2021 Year in Review


My 2021 End-of-the-Year Review

Calendar year 2021 has finally left us, and during that time I left 66 entries on my blog, which is basically record for me. In 2009, I had 86 posts, but many of those were reprinting old reviews I'd written in a tiny notebook that I kept for the same reason. That's not to say that I didn't have any "old posts" this past year, but I didn't have as many.

So what could be found in those 66 entries? A lot of different stuff, different genres, and various lengths. I tried not to stuff a bunch of 100-200 page books in at the end of the year.

Fiction

First, of those, only 23 were novels, long or short. Three were Christmas stories, which may be short for "novels" but longer than the other Christmas material I read. Ten of these books were from joining a book club. (Shame on me, it should've been 11, I skipped one month, and I wasn't part of the group at the beginning of the year.)

A quick rundown:

Book Club: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry (Zevin), Beartown (Backman), Ninth House (Bardugo), The Only Good Indians (Jones), The Bear and the Cardinal (Arden), Anger is a Gift (Oshiro), The Oracle Year (Soule), Bellewether (Kearsley), Scythe ( Shusterman), The Anomaly (Ruger).

Christmas books: Jake and the Gingerbread Wars (Foley), Claus for Concern (Lester), The Ghost of Christmas Past (Fox), and A Very Beechwood Christmas (Garrett). The last one was finished in January after Christmas 2020.

Anthologies: Aesop's Fables (Aesop/Jones), and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle).

And the rest: Tooth and Claw (Walton), Circle (Miller), Vampire Addiction: The Vampires of Athens (Pohler), The Outposter (Dickson), Kings of the Wyld (Eames), Troll Hunter: Witch for Hire (Mason), and The Crime Beat (Fuller), which was really a novella.

Of those, one was a library recommendation, one a scifi con recommendation, one was an Analog serial that I found in book form, two were free in emails, one was a free Tor.com ebook, and one was a free download I found when I was searching for books with trolls.

Abandoned was They Were the Best of Gnomes ... (Wills). I couldn't get into it.

Nonfiction

There were six books in this category. One historical, one biographical, one inspirational, two informative, and one about TV.

The Man From the Other Side (Orlev), Don't Burn This Book (Rubin), I Heard God Laugh (Kelly), The Literary Handyman: Tips on Writing From Someone Who's Been There (Ackley-McPhail), Doctor Who: 365 Days of Memorable Moments and Impossible Things (Richards), Principles of Zen Philosophy.

Full disclosure: Danielle Ackley-McPhail is an editor whom I've worked with on three book titles.

Poetry

One was a short poetry book I was asked to review. (It wasn’t great.) and one was a collection of short stories that I got on World Book Day book from amazon == I tried to get through it but couldn’t. It was more the writing than the subject matter.

Learning to Breathe (Stephens), Amora: Stories (Borges)

Additionally, I discovered by accident that a former student of mine had published a collection of poetry (which I haven't acquired yet) and then I found out that she released a second collection for the holidays. That title is in the Christmas section.

ANALOG

In 2021, I acted upon an idea that I had the year before, and started reading issues of Analog dated 50 years earlier. This is from before I had my subscription. As such, I read 12 issues.

Shorter Christomas works, stories and poetry

The titles I read were: A Country Christmas by Azmat Hussein (ridiculously bad); Hectic Holidays by Heaven Santiago (poetry); Merry Christmas 2021: A Short Story Novel by Stephen Leacock (not good, didn’t suck); Sneaky's Christmas Mystery by Debbie De Louise (not good, 32 pages, bailed after 3 pages), The Chrsitmas Eve Landing by John O'Boyle (a picture book, I read it anyway), Frosty Blend by Kennedy Layne (book 15 of 23, not good), Old Christmas by Washington Irving, Christmas Elf by Arnie Lightning.

For a total of 7 titles plus 1 abandoned.

Random Short Novels, Short Stories & Gaming Books

Random Game/Gaming Books - 1 title, but this entry wasn't posted yet.
A Bushel and a Peck of eSpec Stories - Also not posted yet, there were 6 short stories, although they are getting longer because I'm ready by size. The last was another Christmas sotry.
A Bushel of eSpec stories - 12 stories from eSpec authors. These were bonus stories from Kickstarter campaigns.
A Peck of eSpec Stories - 12 stories from eSpec authors. These were bonus stories from Kickstarter campaigns. I sorted my directory by size, and these were the shortest ones.

That's a total of 31 stories in this section.

Graphic Novels and Manga

It was a good year from Graphic Novels. For one thing, I found actual graphic novels to read instead of collections of reprints that didn't tell a complete story. (Or worse, told three incomplete stories.)

In one calendar year, I read 21 volumes of My Hero Academia, 4 volumes of Ultraman (sadly volume 5 is not available in electronic form), 2 volumes of My Monster Secret, Shadow of the Batgirl and Supergirl: Being Super.

There was also Superman Vol. 7: Bizarroverse, which was incomplete reprints.

That's a total of 30 books in this section.

Assorted Blog Postings

Rounding out the blog were the following postings:

An old year-end Review for 2007, An old Year-end Review for 2006 An old Year-end Review for 2005 An old Year-end Review for 2004 An old Year-end Review for 2003 and Books I've Read Twice.

The 2020 Year in Review was actually published on Dec 31, 2020.

And that was my year. I think I've accounted for all 66 posts (and a couple which haven't been posted yet). Looking forward to 2022. I've already started the runner-up novel from last month's book club vote. Two of the choices looked equally interesting to me, and the winner was a quick read. I would've read the other by now, but I decided to get into the Christmas spirit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bedeviled Eggs (Childs)

Image
Bedeviled Eggs Laura Childs (2010) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This is the third in the series that started with my pandemic book club selection. THe first one was interesting enoug that iI thought I'd try a couple more. This book was not available as an ebook from any of three NYC library systems, so I had to get it as a paperback, just as I did with the previous two. I also got the audiobook, as I did with the last two. It's good to listen to when I'm out for my walks. The usual gang is back. Szanne, the recent widow, and her new boyfriend, Sam the doctor, along with Petra, whose husband is in a medical facility, and Toni, who is still married to Junior. Junior proves to be little more useful in this book. The relationship stays on-again-off-again. I'd imagined Junior as a cross between Jethro Clampett
Read more

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Doidge)

Image
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (The Dowser #1) by Meghan Ciana Doidge (2013) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I'm pretty sure that this was a freebie in a Book Bub mailing list, but it might've been a random search result when looking for free paranormal cozy mysteries. I don't remember. It was mostly a quick read, and I rushed to finish it because a library book became availalbe and I wasn't go to be able to renew that. As it was, I practically forgot that I'd read it, until I noticed the title again on my phone. (My iPad is loaded with a lot of recent stuff which gets downloaded automatically.) This is the first book in the "Dowser" series. The main character, Jade, is half-witch, half-human, and she knows nothing about her father. Her mother never chose to tell her anything, and sh
Read more

Cibola Burn (Corey)

Image
Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey (2014) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I read this nearly a month ago, or at least it seems that way. Once again, I watched the show first which might've made this book go by a little faster. That said, there were enough differences between them. For starters, most of the book takes place on and above the planet Ilus or New Terra, depending upon who's talking. Any of the shows subplots that take place in the Sol system are absent here. There is also some rewriting of settlers. Belters and Outer Planets people (such as refugees from Ganymede) managed to get through the Ring and settled on an inhospitable planet that has a lot of lithium, which they are mining to sell to hire lawyers to stake their claim to "Ilus". They've already been there for a while when a UN/Mars backed
Read more