Playing Catch-Up | What Have I Been Reading in 2018?
11:55 AM
We have one week left in February (that sounds fake, but okay) and I have read some really good things this year. Instead of doing a detailed overview of all 14 books that I've read so far and prattle on for ages, I'm going to highlight some highs and lows and also talk about some overall goals (if you can call them that) I have for this reading year. I am keeping an up-to-date Twitter thread on every book that I read and you can see that here (like, I've read a few super great thrillers that I won't be talking about in this post but you should definitely check them out in that thread).
Up to this point, I've rated 3 books a full 5 stars. I'm trying to be more selective with what I rate 5 stars, as I think that I got a little lax with that rating in 2017. This isn't that big of a deal, really, but I want to save those 5 glowing stars for the best of the best. I want to be more critical overall and really think about what I'm enjoying and not enjoying and try to put it into words better than I did last year. I am proud of myself because for both 2016 and 2017, I have written at least short paragraph-length reviews of everything that I have read. I want to continue that this year and try to write longer reviews for the things I feel really strongly about on either end of the spectrum.
Anyways, the books that I would consider my favorites of the year so far are The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire, and The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, with the last being my absolute favorite. It was truly a masterpiece. If you want a read that, most simply put, follows the life of a teenager as her family moves to Alaska, please pick this one up (although I should also mention that there is abuse and grief and lots of precarious situations). The other two, Bear and Sugar Sky, are intricate fantasies, both vastly different but extremely enjoyable.
I haven't downright hated a book yet. I haven given 2 stars to a couple of books: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero and The Blue by Lucy Clarke. I was really looking forward to both of these so that rating was a bit of a disappointment. I did really well in 2017 with not having a lot of negative reading experiences and I am hoping to keep that up this year. While negative-leaning reviews are probably my favorites to write, I definitely don't aim for them. It's sad, of course, when a book that I was really hoping to enjoy turns out to be not that great, but I think negative reading experiences make up a reader's personality just as much as positive ones do. After all, how are you going to appropriately appreciate and savor an incredible book if you haven't had those bad ones to mold your tastes and critiques?
Really, I have a lot of high hopes for more great reads throughout the year. I'm currently reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which I have heard nothing but good things about. I'm only about 50 pages in as of the writing of this sentence and I am really enjoying it so far. Stay tuned for my thoughts on that. I'm also looking to pick up the sequel to the aforementioned Katherine Arden work. It's called The Girl in the Tower and I have the stunning UK edition and I cannot wait to dig in. I always have a running list of books I want to read next in my head but when it comes time to actually pick one, there's always a surprise candidate that comes out of thin air and throws everything off balance.Earlier in February, I finished two books on the same day and I rated one of them 3 stars and one of them 3.5 stars. This kind of caused my mind to explode. When I rate books, I rate them independently of each other, of course. Unless they are part of a series or so stunningly similar to something else that I can't help but compare it, books are their own individual experience. When I saw that I rated those two books only half of a star differently, it really messed me up! One of them was a new YA fantasy with lush writing and fun teacup pets and I really enjoyed it, the other was a nonfiction book written by a librarian in the form of letters written to books and authors and, yeah, I enjoyed that one, too, even though the second and less-exciting section really let me down. I don't know where I'm going with this and I know I'm doing really poorly at explaining it but, really, what it boils down to is this: rating books is really, really weird.
There are two things I'm trying to do in 2018: read more nonfiction and read more diversely. I can't remember my exact diverse book percentage from last year, but I don't believe that it is over 50 percent and that is what I'm really trying to aim for now. In the reading spreadsheet that I use, I tag books diverse for things such as race, sexuality, ability, mental illness, gender identify, so on and so forth. I've currently been tagging books as diverse for the characters only, and not specifically the author.
As for nonfiction, I just want to read more of it. As of writing this, I am waiting for my federal tax refund to hit my bank account and, when it does, I have several nonfiction titles on my Amazon wishlist that I am really interested in getting. Mostly dealing with women in history and their accomplishments, I'm hoping that they can live up to this feeling that I have, that they're going to amaze me with every page. I'm also hoping to read more memoirs and things like that, after absolutely loving After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry last year.
Next week, one of my most anticipated books of the year releases (and it also happens to be nonfiction): I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. Published posthumously after her sudden death, this book follows McNamara's intense search for the Golden State Killer. I just read an article yesterday that discusses how this book was put together, with help from her husband, Patton Oswalt, and a couple of other people. True crime is fascinating to me (a very gray area, I know) and McNamara's writing was (is? I never know the correct tense usage in a situation like this) phenomenal. I'm sure that this will be an engaging yet bittersweet read; Oswalt believes that McNamara used prescription drugs to deal with some of the affects of so closely following this case and her death was caused by an adverse interaction of said drugs.
That same day, I'm looking forward to All Out, an anthology dealing with stories about queer teens throughout the ages. A lot of good authors are included in this, including Elliot Wake, whom's works I have previously devoured (and loved). Anthologies are hit and miss for me and I gave Meet Cute a decent 3 star rating earlier this year, but I have extremely high hopes for this one.
So, that's it, a little taste of what I've been reading so far this year. I'm sure 2018 will have its ebbs and flows, but I think that there are a lot of promising looking titles hitting shelves in the coming months and I also have a whole bunch of books staring at me from my own shelves that I need to get to. I'm not sure how I will incorporate what I'm reading into this blog, whether I'll do wrap-ups after every so many books or just talk about the ones I'm really loving or really hating, but I know that I'll be discussing a lot of things that I am (and hopefully will remain) very excited about.
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