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You know, I'm too old, and too much of a Christmas-fanatic, to care TOO much about what I do or don't receive for Christmas. Christmas is all about giving, not getting! And other such cheerful things that I honestly do genuinely mean most of the time. But I admit that this year I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed because I didn't get any books. I lie. I got a world atlas, which I've lacked and wanted for a long time, so that was awesome. So I got one book. But I was disappointed I didn't get more books off of my wishlist, which at first sounds funny, because I have NOT BEEN GETTING THINGS READ this year. It's been a bad year for reading, as I've said many times. But I may be looking at that wrong. Here are the books on my wish list that I did NOT GET for Christmas and wished I had gotten:
Show Me a Story: Why Picture Books Matter: Conversations with 21 of the World's Most Celebrated Illustrators, by Leonard S. Marcus
Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices, by Leonard S. Marcus
Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal, by Karen Falk
Fearless Creating: A Step-by-Step Guide To Starting and Completing Your Work of Art, by Eric Maisel
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, by Michael Davis
And maybe somebody could have gone out on a limb and splurge-bought me The Hobbit movie Visual Companion Guide, with forward written by (and lots of pretty pictures of) my Imaginary Husband, even if it wasn't on my list, because certainly I wouldn't have MINDED.
What do all these books have in common? Right. They're all nonfiction. Adult nonfiction. About creative types.
Which brings us to the yearly Books of the Year post. I thought LAST year's reading was bad. According to Goodreads, if I've been keeping proper track (which I think I have), I've only read (or at least finished) 15 novels all year (many of them quite short). But I think I understand what happened. I've gotten burnt out on book REVIEWS. I read so many Professional Resources trying to keep up with all the new releases for work that my to-read list just got TOO LONG, and I gave up. How could I DECIDE what to read next? I did fit a few novels in-- 15, obviously-- but other times I just didn't want to bother.
But when I wanted to read? It was nonfiction, nonfiction on a topic I wanted to learn about. Okay, in one instance it was a humorous memoir with no learning involved, but MOST of the time, we're talking not so much story and much more INFORMATIVE. I've never been good at keeping track of the nonfiction books I read. Maybe it's because so many nonfiction books are BROWSED more than read. For example, I had the Fearless Creating book listed above out on InterLibrary Loan this fall, but I wouldn't say I READ it. I read SEVERAL CHAPTERS and scanned the rest, and knew it would do me more good to own it in the long term than to try to cram all the information into my head-- and do all the accompanying exercises-- in a few weeks. There are parenting books and cookbooks and other sorts of do-it-yourself books that are meant to be referenced in bits and pieces, anyway. There isn't a sense of COMPLETION as you would have with a novel, so they're not as convenient for LISTING.
But the books that most stood out for me this year WERE nonfiction, so I'm going to highlight a few of them, first off:
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones. Folks, if you haven't heard me go on about Diana Wynne Jones, read this post, and then read all the other posts I link to in that. This is a collection of essays she gathered together while going through her papers while she was dying, which she thought ought to go out into the world because they might be useful to somebody. I had to keep stopping, while reading, to let out the emotion that kept building up; I'd finish every reading session gushing into my journal about how utterly brilliant DWJ was and how I want to cry and don't know why I guess it's because she's gone but there was SOMETHING GENUINELY MAGICAL about her, and I'd suddenly feel surrounded by links to alternate universes and bizarre connections in our own universe, and it's all just the most WONDERFUL AMAZING THING EVER. Anyway.
The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson. Right, not to get all woo-woo-y on you, but I got really excited about my Enneagram personality test results, and had to read more. Not all that people have written on the subject is useful (and the forums of the website the test is on-- they're just plain terrible, let alone not useful), but this book hit home. It focuses on spiritual and personal growth, but it does so in a way that most other such inspirational/self-help books can't-- by tailoring the advice toward each sort of personality, so the advice is applicable to you! Nothing "easy for you to say." Nothing one-size-fits-all. Nothing that focuses on OTHER people's problems so that you nod and say "Oh yeah, OTHER PEOPLE should do that more" instead of concentrating on your own problems. It is if these are your tendencies, then what you need to do with your life would be something like THIS. And it's good to know. This book was what made me realize I needed to start taking yoga again. This book gave me the sort of affirmations that have allowed me to proclaim things like "No, I'm actually RIGHT," and "I sometimes actually DO have something to say." I've grown a LOT stronger this year, and this book was a big help.
Speaking of inspirations,
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), Jenny Lawson. I already wrote a good bit about this about 2/3 of the way down this post, so I'm not going to write it all over again here. But Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson is still one of my favorite people on Earth. Or at least the Internet. So yay.
