Sto caricando le informazioni...

2018 on Goodreads

di Fionnuala Lirsdottir

Utenti	Recensioni	Popolarità	Media voti	Conversazioni
34	23	712,155	(4.29)	Nessuno

tutti i membri

▾Utenti

Aggiunto di recente da

arthurjc, Daumari, Alishadt, JudyGibson, wanderlustlover, Castlelass, serru, mattorsara, Koralis, skipstern

▾Etichette

Traduzione delle etichette attiva

▾Consigli di LibraryThing

▾Liste

Things we wish were not catalog(u)ed on LT (49)

▾Ti piacerà?

Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

▾Conversazioni (Su link)

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

▾Recensioni di utenti

data ▼ | voti

1-5 di 23 (prossimo | mostra tutto)

2018年讀完最有感的12本書

1. 如何讓馬飛起來／凱文．艾希頓
2. 一個投機者的自白／托斯科蘭尼
3. 1984／喬治．歐威爾
4. 動物農莊／喬治．歐威爾
5. 皮囊／蔡崇達
6. 不當行為／理查．塞勒
7. 人類大歷史／哈拉瑞
8. 人之彼岸／郝景芳
9. 魚翅與花椒／扶霞．鄧洛普
10. 長樂路／史明智
11. 終結平庸／Todd Rose
12. 創業就是要細分壟斷／李開復、傅盛、汪華 (

)

arthurjc | Jan 3, 2024 |

Copied over from FB when posting my goodreads year in review:
Here it is: my year in books 2018! I made a goal on goodreads to hit 70 this year, and I reached it in the waning days. Partially, this was due to a December rally to actually read books I'd purchased earlier this year but sat on my shelves while I finished library books with due dates. tl;dr, I read a lot and have thoughts.

Let's talk reading trends. In 2017, I deliberately tried to read more Asian American/Asian diaspora authors in May for AAPI Heritage Month, but even at the speed I read I still had a lot of books in my library pile after the month was over. Rather than pushing for a 30 day period, I figured I would try to read more AsAm authors in general, supporting the works of brothers and sisters.

This dovetailed with a realization from Twitter that the most effective time to vote with your dollars is to preorder and boost sales for release week. Books that fell into this category for me: Creatures of Light (ebook, as that's what the publisher does), The Belles, American Panda, Number One Chinese Restaurant, The Way You Make Me Feel, and in not-finished-or-started: The Merry Spinster and What If It's Us.

Going for debut and AsAm authors unintentionally led to me reading more YA in 2018, though some reads aren't from this. I have a few books I'm supposed to buddy read with friends, but life (particularly academia) gets in the way. I did read genderswapped twilight "Life and Death" though, and reread the original Twilight to see what changed and how Stephenie Meyer thinks teenagers work.

My takeaway from the year of teen reads is that socially, we put a LOT of pressure on teenage girls, especially to be "not like the other girls". Routinely, the Wonder Girls and Faile are called as someone's most-loathed character in a Wheel of Time group I follow, and I do feel like the fact that it's kind of okay to hate on teenage girls is why they get mentioned more than the Wonder Boys (because man, Rand broods way, way more, and I honestly feel like people hate Faile because Perrin gets drippy about her). Bella has a lot of feelings in Twilight, and I want her to do more and 'be better' but honestly? It's okay that she has mixed feelings about being a new kid in high school and gets drawn towards the other weirdo in the cafeteria. Book #70 for me was To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and while Lara Jean annoys me as a person, soft, dreamy romantic girls like her exist and *that's okay*. I went to a very LDS high school; I know these types. And if I look within, yes, there's a tiny romantic who sighs at writing letters that will never be read (I may or may not have a journal from eighth grade of precisely that).

