Superlatives for the Books I Read this Year (2019 Edition)

It’s the end of another year, and it feels like every year disappears quicker than the last. So long 2010s. (And thank goodness.) I was hoping to finally hit my goal of reading 22 books in a year, but I ended up with exactly the same amount as last year: 20. Ah well. I’ll take that over reading fewer books.

Anyway, my annual “Book Superlatives” post is a fun way for me to recall the novels I read during the past twelve months. There were only two books I did not like at all, four I thought were okay, and the rest of them I enjoyed. Of course there were a few stand-outs in terms of greatness, which is why a superlative list like this exists! Here were a few of them:



Best Conclusion to a Series

BRIGHT WE BURN by Kiersten White

 
Believe it or not, but I read five novels this year that ended a trilogy or duology; I thought White’s story wrapped everything up the best. The beginning of this alternative history was a bit on the slow side, but it really picked up momentum as the novel progressed. I didn’t see the twist at the end of the “second act”, and I was surprised how all of the main characters got a relatively happy ending. I totally thought we’d witness the female protagonist’s demise instead of reading it during the epilogue. Overall I liked what White did with the series, and I can only imagine how much research she must have done to believably write this story in the time period that she did.





Best New Author to Me

WILDER GIRLS by Rory Power 

I know I raved about this book in a blog post not too long ago, but it definitely left its mark on me this year. Power wrote this post-apocalypse/thriller story with a literary slant, which I felt like it reflected the somber mood of the situation for the small cast of characters that were trapped together on this New England island. Everything turned to chaos at the end, and even though our three main characters made it out safely, the story still left me with more questions. I thoroughly enjoyed this debut from Power.




Best Stand-Alone Book

SATELLITE by Nick Lake 

I only read three books this year that would fall into this category (but one released a companion book earlier in the year). I half-contemplated nominating Power’s book again, but I didn’t feel like it was fair, so I chose my second favorite. 

With SATELLITE, I had to suspend my belief on certain circumstances. (i.e. I thought it was a little too convenient.) I was, however, surprised how much I appreciated Lake’s choice in writing style. I haven’t read anything else of Lake’s – so I don’t know if he typically writes like this – but the sci-fi book was written with zero capitalization. Also, every “and” was replaced with an “&.” My guess is that Lake was writing the story in a way that could seem different yet plausible for how humanity could one day construct sentences. Or maybe he was just trying to be more poetic. Either way, I will admit that it took me a little while to adjust. The rule-follower in me wanted to fix the syntax into the “proper” way, but I got over it the more I read.

But besides the writing, this novel explored the consequences of what could happen to a trio of children who were born and raised in space, and how their bodies adjust to Earth as they land for the first time. I never really gave it much thought about these what if concerns, and it made me appreciate the little ways on how humanity was built for life on our planet.


Most Impressive World-building

THE FATES DIVIDE by Veronica Roth 

This series of Roth’s is a bit anti-climactic compared to her previous works, but I can’t deny that she really stepped up her game when it came to her writing and world-building. There are multiple planets within this space opera, and I was amazed by all the intricacies Roth put into each world that the characters visited. They were all super creative, and I felt like she really took her time with understanding each setting. 

Runner-up: TWO DARK REIGNS by Kendare Blake 

Two of the four main characters found themselves in a new country when this novel opens up, and it juxtapositioned nicely against their previous home across the sea. Meanwhile, another character back on the island showed us readers a different side of their society. For a fantasy book that is the third in a series of four, I was surprised by how much of their world we had yet been able to explore.









Longest Book I Read

THUNDERHEAD by Neal Shusterman 

Clocking in at 504 pages, Shusterman’s dystopian was the lengthiest I read in 2019. I didn’t mind. It actually went by quickly. The next book in this trilogy, however, looks a little intimidating as it currently sits in my TBR pile. (It has a hundred more pages than THUNDERHEAD.) I’m still thinking about that cliffhanger…










Also, in case anyone was curious, I read a total of 7,771 pages this year. That’s 388.6 pages/book. Despite reading the same number of novels as last year, that’s only 56 pages more than 2018. So I guess I subconsciously remained consistent in 2019.

