{"id":50537,"date":"2023-12-31T16:53:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T00:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=50537"},"modified":"2024-01-01T13:05:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T21:05:07","slug":"2023-reading-round-up-%f0%9f%93%9a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2023\/12\/31\/2023-reading-round-up-%f0%9f%93%9a\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 Reading Round-Up &#x1f4da;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' 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20:55:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-06 20:55:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:1075,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/wrap-up\\\/2023\\\/djwudi&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:1076,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/321fe2bf-029b-40dd-8d2a-0c501616d465&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:1077,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/976f8d82-68d8-49ed-be15-94102a708074&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20230329040543\\\/https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/976f8d82-68d8-49ed-be15-94102a708074&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-01 23:45:28&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-01 23:45:28&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:1078,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/1cbe00be-207c-4aa4-891c-acbddd03f07c&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year \u2014 an average of one a week. This year I made it to <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books-read\/469fdeed-91cc-4ac1-9cdf-7e2330dfd0c9?year=2023\">74 books<\/a>. Here\u2019s a quick (?) overview\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/2023readinggoal.png\" alt=\"2023 Reading Goal of 52 books met! 142% (74 books) Fantastic! You&#39;ve exceeded yoru reading goal by 22 books.\" title=\"2023readinggoal.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"765\" height=\"209\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2022\/12\/31\/2022-reading-round-up-&#x1f4da;\/\">The trend of the last few years<\/a> holds true, with another year almost entirely dedicated to escapist fluff. Surprised? I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Non-fiction<\/strong>: Just two books, counting for 3% of my reading. One was a nice <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/28276d21-7740-43c9-998c-f73045ea5d6d\">behind-the-scenes look at <em>The Wrath of Khan<\/em><\/a>, the other was an <em>excellent<\/em> memoir by Deafblind author Elsa Sjunneson. I highly recommend <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/52a7eede-c38b-4926-8590-6c9181ffee01\"><em>Being Seen<\/em><\/a>, especially if you have any interest in recognizing and combatting ableism.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Non-genre-fiction<\/strong> (where \u201cgenre\u201d is shorthand \u2014 though, not very short, if you include this parenthetical \u2014 for science-fiction, fantasy, and horror): Absolutely nothing this year. Everything that wasn&#8217;t non-fiction was &#8220;genre&#8221; fiction.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Quality genre fiction<\/strong>: About the same as last year; primarily the Philip K. Dick nominees and my Hugo project, with a few others added here and there.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, I read all of the books nominated for this year\u2019s Philip K. Dick awards. However, I&#8217;m no longer posting my thoughts or review on the nominees, as starting this year I am the coordinator for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.norwescon.org\/con\/p-k-dick-award\/\">Philip K. Dick award ceremony at Norwescon<\/a>. While I have no input into selecting any of the nominees or the eventual winner, I don&#8217;t want to give any appearance of impropriety. So, I&#8217;ll just read and enjoy each year&#8217;s nominees, and you all will have to make your own judgements as to your favorites.<\/p>\n<p>I added nine books to <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/hugo-reading\/\">my Hugo reading project<\/a>, bringing me up to 65% of the way through. This year\u2019s selections were all good, without any I didn&#8217;t enjoy, but the surprises were Lois McMaster Bujold&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/45da5df1-0c69-41f9-9882-dcaf1cb41e37\">The Vor Game<\/a><\/em> and <em><a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/93427eb8-77be-442a-8dd3-e429b57fc2e6\">Barrayar<\/a><\/em> (and the other books in that series I read to make sure I got the whole story); I&#8217;d never read them before, and likely wouldn&#8217;t have picked them up based on the cover artwork and blurbs, but have ended up <em>really<\/em> enjoying the series and am looking forward to reading more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fluff genre fiction<\/strong>: Unsurprisingly, this once again ended up being the strong majority of this year\u2019s reading. Lots of <em>Star Trek<\/em> novels, with a few detours here and there. And given everything that was going on in <del>2020<\/del> <del>2021<\/del> <del>2022<\/del> 2023, it was very nice to have a bookshelf full of options that wouldn\u2019t take a whole lot of brain power for me to disappear into.<\/p>\n<p>One change this year is that I read a lot more digitally than I usually do. While I generally prefer physical books, there are times when digital books come in handy, or where they&#8217;re the only real option. In the first case, when we went on vacation this year, it was easy to bring along a small library on my iPad; in the second case, I&#8217;ve started actually <em>reading<\/em> the two SF\/F magazines I subscribe to (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncannymagazine.com\"><em>Uncanny<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/clarkesworldmagazine.com\"><em>Clarkesworld<\/em><\/a>), both of which are  distributed digitally.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/wrap-up\/2023\/djwudi\">Storygraph\u2019s stats on my year\u2019s reading<\/a> tell me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019ve read 23,671 pages read across 74 books, with January and September being my reading-est months<\/li>\n<li>Format: 78% print, 22% digital<\/li>\n<li>Longest book: <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/321fe2bf-029b-40dd-8d2a-0c501616d465\"><em>House of Leaves<\/em><\/a> by Mark Z. Danielewski (709 pages)<\/li>\n<li>Shortest book: <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/976f8d82-68d8-49ed-be15-94102a708074\"><em>Line of Fire<\/em><\/a> by Peter David (111 pages)<\/li>\n<li>Most shelved book: <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/1cbe00be-207c-4aa4-891c-acbddd03f07c\"><em>Ender&#8217;s Game<\/em><\/a> by Orson Scott Card (101,609 readers)<\/li>\n<li>Least shelved book: <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/28276d21-7740-43c9-998c-f73045ea5d6d\"><em>Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The Making of the Classic Film<\/em><\/a> by John and Maria Jose Tenuto (2 readers)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/2023booktrends.png\" alt=\"A graph of my reading over the year tracking number of books and number of pages. January, August, and September are the busiest months; March, April, and June are the slowest.\" title=\"2023booktrends.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"895\" height=\"405\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On to 2024!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year; this year I read 74. Here\u2019s a quick (?) overview\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036,2043],"tags":[4243,4244],"class_list":["post-50537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-personal","tag-reading","tag-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}