Tag: 2022 Retrospective

March 2022 in Retrospect: What I Read/Listened to/Wrote About

By

On April 1, 2022

In Books, Calendar Items, Currently Reading, News/Misc.

I was fairly surprised by my counts this month—22 books completed or 7235+ pages (or the equivalent)—it felt like I read more than that. But those are decent numbers, especially when you figure in the average rating of 3.68 Stars. I had a lot of fun with the books I read/listened to this month, and that’s the aim, right? (as easy it is to be distracted by numbers)

I was also surprised by what I’d actually written, especially after being gone for 5 days and then feeling like I had to catch up after that, when I put together that part of this post I expected it to be a pretty anemic list.

All in all…it’s been a good month, as you can see here:
Books/Novels/Novellas Read/Listened to

Troubled Blood One for All Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes
3.5 Stars 4 Stars 3.5 Stars
Madam Tulip and the Rainbow’s End Lives Laid Away Demon Magic and a Martini
4 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars
The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True Recovering Our Sanity Spelunking Through Hell
4 Stars 4 Stars 4 Stars
Hard Reboot Drown Her Sorrows False Value
3 Stars 3 Stars 5 Stars
Death in the Sunshine Glorification: An Introduction Pay Dirt Road
3.5 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars
Double Take The Two Towers Halo: The Fall of Reach
4 1/2 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars
DoubleBlind Murder Under Her Skin Free Billy
3 Stars 3 Stars 5 Stars
20/20
3 Stars

Still Reading

The Story Retold Faith & Life Duckett & Dyer: Dicks For Hire

Ratings

5 Stars 2 2 1/2 Stars 0
4 1/2 Stars 1 2 Stars 0
4 Stars 8 1 1/2 Stars 0
3.5 Stars 3 1 Star 0
3 Stars 8
Average = 3.68

TBR Stacks/Piles/Heaps

Audio E-book Physical Goodreads
Want-to-Read
End of
2021		 9 45 42 144
1st of the
Month		 6 47 41 144
Added 5 3 6 3
Read/
Listened		 4 3 4 2
Current Total 7 47 43 145

Breakdowns:
“Traditionally” Published: 18
Self-/Independent Published: 5

Genre This Month Year to Date
Children’s 0 (0%) 1 (2%)
Fantasy 2 (9%) 9 (15%)
General Fiction/ Literature 1 (5%) 3 (5%)
Mystery/ Suspense/ Thriller 11 (50%) !!! 28 (45%)
Non-Fiction 1 (5%) 5 (8%)
Science Fiction 2 (9%) 4 (6%)
Theology/ Christian Living 2 (9%) 9 (15%)
Urban Fantasy 3 (14%) 8 (13%)
“Other” (Horror/ Humor/ Steampunk/ Western) 0 (0%) 1 (2%)

Review-ish Things Posted

Other Things I Wrote
Other than the Saturday Miscellanies (5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th), I also wrote:

Enough about me—how Was Your Month?

Highlights from February: Lines Worth Repeating

By

On March 3, 2022

In Books, Currently Reading, News/Misc., Quotations

Highlights from the Month
Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be).

Ban This Book

Ban This Book by Alan Gratz

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can’t make you into a bad person

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

If there’s a killer coming after you with a knife, embarrassment doesn’t even register.

If you have ever tried to stay afloat on a pair of magic bread slices, then you’ll know what it was like.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cookie look smug.

The Blood Tide

The Blood Tide by Neil Lancaster

The other two much younger investigators were self-importantly wandering around the bridge, trying to give the impression that they knew what they were doing.

You’re job pissed, you are.’

‘I prefer the term dedicated.’

The Goodbye Coast

The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide

If the price of keeping your job was shooting someone, maybe think about going to college.

Ren noted the shotgun. It was in its usual place, leaning against the wall between a rake and the long pruning shears.

“Quite a selection of gardening tools,” she observed.