I’m hoping to finally get a chance to reach my goal of 22 books in 2020, but it’s always so difficult to set aside time to read during the last three months of the year. Right now, I have 25 books on my dresser that are eagerly waiting to be read. They like to mock me.

Here’s hoping that I’ll have a more successful year in 2020. (And decade.)

NaNoWriMo ’19 (aka: I’m Too Competitive Against Myself)

Has it really been over two weeks since I finished NaNoWriMo? I guess the days have flown by in a blur, trying to get ready for Christmas, since Thanksgiving occurred so late this year. On the bright side, having the holiday later than usual allowed me to focus more on writing.

And what an interesting NaNoWriMo it was this year. First off, the website underwent some heavy changes a couple months prior, but I hadn’t really logged in until October 30. I had to get myself acquainted with everything, and some features weren’t working the way it should have been. Unlike some users, I luckily didn’t have a problem with uploading my daily word count. I did, however, have some issues with the “recording of time.” I thought it was a cool feature – since I already time myself on how long it takes for me to write – but I felt like it was not showcasing the proper time periods on my stats. Good thing I still input this data into my own document. They also did away with the validation this year due to the program not working in their favor. It meant I didn’t have to spend time on November 30 copying and pasting my entire NaNo, but it also meant people could lie and say that they hit the 50k mark and earned their prizes without actually “winning.”

I wrote every day during the month of November. I had set out with the goal of writing at least 1700 words/day, but sometime around a third of the way in, I decided it was too easy. So I kicked it up to at least 1800 words/day. Not sure why I do this to myself, but it really shouldn’t surprise me anymore. (It’s definitely not the first time I’ve bumped my word count on writing projects, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the threshold be so high for a daily count.) I probably spent 5-6 days writing just after midnight so I didn’t have to write so much later in the day.

In the end, is it really surprising that I won for the sixth year in a row?

I won with a total of 55,443 words. Which meant I had beaten last year’s record by 2,382 words. I finished NaNo on Thanksgiving, so that was cool, but I still wrote during the last two days of November. My average daily word count was 1848.1 words. The average time was 1 hour, 40.2 mins. What’s interesting is that I also beat last year’s speed by 6 mins.

^Can you tell when I made the switch to 1800 words? 

I wrote 13 stories during the course of NaNoWriMo. My genres were all over the place. Maybe it was because the music I was listening to was all over the place as well? I wrote completely in third-person past-tense, so at least I was consistent in that?

The longest story that I worked on lasted me for 11 days. I had started it on a Saturday, and I needed to be somewhere that evening. I figured I wasn’t going to have much time to write once I eventually returned home, so I had to quickly come up with an idea to write a few hundred words. I leaned into my preferred genre and began writing something. Had no idea where it was going to go, but at least there was some sort of easy conflict set up in the beginning. And as I began to spend time with the characters and setting, I started to learn a bit about them and the story. Two short “chapters” in the beginning were basically exposition, but it helped with my world building. After all, I could always delete these paragraphs later if I ever wanted to polish it up. Halfway through the story, as I was rereading my work, I discovered that I was writing it in the direct and no-nonsense voice of the protagonist. I hadn’t planned on doing that – I was writing it in third-person, after all – but her personality had crept into the words. All I know is that I went very far with this idea I had spontaneously created simply because I had to complete my daily word count.

I only spent one day working on a story idea that I had previously thought of back in September. All the other stories were either derived from writing prompts or something I had made up on the spot. Not going to lie, there were a few days in November where I would stare at the clock as it ticked away toward midnight and I willed myself to think of some sort of plot idea because I had nothing. Those were always frustrating.

In the end, I’m quite proud of my new record. Of course, this also means I’ve only set the bar even higher for next year. But I’ll worry about that in October/November 2020.

As usual, here’s my annual grainy photo from my webcam with me and my lovely Winner’s Certificate.

P.S. I also managed to write a poem toward the end of November! Second one this year, so that’s probably it for me in 2019. I played around with the form, which I haven’t done with a poem in a while. It spontaneously came to me at 2 a.m., and I quickly wrote it down. The paper looks like complete chicken scratch, lol. Phrases were crossed out and replaced with better words, and I rearranged three stanzas. It definitely looks better typed out.