i'm goin' to toontown

Once again: the full list of books I read in the past year. Not counted are comic books, graphic novels, fanfics, works in progress that I have edited or beta-read, or webcomics. (For this year, that means that among other things I am not counting having FINISHED HOMESTUCK.)

Titles behind the ( cut-tag. )

My total count is up considerably, from 142 to 163. First-time-read count is likewise up, from 35 (25% of all books read this year) to 56 (34%).

My five most-read authors this year were Lois McMaster Bujold, Naomi Novik, David Eddings, Diane Duane, and Dorothy Sayers. Topping the first-time-read chart this year are Maggie Stiefvater, Dorothy Sayers, Catherynne M. Valente, Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, and Jo Walton (with the last two tied).

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and Jo Walton's Among Others are still my most-reread books over the nine years I've been tracking. Following them are Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, Janet Kagan's Hellspark, and Dorothy Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon.

And because I didn't say so the other night: Happy New Year to all, and may this year be better than the last. (Please and thank you, God, okay?)

Once again: the full list of books I read in the past year. Not counted are comic books, graphic novels, fanfics, works in progress that I have edited or beta-read, or webcomics. (I've been wondering if I should start counting graphic novels and/or novel-length fanfics. What do you think?)

Titles behind the ( cut-tag. )

Trends! My total count is down, from 177 books last year to 152 this year. My first-time-read count has gone up, from 42 to 62 (and from 24% to 61% of all books read).

My five most-read authors (by book count) this year were L. Frank Baum, L.M. Montgomery, Seanan McGuire, Lois McMaster Bujold, and C.J. Cherryh. The authors topping the first-time-read chart this year were L.M. Montgomery, C.J. Cherryh, Charles Dickens, and Rosemary Kirstein; tied for fifth place were Catherynne M. Valente, Seanan McGuire, and Tamora Pierce.

Over the past seven years my most-read authors are Lois McMaster Bujold, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, and Diane Duane, with Naomi Novik and L. Frank Baum tied for fifth place. My most reread books are William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (ten times in seven years) and Jo Walton's Among Others (seven times in three years).

Man that's a lot of data analysis for no particular reason.

Once again: the full list of books I read in the past year. Not counted are comic books, graphic novels, fanfics, works in progress that I have edited or beta-read, or webcomics.

Titles behind the ( cut-tag. )

[Edited to remove accidental duplicate.]

There are so many things I have been meaning to post and not gotten around to it, including a handful of links and an update on the acapella music collection project and a mention of the actual by-god double rainbow all the way across the sky I saw two weeks ago.

So of course I'm going to post a meme instead. From cflute via technoshaman: Write Like A Girl.

Italicize the authors you've heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you've read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.

Please feel free to repost with your own favorite female SF (or non-SF) authors included! (I've added my own in a different color.)

( throw your hands up at me )

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).

Then she remembers Bigend's iBook, with its bright new Heathrow security sticker. She hauls the nylon case up from the floor and opens it. She'd spent twenty minutes, the night before, poking around on the desktop, but now for the first time she notices an unmarked CD-ROM that proves, on insertion, to be a searchable database for all of F:F:F. Whoever does these things for Bigend has also provided, on the hard drive, a complete collection of the footage and her three favorite edits, one of them by Filmy and Maurice. Still sitting cross-legged, she makes a Stickie: COPY CD FOR IVY.

-William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

So a little over a year ago, I decided to keep a log of all the books I read in 2008. I'm pretty sure I missed at least a couple around the middle of the year, and I kind of decided arbitrarily not to include graphic novels or plays, but this is still pretty close to comprehensive.

( The List! )

I'd given some vague thought to analyzing trends and patterns, but ... nah. (Anyone feeling compelled to analyze, however, is welcome to share!)

So everyone's talking about Sweeney Todd (sorry, agonistes, me too). And in the comments to filkertom's post on the subject a while back, somebody was complaining about how the musical changed the original story, and expressed disgust for how Sondheim turned Todd into "a misunderstood anti-hero".

I boggled a little, as I'm sure at least some of you are, but it got me thinking. Sweeney Todd is obviously not a misunderstood anti-hero, but what is he?

Has anyone yet coined and defined the term anti-villain?

If an anti-hero is a character you're not supposed to like, or sympathize with much, or admire, but who is nonetheless the one you're supposed to root for ... I propose to define an anti-villain as a character you do like or sympathize with or admire, but are nonetheless not supposed to root for.

Sweeney Todd may be an example of such. So is everyone from Booth to Oswald in Sondheim's Assassins. I'm not sure where to draw the line between an anti-villain and a villain who has been humanized to the point of drawing audience sympathy, or one who is just so awesome as to draw audience admiration. I think the difference may be in the presentation of villain as protagonist.

Following the immediate obvious association, does this make Elphaba an anti-villain? I don't think so, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on why.

Discuss.

Ganked from camwyn:

The list is the 106 books most often noted as unread by Library Thingusers. Bold is for books you've read. Italics for books you've started but haven't finished. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable.

( Behind the cut-tag: ze List! )

Wow, there are ... really a lot of books on that list I haven't read and should.