While I always am drawn towards nonfiction, especially natural science, in the time of POTUS 45 I am making a conscious effort to read more 'woke'- current events, the ways systemic oppression affects us, etc. I had to check my US-centric view of the world when I read "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race"- while the thesis is important and definitely still applies here, I was surprised to realize Reni is a *British* author, and her book explicitly discusses UK policy that has influenced the way people are perceived. Fire and Fury got a lot of buzz at the beginning of this year (I joked that it was a national book club pick), and maybe so as the first of several tell-alls, but I don't feel like I gained anything I didn't already guess (chaos and petty infighting? not surprised) and it felt rushed. Stormy Daniels' book was funnier, and an interesting autobiography on its own without the POTUS bits. If you've never read a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay, "We Were Eight Years in Power" collects some of the best, with additional writing for context around when they were written.

This year, I also read books suggested by podcasts or selected by goodreads groups as a monthly book club- I failed to meet book club deadline alas, but I did read several Books and Boba picks (Exit West, reread Crazy Rich Asians (also for the movie), Number One Chinese Restaurant). Jello Girls came up in several pods (Gastropod and Sporkful), and Prairie Fires was livetweeted by Ana Mardoll last year and currently going through a reread at the hashtag #PrairieFires now! And of course, The Adventure Zone is a podcast and Here There Be Gerblins is the first adventure arc but now in graphic novel form.

I just pulled up my postmortem from last year. My reading resolution was to read more of my own library, which I'll give myself a C- this year, 29/70 were books I own. Last year, it was 18/73. Unfortunately, my buddy read with Zhian is on hold because his copy of SET got lost through no fault of his own. I mention continuing to read more Asian diaspora authors, and I can safely say I did, but I still need to read more SE Asians (though I can say I expanded beyond sinocentric ones this time- several reads this year featured Korean protagonists).

GOALS FOR 2019:
- actually try recipes in the cookbooks I read
- continue to explore the diversity of the Asian diaspora
- read more books by LGBTQ authors, particularly trans and enby writers
- read and finish at least two 'book club' selections in the designated month

Quantitatively, 70 books is *a lot*. Even going with YA and novellas. There's some self-selection in that goodreads power users tend to be ambitious readers, so there's no reason to feel inadequate seeing some people go 100-200 in a year. Given I have a wedding to plan, probably going to dial it back down to 65, which is still a book and a half a week. (

)

Daumari | Dec 28, 2023 |

Most exciting discoveries during 2018:
The Beverley Nichols garden books...what a mix of whimsy and spice! Part fictitious memoir, part garden observations, these books gave me many chuckles and put me in tune with my inner gardener (which I never knew was there).
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle...or 7-1/2 Deaths if you buy the US version. This one was the most fun to recommend, as it felt entirely original, and how often does that happen anymore with mysteries?
Nine Coaches Waiting...Nobody does suspense like Mary Stewart, and I found this one to be her best. Stayed up into the wee hours reading it.
The Beatrice Hyde-Clare mysteries...For me, Regency romances or mysteries usually all sit at the same level of "just so-so". I was absolutely surprised by this series from Lynn Messina. Smart and funny!

Some stats...
This year I was almost half and half for reading authors new vs. authors familiar to me.
Whittling down my to-read list meant that I could spent a little time with old favorites, so 11 of my books were re-reads. My longest book was a re-read, Wives and Daughters.

I gave five stars to about 9% of the books I read. Four stars and three stars to almost 40% each. I'm happy that I found almost 90% of my reads enjoyable to that degree.

I had the thrill of getting to read 9 books before they went on sale to the public, and an additional 9 shortly after publication, thanks to NetGalley and the publishers that approved my requests!

October was evidently my most prolific month, with 18 books read.

In a stat that will surprise no one, historical fiction or fiction written prior to 1950 accounted for almost 60% of my books. The only thing that's surprising is that it's not a higher percentage!

On to 2019...

