2022 Reading Tally

I have been nerding out over my own reading data for a while, here's last year: http://www.talkapedia.com/2022/01/2021-reading-tally.html

In 2022, I kinda blew the prior years to smithereens.  Also, huge hat tip to Storygraph which tracks so many of the things I used to track through tags and tallies.  

I also read a lot of short and shorter fiction, which helped. 

Read 304. I know. 118 were under 300 pages, a combo of shorter novels, novelettes, novellas, and graphic novels. 
I DNF'd 15. 

Top category - Romance 138
Contemporary was next at 110.

Most read author was Martha Wells, then a four way split between Jessie Mihalik, Lauren Dane, and C. L. Polk.  (Amusingly only one of those authors writes contemporary.  

March and April were the highest read  months with 36.
I read 197 different authors
125 new to me authors.  I wanted to note, while I like to read new to me authors, new to me does not mean new per se. Also, when you read a lot, you need lots of authors to turn to, because some of my faves only released one thing last year. (Which hey, not a complaint, just an observation.)
88 of these were part of a series.
39 were audio. A combination of pandemic plus day job meant I had to rethink how to get audio working for me. But yay, it's a great way to consume stories. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This piece on the rise of therapists on social media doesn't really have an answer, but I think it's useful to think about.

2. This piece looks at how the Oscars are part of a larger ecosystem that is failing to recognize Black women. 

3. This photographer who documented much of Hawai'i during the so-called Hawaiian renaissance is trying to figure out the best plan for his archive. 

RIP to Lorelie Brown

Lorelie Brown was one of those people who I knew about before we met. We had writer and reader friends in common. I had read her books. I had read books she co-wrote under the name Katie Porter. 

During the pandemic we were in a group that met to talk about books and the world and also craft. She talked about gorgeous yarn she was knitting with, books, school, and other things. It to me felt like the best kind of thing. Where you meet someone you've tangentially known for a while and they are just as interesting as you had hoped. 

Cancer is a big giant jerk. And it deserves very little time in Lorelie's story. She has left behind many loved ones, many people who were lucky to know her, and read her words. 

The Movie Theater Era

I haven't been to a movie theater since the pandemic started. This is neither a brag nor a lament. I was someone who used going to a movie as an excuse to be out of the house for so many hours as a teen, who had a regular weekly meetup with friends in and after college where we figured we'd see something, TBD. But it is an interesting look back. One of the first movie theaters I remember going to as a child was in a shopping center that also had a small carousel. That shopping center and theater are long gone. The theater I could walk to (a bit, it was like a mile, but I could) growing up, was 2 screens and was later replaced by a larger multi-screen before the mall it was in shut down. 

One theater near me was bought by a larger chain, then closed, then "saved" by locals but only after a complete rebuild.

The theaters I went to as a teen who was allowed to metro a little farther have all been some combination of closed, redone, replaced. 

Even ones like the one in City Place or Gallery Place that seemed newer have closed, rebuilt, closed. 

And I could cry about things changing, but if course, my home TV is approximately six times larger than one of the TV's I used to have. At home I can enable close captioning, listen to movies on my headphones, and gather all my preferred snacks. The moviegoing experience has changed, and the pandemic is just part of that. 

I expect, like many industries, it will reinvent itself. I loved doing the summer screens with food trucks and music. Some of them even had inflatable seating you could borrow. There are ways to lure me out of my living space, but for me at least, it has to be more than just seeing a movie. 

Of course, I say this, and my friend sent me pictures of some of the outfits at an opening weekend near her, and it was amazing. So maybe that's it. That might be why the movies that encourage cosplay are doing well in theaters, and some of the others are thriving (I hope) in streaming.  

Three Interesting Things

1. I confess I am no longer a regular reader of advice columns, but was directed to this lovely column on Autostraddle where someone who needed advice fixing the harm they had caused their girlfriend in regards to her weight gain, and the answer was a wonderful exploration of expectations in loving relationships.  

2. Becca Syme - who I know I point to a lot, because her advice works very well for me - interviewed with Joanna Penn about intuitive writers, and how sometimes the ways you know a thing may be less clear at first, but that isn't always less data driven.  

3. I really enjoyed Xochitl Gonzalez's book about two siblings reckoning with their changing New York neighborhood, so this column about gentrification and silence was food for thought.