Books 2017: log update

I'm coming off a cold and I'm sure I don't remember everything I've read.

Books 2017: 210-222


210. Sarah Glenn Marsh, Reign of the Fallen. Razorbill, 2018.

Read for review for Tor.com. Good.


211. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Deception. Mira, 2018.

Read for column. Also good.


212. M.C.A. Hogarth, From Ruins. Ebook, 2017.

Read for column. Good.


213. Ali Vali, Heart of the Devil. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F romance. Not good, but enjoyable.


214. L.A. Hall, The Comfortable Courtesan Vol. 1. Ebook, 2017.

Really good. I need to write more about this latter.


215. Beth Revis, Star Wars: Rebel Rising. Ebook, 2016.

Read for column. Not really what I was looking for in a Star Wars story, but maybe I should have known that going in.


216. Genevieve Cogman, The Lost Plot. Tor UK, 2017.

Read for review. Good.


217. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Mission. Subterranean Press, 2017.

Read for column. Really good. Excellent.


218-220. Seanan McGuire, Chaos Choreography, Magic for Nothing, and Tricks for Free. DAW Books, 2016-2018.

Read for column. Fun.


221. Kara A. McLeod, Known Threat. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F thriller with romance elements. Terrible, but still strangely entertaining.


nonfiction

222. Richard Holmes, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air. William Collins, London, 2013.

A history of ballooning. Moderately fascinating, but definitely worth reading for the bit about the balloon post and the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war, when thousands of letters went out by balloon and back - thanks to the technology of photography and miniaturisation - by pigeon.

2017 in Review

It feels like a very long year. Mostly the length is down to political news from around the world: between the US and the UK, there's been more than enough to make you really feel the "week's a long time in politics" - but add Australia's dreadful "postal survey," and the litany of violence and tragedy from around the world, and, well.

I'm still here. If you're reading this, you're still here, too, and a whole new calendar year is just around the corner.

In personal terms, 2017 is probably the happiest/best year of my life so far. I met an amazing human at the beginning of the year, and now she is my amazing girlfriend. (I want to keep her. She says she's keeping me.) Aqueduct Press published a collection of my reviews in July. Around about that time, Locus invited me to write a proper column monthly. I've had a couple of clients for editing services, and one gig as a "sensitivity reader" (terrible term: wouldn't "experience consultant" be better? Or even "editorial consultant"?) Professional progress is happening for me, albeit slowly and not in a way I ever expected.

In work terms:

- I've written a Sleeps With Monsters column just about every week for a year. That's roughly 36,000 words just on the column.
- Tor.com has also published 42 reviews which I wrote - it'll be 43 by the end of the year. That's another 32,000 words approximately. (Calling the average column length 700 words, and the average review length 750 words, which is actually underestimating the reviews some, I think.)
- I've written, oh, let's call it six three-thousand-word columns for Locus: 18,000 words
- Some reviews for Patreon: let's call it 18,000 words, or 1500 words per month, as an estimate.

That's a minimum of 114,000 words written this year.

Well. That's a long chalk from the "not very much" my brainweasels keep trying to tell me I've been doing.

(I also read a minimum of 222 books.)

And this was the year I got involved in local politics. I'm a branch secretary for a political party now. So. I have DONE THINGS, 2017!

And I turned 31. I wonder what 2018 has in store?