Alishadt | Feb 25, 2023 |

Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |

I consider 2018 to be the year that I truly lost interest in YA fiction, especially in the second half of the year. Most that I picked up, I didn't get very far before putting them down, or even beyond the blurb on the back of the book. I did read a few good ones, including finishing the last two books of the Winner's Trilogy ([b:The Winner's Crime|20443207|The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Trilogy, #2)|Marie Rutkoski|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411741455s/20443207.jpg|31174003] and [b:The Winner's Kiss|20443235|The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)|Marie Rutkoski|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455809407s/20443235.jpg|31175868]) by Marie Rutkoski, and two books, [b:Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda|19547856|Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Creekwood, #1)|Becky Albertalli|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1402915678s/19547856.jpg|27679579] and [b:Leah on the Offbeat|31180248|Leah on the Offbeat (Creekwood, #2)|Becky Albertalli|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1510886704s/31180248.jpg|51820754], by Becki Albertalli. But the magic of YA is gone now. Or maybe I just grew up a bit more and my tastes changed. After all, this was the year that I moved out to a new place on my own, started a mentorship, decided to change careers, and completely transformed my social life. 2018 was actually the best year of my life so far!

In terms of reading, I was pretty much all over the place, trying to find something to replace YA, I suppose. I read some interesting non-fiction on contemporary social/political/cultural issues, including [b:Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now|37830765|Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now|Jaron Lanier|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1526958131s/37830765.jpg|59513117] and [b:No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need|34814047|No Is Not Enough Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1491517241s/34814047.jpg|56535051], which made me realize I want to read more from this genre as I'm so unaware of a lot of current issues. I also managed to read a bunch of books I've been meaning to read for years, which I had previously neglected in favour of easier-to-read YA. These include the literary fiction standouts [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439197219s/6288.jpg|3355573] and [b:Middlesex|2187|Middlesex|Jeffrey Eugenides|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437029776s/2187.jpg|1352495], as well as sci-fi/fantasy written by female authors ([b:The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit|428428|The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit (Wraeththu, #1)|Storm Constantine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1393241436s/428428.jpg|3311950] and [b:Parable of the Sower|52397|Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)|Octavia E. Butler|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442169447s/52397.jpg|59258]). Anne Bishop's urban fantasy series The Others, starting with [b:Written in Red|15711341|Written in Red (The Others, #1)|Anne Bishop|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411439502s/15711341.jpg|21378102], was one I picked up on a whim but it turned out to be an incredibly interesting and unique twist on the vampire/werewolf/paranormals lore. Overall, I became much more interested in reading about adult characters and situations closer to my own life (even within a sff context), which I hope to explore more of in 2019.

Numbers-wise I read not quite twice as many books in 2018 as I did in 2017, but half of them were graphic novels and manga. This was mainly due to me wanting to expand my art skills into figure drawing in the early months of the year and I was exploring various styles of cartooning. I normally don't pick up Western/non-manga graphic novels so it was interesting to see the different ways of drawing characters and telling a story, although ultimately I was not interested in them enough to actually read any of them during that period except two graphic novels ([b:Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #1|30370844|Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #1|Chynna Clugston Flores|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465352343s/30370844.jpg|50883977] and [b:Nylon Road: A Graphic Memoir of Coming of Age in Iran|7025936|Nylon Road A Graphic Memoir of Coming of Age in Iran|Parsua Bashi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311990576s/7025936.jpg|7273266]). Somehow, it reignited my love of Japanese manga though, and I spent the rest of the year reading lots of it. Some standouts include [b:Does the Flower Blossom? 1|17157211|Does the Flower Blossom? 1|Shoko Hidaka|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423037860s/17157211.jpg|12634406]-3, [b:NightS|13633126|NightS|Kou Yoneda|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418607067s/13633126.jpg|19242787], and [b:What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Volume 1|18339951|What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Volume 1|Fumi Yoshinaga|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1395779183s/18339951.jpg|3674605]-5.

