coprime

Every year when I look back, I get sad that I haven't read more books than I did and resolve to do better. This year, I made a really good push in the first half of the year and then discovered I could easily put AO3-hosted, book-length fanfic on my ereader. And that kind of killed my reading in the second half of the year, haha. Thirty-three books from January to June, eleven from July to December.

Oh well. Something to note for the upcoming year: make an effort to read those paper books you keep buying and ebooks you keep downloading.

* means I loved it, + means I liked it, = means I was neutral, - means I disliked it

( The List! )

My favorite was probably Zoe Archer's Blades of the Rose series. I devoured the entire series as soon as I got them. I haven't enjoyed a romance series that much in a while -- it had about everything I could ask for: interesting heroines and heroes, plot, magic, lots of action, fun sex, exotic locations. Even now, it makes wish for more in the series in any form I can get. The only complaint I had was that once each novel's couple started having sex, they had sex a lot, to the detriment of moving the plot along sometimes.

Worst was probably Craig Halloran's The Darkslayer, although someone who's not me might love it. It wasn't badly written, but it felt like someone decided their tabletop RPG was so cool it needed to be made into a novel. And I don't really care about someone else's D&D campaign.

Best new-to-me author was Pati Nagle. Both of her books I read this year were copies of books I won via LibraryThing, and I enjoyed both immensely. Coyote Ugly is a collection of short stories of hers that spans about ten different genres, though scifi/fantasy is the most common, and Pet Noir is a fleshed-out novella of one of the stories in Coyote Ugly about a genetically-altered cat who's on the police force of a space station.

Also of note, I finally finished the His Dark Materials trilogy, after reading The Subtle Knife four years ago.

Once again, it's time for me to inventory what I've read in the past year. And maybe I can convince myself to get out of the annual December reading slump while I'm at it.

* = loved it, + = liked it, o = neutral about it, - = didn't like it

( Novels )

Comments:
Between Joseph Hansen and Richard Stevenson, this year shaped up to be, in some ways, the year of the gay mysteries. Also a year with a lot of romance novels, ten as compared to last year's four. Coolest discovery was either WebMage, which I found by randomly picking it up at the bookstore, or The Woman Who Loved Reindeer, which I found in a used bookstore after having looked for the book for years. Favorite novel, however, was Fantasia Mathematica because it is an entire book book filled with math-related short stories and poems.

( Comics/Manga )

Comments:
I'm slowly making my way through Frank Miller's most famous works (with an open mind, mind you) so that I can say I've given him a fair shot when I say I don't like his stuff. My comics reading is branching out to be a lot more indie stuff rather than DC/Marvel, which is cool. Coolest discovery had to have been The Perhapanauts, followed closely by Mouseguard. Oddest book was easily The Last Christmas. Mushishi continues to be the most gorgeous manga I've seen.

I've kept a list of books I've read ever since 9th grade. It's actually pretty cool to look back and note trends in what I've been reading.

( 2005's books )

Huh. Exactly one hundred books written down. Though I know there are some I forgot to write down. Also, you can tell exactly when my roommate and I started visitng the comic shop regularly. I could have sworn I'd read more than 11 Rex Stout novels, and I sure keep reading a lot of series for someone who rarely feels like putting the effort in to reading a series.