Superlatives for the Books I Read this Year

It appears that I’ve reached the end of another year already. Earlier today, I looked back at my yearly book log and was disappointed to discover how I only read 19 books. Nineteen! I understand that, to some people, it’s quite an accomplishment. But not to an avid book reader, like myself.

I’ve been recording all the books I’ve leisurely read since 2012 (I know, I’m weird) and it was so disheartening to see how I only got around to less than twenty books. Last year, I read 34 books. And the year before that were 49. In 2013, it was 39. In 2012, I was a reading machine with a total of 64 books (I had a few nice trips to the library that summer).

Despite my measly amount of books this year, it’s not like I wasn’t doing any kind of reading. I had two semesters of school, so I read: nine novels, three literary magazines, and countless of short stories and manuscript submissions.

But because I read so little for myself this year, I decided to have some fun with it and make some superlatives!

Head’s Up: Sorry there are a few spoilers when I’m talking about the books below. I couldn’t get around it. :/




Most Creative

TALES OF THE PECULIAR by Ransom Riggs

     I was blown away by how dedicated the creative team was at trying to make this look like an antique storybook. It had a felt cover with embedded gold lettering, a bookmark, pictures, and occasional footnotes in the voice of the “author” (a character from the Miss Peregrine series). I even loved the little touch of having the colophon related to the narrator’s world.

     Favorite two short stories from the collection: The Splendid Cannibals and The Girl Who Could Tame Nightmares.





Best Sequel

THE HUNT by Megan Shepherd

     The way the first book ended (their escape plan became ruined), I was really interested in how they were planning on escaping this time. Most of the main characters were thrown into a new environment, one of them dies at the end during their second escape, and they land on a new alien planet. Now I’m left wondering how Shepherd plans on finishing the trilogy with her last book.

Runner-ups for Best Sequel:

     THE ROSE SOCIETY by Marie Lu. I was deeply sadden when Enzo died in the first book, so I was fascinated on how he somewhat came back in its sequel. But most importantly, I loved how Adelina finally got to become queen by the end. You go, girl! (Even if she’s technically the villain.)

     THE RULE OF MIRRORS by Caragh M. O’Brian. Since Rosie’s (the main character) consciousness was split into two by the end of the first book, I loved how I was given alternating chapters of each part of her consciousness in the sequel. To be honest, as I was reading, I was more interested in Althea’s perspective than Rosie’s.



Best Stand-Alone

Strangely, I didn’t read many stand-alone novels this year. They were mainly parts of a duology or trilogy. I did read three short story collections, but I won’t count those.

 WHEN by Victoria Laurie earns this superlative. I read this book in two days because I was so intrigued by the plot. It’s kinda a sci-fi/fantasy (because the main character knows the exact date of when everyone dies based on the set of numbers on your forehead), but it was also a mystery (there’s a murderer out on the loose in the town!). And it earns brownie points because the main character’s best friend is a boy and neither of them have romantic feelings to one another. Yay for platonic friendships!








Longest Book

SIX OF CROWS by Leigh Bardugo

It clocked in at 462 pages. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a whole lot compared to other giant books. It’s just the largest book I read this year (the physical book in of itself is also large, but that’s beside the point). But the novel was so good and it was worth every word on its pages.





Best Books I Had to Read for School

What? You didn’t think that I’d actually include the books I was forced to read this year? Ha! I actually enjoyed a few of them, so I decided to share the title between two books:

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith. I loved the interconnectivity between the various characters. I also enjoyed the humor.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler. This dystopian world is right up my alley and I liked how it was written as if the main character was writing in her diary.








So there you have it! Hopefully I can read more than 19 books in the coming year. (The fact that my current tower of books stands at thirteen – thanks to my four new books from Christmas – might motivate me.)

NaNoWriMo '16 (aka: No Sleep For Me)

It has officially been ten days since NaNoWriMo ended. Guess how many words I wrote during the entire month of November?

The grand total was 51,891 words.

That’s right! Third time winner, right here!!

This was my second best year in terms of word count. My record was in 2014 with 52,119 words. And, yeah, I was only 228 words from surpassing that record, but whatever. I had finished writing a scene and didn’t want to start a new one. Plus, I didn’t want to write almost 2,000 words on that last day because then it would screw with my monthly average. Especially since I technically hit the 50k mark on the 29th.

But look at how pretty this bar graph is! (No one can say that I'm not a consistent writer.)

I ended up writing a total of six stories this year, which was the same as last year. I didn’t even plan that.

Looking back, Story 1 was a poorly written short story. It was so dialogue heavy (but the concept still interests me). But, hey, it was a good warm-up. When I started writing Story 3, I thought that it would carry me for a majority of the month. Turns out, I only spent five days writing it and then hit a brick wall with it. So I moved on.

On November 9, I had already written five stories (or the beginnings of stories) and I had no idea what to write. So in a fit of panic, I reached for the top book on my pile (see my October blog post for the book tower) and opened it to page 49. I took the first full sentence on that page and it became the very first line of my next story.

I was totally making things up on the spot, but somehow, by the end of the week, I was beginning to see the entire story arc. Eventually, I wrote two charts by hand to organize my ideas. It really didn’t surprise me that I worked on this story all the way up to the end of NaNo.

But guys, despite me winning, this year was tough for me to make time for writing. I had a workshop class, a literary magazine class, and an internship. I already had to do a ton of reading and writing, which is all time consuming. Writing for NaNoWriMo took sometime between 2-2.5 hours daily. During that first week, I think I regularly only got 3-4 hours of sleep because I was trying to cram everything that I needed to get done in a day. My new bedtime is now 4am (which, unfortunately, has stuck since the beginning of November). Luckily, I can sleep in. My whole sleep schedule is terrible, basically.

So when December 1st rolled around, I was relieved. Mainly because I could then concentrate on my final projects for school.

But at least I have something to show for my sleepless nights…

^I feel like I say this every year, but I'm sorry for how grainy the photo is. My webcam is the only thing that can take such a wide shot of myself without having to physically get someone to take a picture.



P.S. Also, as of December 8th, I am officially finished with school! And I don’t mean that I’m finished with the semester (which is true), but I’m done with my second degree. I won’t be attending the graduation ceremony (once was enough), but all I need now is for my actual degree to arrive in the mail.

And a job. I’ll be continuing my internship for another 3-4 months come January (which I’m excited to read more submissions), so I guess that’s something to hold me over in the meantime...