I also really got into collecting English-translated BL/yaoi manga this year, and my collection increased by 13 volumes ([b:Blue Morning, Vol. 1|8103376|Blue Morning, Vol. 1|Shoko Hidaka|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389994744s/8103376.jpg|12888655]-7, [b:Does the flower blossom? n. 3|30151944|Does the flower blossom? n. 3|Shoko Hidaka|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462869023s/30151944.jpg|22398833], [b:NightS|13633126|NightS|Kou Yoneda|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418607067s/13633126.jpg|19242787], [b:Coyote, Vol. 1|36538794|Coyote, Vol. 1|Ranmaru Zaria|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1530433863s/36538794.jpg|50845890], [b:You and Me, Etc.|10054884|You and Me, Etc.|Kyuugou|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1299104537s/10054884.jpg|14950976], [b:ZE, Volume 3|6406295|ZE, Volume 3|Yuki Shimizu|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1323651658s/6406295.jpg|6595180]-4), although I didn't end up reading them all yet! I will continue supporting this niche genre/industry in 2019 as I see Sublime Manga has licensed Ameiro Paradox/Candy Color Paradox, with 4 volumes to be released over the next year. Welp, there goes my wallet.

My bookshelf overall increased in size this year. In October, I won a raffle for the Blood Opera trilogy by [a:Tanith Lee|8694|Tanith Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1433005489p2/8694.jpg], one of my absolute favourite authors, which was a really nice surprise! I haven't yet finished the entire trilogy but it's been very intriguing so far and the first book, [b:Dark Dance|81122|Dark Dance (Blood Opera Sequence, #1)|Tanith Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1239500785s/81122.jpg|78321], is definitely my favourite fiction book of the year. I bought a book on meditation ([b:The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science|25942786|The Mind Illuminated A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science|Culadasa (John Yates)|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439857546s/25942786.jpg|45842013]) as well as a couple Chinese art books. I also received a couple of books by [a:Alan W. Watts|1501668|Alan W. Watts|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1427892345p2/1501668.jpg] for Christmas, an author I have been meaning to read for a while now.

Favourite fiction book: [b:Dark Dance|81122|Dark Dance (Blood Opera Sequence, #1)|Tanith Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1239500785s/81122.jpg|78321] by [a:Tanith Lee|8694|Tanith Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1433005489p2/8694.jpg]
Dark, compelling, and unpredictable, this molasses-slow vampire novel writing in flowery prose is not the sort of thing I thought I'd be into, but I ate this one up.

Favourite non-fiction book: [b:Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now|37830765|Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now|Jaron Lanier|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1526958131s/37830765.jpg|59513117] by [a:Jaron Lanier|3010868|Jaron Lanier|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1374281772p2/3010868.jpg]
This was a really eye-opening book. I figured I already knew all the reasons for deleting social media (the narcissism, comparing yourself with others, FOMO, etc.) but as Jaron Lanier is from Silicon Valley, he is able to go much farther, and explain much more deeply from a computer scientist's point of view.

Favourite manga/graphic novel: [b:NightS|13633126|NightS|Kou Yoneda|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418607067s/13633126.jpg|19242787] by [a:Kou Yoneda|6574446|Kou Yoneda|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1361851148p2/6574446.jpg]
This one I actually read 3 times this year! Mainly because the second story in it called "Emotion Spectrum" is one of my favourite BL one-shots ever so I just kept reading and re-reading it, and then somehow ended up reading the rest of the book too. Ahh, just thinking about it makes me want to pick it up again!

New (to me) authors I want to continue reading in 2019:
[a:Storm Constantine|45816|Storm Constantine|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1418134322p2/45816.jpg]
[a:Anne Bishop|26897|Anne Bishop|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1237258217p2/26897.jpg]
[a:Cormac McCarthy|4178|Cormac McCarthy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1414695980p2/4178.jpg]
[a:Jaron Lanier|3010868|Jaron Lanier|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1374281772p2/3010868.jpg]
[a:Naomi Klein|419|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494619590p2/419.jpg]
[a:Ranmaru Zaria|4885639|Ranmaru Zaria|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1468256338p2/4885639.jpg] (manga)

Total number of books read: 74 (37 text 37 manga/graphic novels)
Number of 2018 releases read: 3
Number of books re-read (excluding manga): 2
Most read author (excluding manga): Tanith Lee (3 books)

Goodreads Year in Books: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2018/3937220

serru | Oct 6, 2022 |

data ▼ | voti

1-5 di 23 (prossimo | mostra tutto)