24.Jan.2009 2008 Wrap-Up

Apologies for not posting for 2 months. I got married and I moved country. I struggled to even find the time to read.

There are a lot of things I need to update, but first thing first. 2008 wrap-up!

I read 39 books in 2008. Pretty good achievement in comparison with my previous records. I read 20 books in 2007.

From those 39 books, 21 books were published in year 2000 onward, 17 from 1900s, and 1 from 1800s.

27 authors were new to me. I particularly loved J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series (I read up to the 5th), and Marjane Satrapi and her Persepolis series. I would definitely read again books by Alexander McCall Smith, Junichiro Tanizaki, Khaled Hosseini, and Margaret Atwood. I was hugely dissappointed by Cormac McCarthy (the Road), Jodi Picoult, Banana Yoshimoto, and Gail Tsukiyama. Kazuo Ishiguro could slowly become one of my fave authors. Both biographies that I read were impressive (A Long Way Gone and I Choose to Live). I would also look into more graphic novels this year.

I made a fancy graph for my ratings:

I rated 4 stars out of 5 for 14 books. 4 stars means “as good as expected/hyped”. So that’s pretty good. I’m quite happy with what I read. I did find 3 books with rate 2.5. 2.5 means “didn’t like it but don’t have the heart to give any less”. And a couple of 5 stars, which means “can’t be any better even if you try” :).

I didn’t complete a few of the challenges. Apparently it’s very hard for me to follow a preset list in preset time. First, I like to pick books on a whim. Second, I just don’t read that fast. I just don’t. So in year 2009, I don’t think I’ll be joining any challenges. If I do, I’ll be picking the short easy challenges that don’t require to read books more than 2 with a time limit no longer than 3 months. That’ll give room for my other options. I’ll still try to keep up with my perpetual challenges though, but they don’t bother me much because I have no pressure in completing them.

The challenge that I’ve been wanting to join, but have not, is the Disney Literature Challenge by Sarah Miller. I LOVE to see her DLC posts, comparing the original book and the Disney-fied movie. It’s a perpetual challenge, so we can jump in anytime. Maybe I will, being a huge Disney fan that I am.

As a closure, I’d like to note that upon moving country, I threw away donated 18 books to Singapore’s Library Bookcrossing program and gave away probably about 10 books to various friends. I still brought dozens of books with me, some here with me in Australia, some at my parents’ other house in Indonesia. It was so hard to resist Singapore’s book sales that happen every few months, not to mention the super cheap secondhand book store. But I reckon it wouldn’t be the case here, since I’ve always found it harder to find cheap good books in Australia (or cheap good anything). We’ll see.

Well, cheers to a better year in 2009! I’m all hopeful and optimistic! :)