WordPress, Baby!

After several years of “wouldn’t it be cool if…”, I finally made the switch to WordPress!  I’ll be adding more content over the coming weeks.  Yay for learning new things!

My Current To-Read List

I have a list of stuff I’d like to read on my Goodreads list, but posting here makes a nice artifact for future reference, plus it’s a little easier to get a sense of priorities without all the noise.  There’s a bunch of stuff on my Goodreads list that I have little interest in reading at the moment, but I don’t want to remove it from my To Read list, if that makes any sense.  Oh well.  It makes sense to me, and that’s all that matters for these purposes. :D
Fiction:
  • Isabel Allende — Daughter of Fortune; House of Spirits
  • Peter S. Beagle — The Last Unicorn
  • Amber Benson — The Witches of Echo Park
  • Pierce Brown — Red Rising
  • Lois McMaster Bujold — The Curse of Chalion
  • Jim Butcher — Peace Talks (beta version, sorry. I doubt it’ll come out in 2015)
  • Octavia Butler — The Parable of the Sower; Wild Seed
  • M.R. Carey — The Girl With All The Gifts
  • Charles W. Chesnutt — The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
  • Harry Connolly — The Great Way trilogy; A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark
  • Samuel R. Delany — Dhalgren
  • Kate Elliot — Cold Magic
  • Laura Esquivel — Like Water for Chocolate
  • Jasper Fforde — The Woman Who Died a Lot, The Last Dragonslayer
  • Kate Griffin — A Madness of Angels
  • Nick Harkaway — Tigerman
  • Deborah Harkness — A Discovery of Witches
  • Russell Hoban — Riddley Walker
  • Nalo Hopkinson — Midnight Robber, Brown Girl in the Ring
  • N.K. Jemisin — The Kingdom of GodsThe Killing Moon, The Shadowed Sun, The Awakened Kingdom, and The Fifth Season (August)
  • Howard Andrew Jones — The Desert of Souls
  • Ken Liu — The Grace of Kings (April)
  • Scott Lynch — The Thorn of Emberlain (TBA)
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez — Love in the Time of Cholera
  • Seanan McGuire — Half-Off Ragnarok; A Red Rose Chain (August)
  • Walter Mosley — The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey; A Red Death
  • Nnedi Okorafor — Lagoon; The Shadow Speaker; Akata Witch; and Kabu Kabu
  • Mallory Ortberg — Texts from Jane Eyre
  • Tim Powers — Declare
  • J.K. Rowling — The next Robert Galbraith mystery
  • Salman Rushdie — The Satanic Verses; Midnight’s Children; and Haroun and the Sea of Stories
  • Brandon Sanderson — Shadows of Self; Steelheart; and Firefight
  • V.E. Schwab — A Darker Shade of Magic
  • Sherwood Smith — Inda
  • Neal Stephenson — Reamde
  • Sam Sykes — The City Stained Red
  • Catherynne Valente — The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Deathless, and Six-Gun Snow White
  • Jo Walton — The Just City
  • Chuck Wendig — The Cormorant (finally being released in audio format 1st Quarter!); The Hellsblood Bride (TBA); Atlanta Burns (January); Zer0es (August)
  • Jaye Wells — Dirty Magic
Anthologies:
  • Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
  • The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables, edited by Robin D. Laws
  • My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer
  • Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
  • Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology
  • Snow White, Blood Red, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow
  • Troll’s Eye View, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow
  • Women Destroy Science Fiction!, edited by Christie Yant
Nonfiction:
  • Karen Abbot — Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
  • Reza Aslan — No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
  • Tara Bennett — Showrunners
  • Ed Catmull — Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
  • Julie Sondra Decker — The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality
  • Jared Diamond — Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
  • Pamela Douglas — The Future of Television
  • Roxane Gay — Bad Feminist
  • Douglas Hofstadter — Godel Escher Bach
  • Walter Isaacson — The Innovators
  • Leslie Jamison — The Empathy Exams: Essays
  • Michio Kaku — The Future of Mankind
  • Rodger Kamenetz — The History of Last Night’s Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul
  • Sam Kean — The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons
  • Elizabeth Kolbert — The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
  • Mike Madrid — The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines
  • Randall Munroe — What If?
  • Jenny Nordberg — The Underground Girls of Kabul: n Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
  • Cory O’Brien — Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology
  • Michael Pollan — The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World
  • William Poundstone — Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google?
  • Frank Rose — The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories
  • Christian Rudder — Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)
  • David O. Selznick — Memo from David O. Selznick
  • Alan Sepinwall — The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever
  • Nate Silver — The Signal and the Noise
  • Rebecca Solnit — Men Explain Things To Me
  • Laurent Tinard — Moviemakers’ Master Class
  • Malala Yousafzai — I Am Malala
Pre-Priscilla Books:
  • Sanora Babb — Whose Names Are Unknown
  • Alice Guy-Blache — The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blache
  • Barry Hughart — Bridge of Birds
  • Daphne du Maurier — Rebecca
  • Oscar Wilde — The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Importance of Being Earnest
Comics and/or Graphic Novels:
  • Kate Beaton — Step Aside Pops (Sept 22), The Princess and the Pony (June 30)
  • Jim Butcher — Down Town
  • Kelly Sue DeConnick — More Captain Marvel, Bitch Planet
  • Grace Ellis and Noelle Stevenson — Lumberjanes
  • Phil and Kaja Foglio — Girl Genius
  • Matt Fraction — Hawkeye
  • Kieron Gillen — The Wicked + The Divine
  • Gail Simone — Red Sonja; Secret Six; Birds of Prey; Wonder Woman?
  • Craig Thompson — Habibi 
  • Brian K. Vaughan — Saga
  • Kurtis J. Weibe — Rat Queens
  • G. Willow Wilson — More Ms. Marvel
Short Stories:

