Tag: wrap-up season 2012
-
Another year of writing statistics
December 20th, 2003 was the day when I completed (and submitted) my first short story. I was eighteen years old. Which means that today is the end of my 9th year of writing. That is a lot of years. And ever since about August of 2004, I’ve been keeping the kind of daily word counts…
-
My slush-reading stint has ended
Since February 15th, I’ve been reading submissions for a venerable SF magazine, Strange Horizons*. According to my email client, I rejected about 850 stories. If I include the stories I passed up (which get rejected by the actual fiction editors), I read and reviewed about 900 stories. Which means I was reading about three stories…
-
Index of books that I blogged about (or just enjoyed) in 2012
These are my 15 favorite books of 2012 (amongst the ones that I blogged about) Things Fall Apart Achebe, Chinua Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Alexie, Sherman Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter Bissell, Tom Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea DeLisle, Guy Mill On The Floss Eliot, George The Sportswriter Ford, Richard…
-
My mixed opinions about Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Crusoe, the Best American Essays, and Tender Is The Night
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – This book is kinda racist. And it’s not because of the N-word; it’s because of the horrible portrayal of Jim–an adult man who is depicted as a bumbling idiot who is deathly afraid of witches and ghosts. Especially in the first third of the book, I…
-
Predictably Good Books (that I read in 2012), Part One
I feel like there’s no way to say “Pride and Prejudice was really good” without somehow indicating that you know it’s supposed to be good and that you’re not surprised it’s good. And that’s why this entry is titled “Predictably good books.” Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – I love Jane Austen. Before reading…
-
Surprisingly Good Books, Part Two
The Fault In Our Stars by John Green – This year, I’ve read a fair number of YA novels with contemporary settings, but this was one of the first of them. It was also the best. The novel’s triumph is its self-aware voice. The narrator is a teenager who’s suffering from cancer. And she’s a…
-
Books I Read In 2012 That Were Surprisingly Good, Part One
Okay guys, I had to restrict this list to books that I haven’t already blogged about. It was the only way to reduce it to manageable size. So these are not the most “surprisingly good” books I’ve read this year. They’re simply the most “surprisingly good” books that I haven’t already written about. I chose…
-
Inaugurating Wrap-Up Season 2012 (oh, also, I watched the Blind Side!)
I am unapologetic in my love of all the yearly roundups that people post on their blogs at around this time of year, and ever since 2010, I’ve conducted my own month-long navel-gazing extravaganza called Wrap-Up Season. Typically, I begin by talking about the books I’ve read in the year. I divide these books into…