years ago, I would have thought it was brilliant. Reading it here and now, though, I was struck by the misogyny with which the female characters were painted and frustrated with its lack of subtlety or nuance...and a major plot development near the end felt very cheap and hackneyed. 
• Zone One: If you don't think of yourself as the sort of person who likes zombie books, this might be the zombie book for you. Gore is minimal in this tale of a man, jokingly called Mark Spitz, working to help "clear" Manhattan of residual zombies as humanity works to restore some semblance of society. Gorgeous prose, but there's something removed about a tale that should be visceral. 
• Soon The Light Will Be Perfect: This debut novel bit off way more than it could chew. Telling the coming-of-age story of one summer in the life of a pre-teen boy, it wrestles with religion, poverty, fraternal bonds, the serious illness of a parent, and a fledgling romance in 250 pages, which gives none of it any room to develop and the constant shifts in focus left it feeling incredibly unfocused. This was like reading an early draft of an epic...all bones, no actual meat.
• The Hours: I'd seen the movie, so I had a good sense of the plot already, but I wasn't ready for how beautiful the language of this book would be. The stories of three women are told through a single day from the perspective of each, all linked by Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf as she begins the novel, Laura Brown, a housewife in the 1950s who is reading it as she wrestles with the constraints of her role as a mother, and Clarissa Vaughan, who is preparing to throw a party for her best friend and ex-lover, Richard, who has just won a literary prize but is dying of AIDS complications.

In Life...

• Weekend at Lake Tahoe: As usual, I joined my husband for his work conference at the lake this month, which is always a treat because it's gorgeous up there.

One Thing:

On the surface, this is an essay about an influencer by the person who helped ghostwrite the internet persona that made her famous. But it's also a story about toxic friendships, and jealousy, and mental health, and growing up, and the writing is beautiful. It's inspired a lot of discussion on the internet about who (if anyone) is in the wrong, and I found it very ample food for thought.

Gratuitous Pug Picture: 

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A Month in the Life: September 2019