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[Cthulhu]

More books, I'm moving fast right now.

Finished Hyperion book 1 and came up with a good non-spoiler synopsis:  Every single person in the galaxy has this huge conspiratorial plan and the story is the clusterfuck that ensues when everyone puts their plans into action simultaneously and realizes everyone else had one too.

Finished Hyperion book 2 as well, I slammed this one back in one day.  I don't want to say it's better than book 1 but it had me reading compulsively all the way through.  This is the one where the above clusterfuck really kicks off. 

There are two more Hyperion books but I haven't started on them yet, taking a break to read another Dan Simmons book, Carrion Comfort.  This one's pretty weird but also engaging, a horror novel with pretty grand scope, something I usually don't like but it works well here.  Some small portion of humans are psychic vampires.  They're like a cross between vampires, cronenberg scanners, and conspiracy theory adrenochrome addicts.  They can connect to people and share their thoughts as well as physically control their bodies, and they feed on the emotional turmoil of their victims as they're forced to do horrible things, and as long as they do it regularly they don't age.  A small group of more casual vampires end up killing each other and the messy fallout threatens to expose a much bigger, deeper conspiracy.

[Yoink]

I was doing well for a while, but then Dracula took me ages to get through (mostly due to distraction, especially with the world and my social life finally starting to open up somewhat - the book itself actually made for a surprisingly gripping read, considering what I'd heard about it over the years) to the point that I ended up with Goodreads telling me to read a book a week at one point. I may have read a cheeky graphic novel to catch up a bit, heh.   
Now I'm re-reading 100 Years of Solitude, an old favourite I'd been wanting to read again for years, and I really need to knuckle down and get stuck into it. Might be time to turn the ol' smartphone off for a while, methinks.   

I'm at 31 of 36.   


Edit: oh, two things I forgot to mention.   
Firstly, I picked up a copy of Hyperion (along with many other amazingly cheap books) at a surprisingly well-stocked op shop in a little country town earlier in the year. I've been meaning to read that for some time, it looks fantastic.   

Secondly, "a book a week" wouldn't have been far-fetched for me as a kid, when I was a speed reader who split the bulk of his free time pretty evenly between reading and videogames, but now (although I can achieve some pretty decent read-rates on the odd occasion that I'm in the zone and focused) it seemer almost absurdly unlikely.   
Anyway, that's it, gonna turn my phone off and do some reading now.   

[Vector]

Update for the month of November.

"Winterfair Gifts", Lois McMaster Bujold
Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu
This is How you Lose the Time War
The Flowers of Vashnoi, Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Lois McMaster Bujold
A Burst of Light and other Essays, Audre Lorde
The Shadow of Kyoshi, FC Yee
The Samurai's Garden, Gail Tsukiyama

Spoiler: Goal (click to show/hide)

My goal for 2021:
- 12 books of either enjoyable fiction or educational non-fiction. If I read a book and I don't either learn much or enjoy it, it doesn't count. I want to push myself to open my horizons more instead of just mechanically reading through things.
- The Great Chinese Classics I haven't finished yet: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, the one based on Water Margin, The Scholars.
- 6 books in languages that aren't English. Manga counts as a third of a book.
- 4 math books, cover to cover, that aren't required for class.
- 4 books on education theory.
- 4 books on prison/carcerality.

Personal modification:
Finishing books I started in 2020 or earlier is OK.
I'll keep track of the other things I finish in a separate list.

Progress:

Spoiler: 12 Awesome Fiction/Nonfiction Books, PENDING/12 (click to show/hide)

-snip-

Spoiler: Great Chinese Classics, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Non-English Language, 0.66/6 (click to show/hide)

Girls' Last Tour vol. 3
Girls' Last Tour Vol. 4

Spoiler: Unrequired Math Books, 2/4 (click to show/hide)

The Shape of Space - Weeks
Functions and Graphs - Gelfand, Glagoleva, Schnol

Spoiler: Books on Education Theory, 4/4 (click to show/hide)

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom - Bettina Love
Grading for Equity: What it is, Why it Matters, and How it can Transform Schools and Classrooms - Feldman
Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation - Ebony Omotola McGee
The Psychology of Learning Mathematics - Skemp

Spoiler: All About Prison, 5/4 (click to show/hide)

Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis
Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms - Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law
American Prison - Shane Bauer
Halfway Home - Reuben Jonathan Miller
Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of our Time - James Kilgore

Spoiler: Other books, 71/0 (click to show/hide)

Dragon Republic - RF Kuang
The Burning God - RF Kuang
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir - Ellen Forney
Empire of Wild - Cherie Dimaline
Permutation City - Greg Egan
The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones
x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender - Eugenia Chang
The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho
Mediocre: the dangerous legacy of white male America - Ijeoma Oluo
"The Mountains of Mourning" - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Vor Game - Lois McMaster Bujold
Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X Kendi
The City We Became - NK Jemisin
Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard
Ping Pong Omnibus, Vol. 1 - Taiyo Matsumoto
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome - Joy DeGruy
In Defense of Looting - Vicky Osterweil
How to Hide an Empire - Daniel Immerwahr
Caste - Isabel Wilkerson
Lost Voices - Svetlana Alexievich
The Seventh Day - Yu Hua
The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
The Echo Wife - Sarah Gailey
Cetaganda - Lois McMaster Bujold
Magic for Liars - Sarah Gailey
How to kill a city - Peter Moskowitz
Tokyo Ueno Station - Yu Miri
Leviathan - Boris Akunin
Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee
An Indigenous People's History of the United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Hexarchate Stories - Yoon Ha Lee
Raven Strategem - Yoon Ha Lee
Ethan of Athos - Lois McMaster Bujold
Double Take - Kevin Michael Connolly
Revenant Gun - Yoon Ha Lee
The Rise of Kyoshi - FC Yee
Beartown - Fredrik Backman
The Factory - Hiroko Oyamada
Invincible, Ultimate collection vol. 1-8
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 1
"Borders of Infinity" - Lois McMaster Bujold
Brothers in Arms - Lois McMaster Bujold
Mirror Dance - Lois McMaster Bujold
Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold
Barrayar - Lois McMaster Bujold
Hunt, Gather, Parent - Michaeleen Doucleff
Bowling Alone - Robert Putnam
The Ghost Bride, Yangsze Choo
Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
Komarr, Lois McMaster Bujold
Goodbye, Battle Princess Peony, Mira Ong Chua
A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
"Winterfair Gifts", Lois McMaster Bujold
Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu
This is How you Lose the Time War
The Flowers of Vashnoi, Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Lois McMaster Bujold
A Burst of Light and other Essays, Audre Lorde
The Shadow of Kyoshi, FC Yee
The Samurai's Garden, Gail Tsukiyama

84 books read so far this year ...

So much was thrown off by my severe depression in the first part of the year that it's been hard to attempt the majority of my goals for 2021. I hope that next year can be more stable.

[Vector]

Month of December: *surprised pikachu face*

Yeah, I literally didn't finish a single book this month. I'm not even sure I cracked a book open. So the November post is where the year ends.

Choosing only the books from the unlisted category, here are the best that I read this year:

Permutation City - Greg Egan
In Defense of Looting - Vicky Osterweil
How to Hide an Empire - Daniel Immerwahr
The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
The Seventh Day - Yu Hua
Caste - Isabel Wilkerson
Hexarchate Trilogy - Yoon Ha Lee

A number of the other books were pretty good, but these seven were definitely the best. I learned a lot from this year's efforts.

1. Most importantly, I developed a much better sense of my own taste and how it differs from the standard books that tend to be recommended in certain venues. I am becoming more skilled at determining whether a book is going to contribute substantially to my knowledge or not.

2. I am reading a much more diverse list of authors than I was say, two years ago. I was surprised that, selecting solely on quality and with the intention of selecting up to twelve authors, my top seven authors for this year included two trans people, three women, and three authors of a different racial background than me.

2.' This was very much helped by actively pushing myself to listen to people whose points sounded disagreeable, and joining yearly reading challenges focusing on breadth over on Habitica.

3. One of my goals for the next year needs to be getting my hoard of owned or to-be-read books under control. I signed up for Storygraph at some point and might try to import my paper list over there.

[Yoink]

Oh right, I finished my goal just in time, on the 28th! I could have hit 36 books a lot sooner if I wasn't so easily distracted, but alas.   
Might aim for 40 this time. We'll see.   

[Vector]

OK! Come post in the 2022 thread!