“I grow ammo,” Marlowe replied. “The .357s are doing nicely. The 45s wont bloom until next year.” Ren didn’t laugh and she didn’t smile. He covered with a question…

“DeSallis is a tax accountant. He was mine for years but I let him go. He walks a little tog close to the line, but he could recite the IRS regulations and ski a the same time. DeSallis could find a deduction if it was hidden in my neighbor’s duck pond.”

The Sunshine was the worst motel in Hollywood and Hollywood had a lot of terrible motels. It was like a dying sewer rat amid a crowd of healthy sewer rats.

All at Sea

All at Sea by Chris McDonald

…no argument with a woman of a certain age about money gets won, especially if that woman is Northern Irish—the sweetest old lady in the land can turn into Deborah Meaden at the mention of cash.

It made Adam think of the Titanic, which was not a comforting notion at all.

When they’d been growing up, they’d both been unlucky in love: unlucky in the sense that the opposite sex had generally considered them invisible.

A short, round man with weathered skin and a beautiful combover appeared from the back and greeted them warmly in English.

‘Is it that obvious?’ Adam laughed.

‘Yes, my friend. You look like human milk bottle. Now, how may I help today?’

Dead Man in a Ditch

Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold

(I really wanted to take the time to transcribe a bunch of the lines from this, but if I stopped to note every good line here I wouldn’t have finished listening to it)

Good gamblers can separate math and emotion. Bad gamblers look for ways to make them align.

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

“And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don’t want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!”

“Good Heavens!” said Pippin. “At breakfast?”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

February 2022 in Retrospect: What I Read/Listened to/Wrote About

By

On March 1, 2022

In Books, Calendar Items, Currently Reading, News/Misc.

22 Books completed last month, 5,670 pages (or the equivalent) 3.6 stars. That’s only 1 book less than last month—between the shortness of the month and the doorstop that I’m reading right now, that is really surprising to me. I’ll take that. Also 3.6 stars? That’s good enough for me.

Tracking the number on my Goodreads Want to Read list is messing with my head, this makes 2 months in a row of adding as many as I read? Humbug. At least it isn’t growing, I guess.

Basically, February was an okay month here (obviously not the case in the world as a whole). Here’s what happened here:

Books/Novels/Novellas Read/Listened to

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law Revenge of the Beast Ban This Book
3 Stars 3.5 Stars 3.5 Stars
Mike Nero and the Superhero School A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking Go Back to Where You Came From
3.5 Stars 3.5 Stars 4 Stars
The Lost Discipline of Conversation Under Color of Law The Blood Tide
2 1/2 Stars 4 Stars 4 Stars
Shattered Bonds Jumping Sharks and Dropping Mics The Imputation of Adam's Sin
4 1/2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars
Why bother with church? Dead Man in a Ditch The Goodbye Coast
3 Stars 3.5 Stars 4 Stars
All At Sea Light Years from Home How Not to Be an *SS
4 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars
Man Down The Fellowship of the Ring Quest
4 Stars 5 Stars 3 Stars
Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead
3 Stars

Still Reading

The Story Retold Faith & Life Troubled Blood

Ratings

5 Stars 1 2 1/2 Stars 1
4 1/2 Stars 1 2 Stars
4 Stars 8 1 1/2 Stars
3.5 Stars 5 1 Star
3 Stars 6
Average = 3.6

TBR Stacks/Piles/Heaps

Audio E-book Physical Goodreads
Want-to-Read
End of
2021		 9 45 42 144
1st of the
Month		 6 46 42 144
Added 3 4 0 3
Read/
Listened		 3 3 1 3
Current Total 6 47 41 144

Breakdowns:
“Traditionally” Published: 13
Self-/Independent Published: 9

Genre This Month Year to Date
Children’s 1 (4%) 1 (3%)
Fantasy 5 (22%) 7 (18%)
General Fiction/ Literature 1 (4%) 2 (5%)
Mystery/ Suspense/ Thriller 6 (26%) 17 (43%)
Non-Fiction 3 (13%) 4 (10%)
Science Fiction 1 (4%) 2 (5%)
Theology/ Christian Living 4 (17%) 7 (18%)
Urban Fantasy 1 (4%) 5 (13%)
“Other” (Horror/ Humor/ Steampunk/ Western) 0 (0%) 1 (3%)

Review-ish Things Posted

Other Things I Wrote
Other than the Saturday Miscellanies (5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th), I also wrote:

Enough about me—how Was Your Month?

