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2009 - The Reading Stats

After freaking out that some really good books sales this year had gotten my tbr pile to never before seen proportions - I like to have enough stashed so that if I had to get through the next few weeks, or even months without hitting a bookstore I could, but what with people releasing new books on a near daily basis, I try not to have, say a year's worth of reading - it turns out while it is still higher than I normally like, it is less than a year's worth. Phew. I know you were worried.
In 2009, I read 127 books. A smidge more than last year, but still not as high as 2007.
Highest reading month was December with 19. Lowest was March with 4. (So, basically, year to year there seems to be no clear trend for high and low reading.)
I read 82 different authors (which matches 2007).
The author I read the most was Nora Roberts (if we include her J.D. Robb self, which I did) at 6.
66 were part of a series.
118 were released this year, making me a new release junkie.
E-books took a much higher percentage this year with 93 being e-books.
Well, now, back to reading...or knitting...

Dear TV Folk

Since I will be "Glee"-less for the next few months (it returns in the spring), I appreciate that "Better Off Ted" is back and "Project Runway", "Burn Notice" and "Chuck" are coming back. That should help. Especially, since Mr. Sepinwall said "Chuck" season 3 is both "fun and awesome".

My NPR Name is...

Taral Benbecula.
This made the top 30 posts for 2009 over on Monkey See.
I still think that "Geeks, Genre, and Why Fantasy Football is just D&D Without Elves" was pretty freaking awesome too. (I recognize awesome and most viewed and most commented are not necessarily overlapping things.)
ETA: link

The Aughts

I feel the need to mention that the Guardian is referring to the decade as the noughties, which makes me giggle quite a bit. I've been using aughts in those rare situations where one feels the need to reference a decade, but apparently there is confirmation that nameless things can exist on.
Also, I used numbers to make it pretty, there is no meaning to the numbers.
1. I joined Facebook. Lots of people did this, I held out for a while, having already seen some social networking sites come and go. I caved and am mostly happier for it even if it has taught me that some of my friends have a different idea of info to post on the web than I do.
2. I began blogging. My sister had suggested this way back in the day, amused by my commentary when I sent her my football picks for the week. (She was getting pummeled in the work pool and decide expert assistance was needed.)
3. I started knitting again. Heh.
4. I joined Ravelry. Ravelry was actually one of the reasons I resisted Facebook since it was already sucking up so much of my time, I hesitated to add something else to the list. The list of things that ravelry has done for me are too great to attempt to squeeze in here.
5. I discovered NaNoWriMo which got me the manuscripts I'm fiddling with and got me to go join RWA and really start working on this writing stuff instead of writing little snippets of things that should go into something someday.
6. I went to two author/reader/writer events and both were amazing and I got my current critique buddies out of cherry con. I also joined the cherries list and discovered the Will Write for Wine Podcasts (which I am behind on again).
7. I bought an Ipod. (Well, two, but really, let's move on from that.) And started reading ebooks and understanding why people might wish to cart around that much music at once and maybe buy a single song instead of a whole album.
8. I entered the DVR generation. This is not much a surprise considering previously I had multiple VCRs set up on a splitter so that I could deal with the inevitable logjam that occurs at least one a week. But the ability to pause and rewind live TV that I had not previously considered worthy of recording is so amazing that it annoys me when I go places where I can't do that. And the ability to stream movies magically there is really making my couch a cool place to hang.
9. I accepted the "need" for cable. My parents did not have cable growing up, we didn't have it in college, so it wasn't until the late nineties where I had roommates who it. I was still pretty much of the it's fun to have but not necessary until two things happened. "Project Runway" and "The Daily Show". Admittedly, "The Daily Show" well precedes the aughts, but I was introduced to it and eventually sucked in in the aughts.
10. I joined my church (which is now a congregation but it was a church when I joined it). And then I got asked to help with the youth group after someone bailed mid-year. And I ended up on a district wide committee and many many cool things happened. Most of which I can't tell you about. But they were cool.
11. I became a telecommuter (which I still have mixed feelings about) and also gave up my car which was related to both that and to...
12. Moving back to DC. (Technically, I did this twice in the aughts.) My intention had always been to make that happen but both times it worked out unexpectedly. I think I'm stuck in the city limits (happily) for a while this time.
Here's hoping the te(e)ns are as interesting.