  • Harry Connolly — Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy
  • Neil Gaiman — Trigger Warning collection
  • Intisar Khanani — The Bone Knife
  • Kelly Link — Get In Trouble (Feb 3rd)
  • Ken Liu — upcoming short story collection (TBA)
  • Seanan McGuire — whatever Toby Daye or InCryptid stuff I haven’t read yet
  • James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon — Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

Okay, internet.  What is falling off my radar?  

Books I Read in 2014

Previous Years:
2010
2011
2012
2013

When I created the list of books I read in 2013, I was horrified at the low number of books I read that featured female protagonists.  My goals for 2014 were:

  • Read more books, period.
  • Read more books by and starring women and people of color
  • Read more books written before my birth
  • Continue to read a diverse selection of nonfiction subjects
To that end, I succeeded where women and nonfiction were concerned, but I continue to fall hideously short where authors and protagonists of color are concerned.  Reversing that needs to be a primary goal of 2015.
The books I read were:

Urban Fantasy:

Ashes of Honor, Seanan McGuire
Chimes at Midnight, Seanan McGuire
Indexing, Seanan McGuire
Skin Game, Jim Butcher
Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire
The Winter Long, Seanan McGuire
Legion: Skin Deep, Brandon Sanderson
Fantasy:
Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal
Without a Summer, Mary Robinette Kowal
Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett
The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Patrick Rothfuss
Valour and Vanity, Mary Robinette Kowal
Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett
Cinder Spires #1: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher
The Stupidest Angel, Christopher Moore
Sci-Fi:
Parasite, Mira Grant
Lock In, John Scalzi
The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
Superheroes:
Ms. Marvel, vol 1: No Normal, G. Willow Wilson
Captain Marvel, vol 1: Higher Further Faster, Kelly Sue DeConnick
Mystery:
The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith
Non-Fiction:
(Anthologies)
If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?, Kurt Vonnegut
(Memoir/Humor)
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson
Yes Please, Amy Poehler
(Filmmaking & Writing)
Writing the TV Drama Series, Pamela Douglas
Difficult Men, Brett Martin
(Science)
The Pluto Files, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
The Violinist’s Thumb, Sam Kean
I also listened to the following Podcasts:
Serial*
No Such Thing As A Fish*
Children of Tendu*
Welcome to Night Vale*
On The Page with Pilar Alessandra
Writing Excuses
* In entirety
Data
Total Pages: 9717, compared to 8052 in 2013 and 8886 in 2012! 2011’s 19,376 can stop bragging. Like half of that was from rereading Sandman.
Format: 24 audiobooks, 1 print book (Writing the TV Drama Series), 1 ebook (Indexing), 2 graphic novels (Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel), 2 beta texts (The Slow Regard of Silent Things and The Aeronaut’s Windlass).
Total Authors: 21
Gender of Author: Parity! 15 by women and 15 by men! Yes, I read the first volume of Captain Marvel on New Year’s Eve to bring it into balance. And yes, I’m counting J.K. Rowling’s male pseudonym as a woman, because I wouldn’t have read the book if I hadn’t known she’d written it.