Highlights from January: Lines Worth Repeating

By

On February 2, 2022

In Currently Reading, News/Misc., Quotations

Highlights from the Month
Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I probably will skip audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be).

Apparently, the theme for January is: Coffee.

Family Business

Family Business by S. J. Rozan

I’d have snorted, but that’s my mother’s signature response, and I’m trying to avoid it.

“I’ve spent the afternoon online trying to look under Jackson Ting’s rocks, and I can’t even find his rocks.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“You’re the more experienced investigator in this partnership, and I’m always trying to learn from you.”

Not that Chinatown doesn’t still have corruption, self-dealing, and general evil. But now it’s more like everywhere else.”

“Meaning?”

“Small-time crime’s still all over the place—illegal gambling, people getting mugged, merchants cheating customers—but the big-ticket stuff has gotten more… abstract. Cerebral. White collar. And more integrated with the rest of the city. Your corruption is now our corruption.”

“The melting pot, a beautiful thing.”

“Ah. Now there you might be onto something.”

“I’m not just a pretty face, you know. In fact I’m not any kind of a pretty face.”

“Fishing for compliments never works.”

“It does when you do it.”

“Because I deserve them.”

Bloodlines

Bloodlines by Peter Hartog

EVI [Engineered Virtual Intellect] controlled everything, right down to the lunch menu. To some, it was scary, but the machines hadn’t taken over just yet.

I had no idea what they were waiting for.

I live by a few simple rules, one of which is when someone offers you coffee, you say yes. Unless that someone is trying to kill you, in which case you accept the coffee under advisement.

Adding caffeine to my frayed nerves was probably not one of my brightest ideas. I had a penchant for collecting bad habits and decided not to turn a new leaf just then.

“What do you know of genetic resequencing and engineering?” Besim asked.

“About as much as the next guy,” I replied. “Meaning, nothing.”

Where the Drowned Girls Go

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

“Heroism is addictive. Mybe that’s why it sounds so much like ‘heroin.'”

Nice Dragons Finish Las

Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron

“We bend the rules of the universe on a daily basis. Presumptuousness is the base line for entry.”

He should be focusing on how to appease his own family so he could remain alive and uneaten, not worrying about his conscience. Real dragons didn’t have consciences, anyway. His certainly hadn’t done him any good.

Beside him, Svena was observing the back and forth with the sort of bored impatience of a sports caster watching a veteran boxer taking on a volunteer from the audience.

The Hobbit

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkein

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Bye Bye Baby

Robert B. Parker’s Bye Bye Baby by Ace Atkins

The coffee tasted as if it had been made fresh in the last week or two. But I drank it anyway.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction by Mick Herron

Some days, it would be better if you’d stayed in bed.

No, there was a level deeper than that—some days it would be better if, the night before, you’d reached some previously unattainable plateau of drunkenness; a level at which you didn’t simply sleep through the following day, but it didn’t technically exist—it was a hole in your calendar, forever out of reach.

Even now, with rush hour fading, people piled past like lemmings. Which, she’d lately read, weren’t the suicidal types legend painted; the abrupt declines in their population less to do with mass clifftop dives than with hungry predators—arctic foxes, owls and the like. Which was more realistic, but disappointing too. Suicide had been the one thing everyone knew about lemmings. Now it turned out they didn’t even have that going for them. If they weren’t depressed before, that should do it.