Of those 15 fiction books I read this year, these are probably my top five, in alphabetical order by author:
Carson, Rae. The Girl of Fire and Thorns
Cooper, Michelle. The FitzOsbornes at War
Jones, Diana Wynne. The Dark Lord of Derkholm
Okorafor, Nnedi. Akata Witch
Stroud, Jonathan. The Amulet of Samarkand
Don't feel like blurbing. I wrote about a couple of them in the last linked post.
I think that's all I've got. Is that all I've got this year? That might be all I've got.
Show Me a Story: Why Picture Books Matter: Conversations with 21 of the World's Most Celebrated Illustrators, by Leonard S. Marcus
Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices, by Leonard S. Marcus
Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal, by Karen Falk
Fearless Creating: A Step-by-Step Guide To Starting and Completing Your Work of Art, by Eric Maisel
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, by Michael Davis
And maybe somebody could have gone out on a limb and splurge-bought me The Hobbit movie Visual Companion Guide, with forward written by (and lots of pretty pictures of) my Imaginary Husband, even if it wasn't on my list, because certainly I wouldn't have MINDED.
What do all these books have in common? Right. They're all nonfiction. Adult nonfiction. About creative types.
Which brings us to the yearly Books of the Year post. I thought LAST year's reading was bad. According to Goodreads, if I've been keeping proper track (which I think I have), I've only read (or at least finished) 15 novels all year (many of them quite short). But I think I understand what happened. I've gotten burnt out on book REVIEWS. I read so many Professional Resources trying to keep up with all the new releases for work that my to-read list just got TOO LONG, and I gave up. How could I DECIDE what to read next? I did fit a few novels in-- 15, obviously-- but other times I just didn't want to bother.
But when I wanted to read? It was nonfiction, nonfiction on a topic I wanted to learn about. Okay, in one instance it was a humorous memoir with no learning involved, but MOST of the time, we're talking not so much story and much more INFORMATIVE. I've never been good at keeping track of the nonfiction books I read. Maybe it's because so many nonfiction books are BROWSED more than read. For example, I had the Fearless Creating book listed above out on InterLibrary Loan this fall, but I wouldn't say I READ it. I read SEVERAL CHAPTERS and scanned the rest, and knew it would do me more good to own it in the long term than to try to cram all the information into my head-- and do all the accompanying exercises-- in a few weeks. There are parenting books and cookbooks and other sorts of do-it-yourself books that are meant to be referenced in bits and pieces, anyway. There isn't a sense of COMPLETION as you would have with a novel, so they're not as convenient for LISTING.
But the books that most stood out for me this year WERE nonfiction, so I'm going to highlight a few of them, first off:
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones. Folks, if you haven't heard me go on about Diana Wynne Jones, read this post, and then read all the other posts I link to in that. This is a collection of essays she gathered together while going through her papers while she was dying, which she thought ought to go out into the world because they might be useful to somebody. I had to keep stopping, while reading, to let out the emotion that kept building up; I'd finish every reading session gushing into my journal about how utterly brilliant DWJ was and how I want to cry and don't know why I guess it's because she's gone but there was SOMETHING GENUINELY MAGICAL about her, and I'd suddenly feel surrounded by links to alternate universes and bizarre connections in our own universe, and it's all just the most WONDERFUL AMAZING THING EVER. Anyway.
The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson. Right, not to get all woo-woo-y on you, but I got really excited about my Enneagram personality test results, and had to read more. Not all that people have written on the subject is useful (and the forums of the website the test is on-- they're just plain terrible, let alone not useful), but this book hit home. It focuses on spiritual and personal growth, but it does so in a way that most other such inspirational/self-help books can't-- by tailoring the advice toward each sort of personality, so the advice is applicable to you! Nothing "easy for you to say." Nothing one-size-fits-all. Nothing that focuses on OTHER people's problems so that you nod and say "Oh yeah, OTHER PEOPLE should do that more" instead of concentrating on your own problems. It is if these are your tendencies, then what you need to do with your life would be something like THIS. And it's good to know. This book was what made me realize I needed to start taking yoga again. This book gave me the sort of affirmations that have allowed me to proclaim things like "No, I'm actually RIGHT," and "I sometimes actually DO have something to say." I've grown a LOT stronger this year, and this book was a big help.
Speaking of inspirations,
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), Jenny Lawson. I already wrote a good bit about this about 2/3 of the way down this post, so I'm not going to write it all over again here. But Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson is still one of my favorite people on Earth. Or at least the Internet. So yay.
Of those 15 fiction books I read this year, these are probably my top five, in alphabetical order by author:
Carson, Rae. The Girl of Fire and Thorns
Cooper, Michelle. The FitzOsbornes at War
Jones, Diana Wynne. The Dark Lord of Derkholm
Okorafor, Nnedi. Akata Witch
Stroud, Jonathan. The Amulet of Samarkand
Don't feel like blurbing. I wrote about a couple of them in the last linked post.
I think that's all I've got. Is that all I've got this year? That might be all I've got.