Race of Author: A whopping 29 books by white authors, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson as my lone author of color.  What the HELL, Priscilla. No, having white Muslim woman G. Willow Wilson among those 29 does not make this figure any less shameful.
Gender of Protagonists: 5 starring men, 14 starring women, and 4 with multiple protagonists of mixed gender (or in the case of Lock In, a protagonist of indeterminate gender–though I listened to the Amber Benson audio performance, which biased me towards female). HELL TO THE YES.  This nicely compensates for last year’s galling revelation that I read almost nothing with a female protagonist!
Race of Protagonists: Again a poor showing with 20 books with white protagonists, 2 with protagonists of color (Lock In and Ms. Marvel), with maybe-kinda The Stupidest Angel slipping in with Mixed Protagonists, as one of the viewpoint characters is Latina.

Publication Date: Almost half (14) were published in 2014 (or 2015 for The Aeronaut’s Windlass), and the same number (14) came out within the last ten years.  Only two came out pre-2005: Monstrous Regiment (2003) and The Stupidest Angel (2004).
And man, I’m just realizing I left Jim Butcher’s “Ghoul, Goblin” and “War Cry” off this list.  Whoops.  Comics and betaing make everything complicated.
Reflections
I’m frankly gobsmacked that despite my massive efforts to read as many female authors as possible, I ended the year at parity. Why am I not gravitating more toward the amazing women writing in fantasy?  I’m reminded of those studies where grade school teachers thought they were giving boys and girls equal speaking time, when they were really giving girls 1/6 of the speaking time, and when speaking time was actually equal, the boys complained the girls were doing all the talking.  
What do I need to do to make parity feel natural and effortless?  I need to look through recs of female authors and discover some new favorites, so they’ll take up more space on my “unquestioned auto-buy” list.  The auto-buys are where the guys are getting their edge.  They’re also dominating my nonfiction choices.
I also need to read more authors of color. Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist was high on my To Read list, but I didn’t get to it this year.  I utterly adore N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor–I really need to catch up on their recent work.  I’ve been meaning to pick up a Murakami book for years.  There are a couple Octavia Butler books I’m curious about, despite my wildly differing opinions on two of her books (adored Kindred and was thoroughly skeeved out by Fledgling).  
Other authors of color for me to keep in mind: Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende (really enjoyed her Zorro), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sherman Alexie, Samuel R. Delany, Malala Yousafzai, Nalo Hopkinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Malinda Lo, and Charles Chestnutt.
Who am I missing?
So yes!  Goals for 2015 are only slightly modified from previous years:

  • Read more books, period.  My 2014 Goodreads goal was 26, and my 2015 goal is 30. 
  • Read more books by and starring women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups
  • Read more books written before my birth
  • Continue to read a diverse selection of nonfiction subjects, but with more books by women
  • Read more screenplays
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