How to Save a Superhero

How to Save a Superhero by Ruth Freeman

“You’ve had lots of adventures for someone your age,” said Ms. Swift quietly, “maybe not all bad, but not all good either. You know, I think that’s why I came to love books so much. When I was young, I wasn’t very happy. My parents were older and very strict. They didn’t have much time for me, but I found I could always go somewhere else, somewhere wonderful, between the covers of a book. And one of my very favorite places was the world of the river in this book [The Wind in the Willows].”

The Jackals

The Jackals by Adam Shaw

In hindsight, I probably should have noted that this meant to stay away, but clues aren’t easy to pick up on when you’re twenty-two.

Word traveled from one person to another like head lice or fleas…

Next to one of them sits a small Power Rangers action figure I snuck up there when we moved. Despite Lauren checking on those plants every day, it took her three months to notice it. As a reward, she said, I could keep it up there.

The coffee comes at me like a drunk aunt coming in for a kiss at a family reunion, and it hits me like a hot slap to the face.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

January 2022 in Retrospect: What I Read/Listened to/Wrote About

By

On February 1, 2022

In Books, Calendar Items, Currently Reading, News/Misc.

2022 got off to a decent star: 24 titles, 6428 pages, with an average of 3.75 stars. Thankfully, I’m done with the looking back at 2021 posts, that took a little longer than I wanted (still, I had fun doing them—hopefully someone else enjoyed them). Things are doing okay on the posting front—always have ambitions for more, but I think things are going okay so far. I’ve got some fun things in the works, some of which you’ll hopefully see soon.

But enough about that, here’s what happened here in January.

Books/Novels/Novellas Read/Listened to

Family Business Gone Missing The Finders
4 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars
And Your Enemies Closer God Dwells Among Us Bloodlines
3.5 Stars 4 Stars 3.5 Stars
The Curious Dispatch of Daniel Costello (Audiobook) Where the Drowned Girls Go Two Witches and a Whiskey
4 Stars 3.5 Stars 3 Stars
The Accomplice God with Us How to Save a Superhero
4 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars
Dark Queen The Good Sister A Bathroom Book...
5 Stars 3 Stars 3 Stars
Bye Bye Baby Dogtripping The Hobbit
4 1/2 Stars 3.5 Stars 5 Stars
Dead Man's Grave Reconstruction How to Save a Superhero
4 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars1
Burning Bright You're Only Human The Jackals
4 Stars 4 Stars Still Deciding

Still Reading

The Story Retold Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law Revenge of the Beast

Ratings

5 Stars 2 2 1/2 Stars 0
4 1/2 Stars 1 2 Stars 0
4 Stars 10 1 1/2 Stars 0
3.5 Stars 5 1 Star 0
3 Stars 6
Average = 3.75

TBR Stacks/Piles/Heaps

Audio E-book Physical Goodreads
Want-to-Read
End of
2021		 9 45 42 144
1st of the
Month		 9 45 42 144
Added 2 4 7 3
Read/
Listened		 5 3 6 5
Current Total 6 46 43 142

Breakdowns:
“Traditionally” Published: 18
Self-/Independent Published: 6

Genre This Month Year to Date
Children’s 0 (0%) 0 (0%)
Fantasy 2 (8%) 2 (8%)
General Fiction/ Literature 1 (4%) 1 (4%)
Mystery/ Suspense/ Thriller 11 (46%) 11 (46%)
Non-Fiction 1 (4%) 1 (4%)
Science Fiction 1 (4%) 1 (4%)
Theology/ Christian Living 1 (4%) 1 (4%)
Urban Fantasy 3 (13%) 3 (13%)
“Other” (Horror/ Humor/ Steampunk/ Western) 4 (17%) 4 (17%)

Review-ish Things Posted

Other Things I Wrote
Other than the Saturday Miscellanies (1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th), I also wrote:

Enough about me—how Was Your Month?

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