This has been an eventful year for me. I became a father and introducing a child into life's equation certainly shook things up. She is wonderful of course but quite dependent. Thankfully I have been able to take a full year off work, and that certainly resulted in more reading time in between naps and diaper changes.
In general this has been a fantastic year. I was introduced to fantastic up and coming authors like Sally Rooney (Normal People) and Lisa Halliday (Asymmetry), as well as blown away by Rebecca Makkai's amazing social novel about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, The Great Believers.
I tried to follow the big awards, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Women's Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. I didn't pressure myself to finish the long or shortlists, but was able to read enough to have my favourites or least favourites, as the case may be.
For the first time I decided to tackle the Giller Prize before the award was handed out. I read the entire shortlist and was happy to see Esi Edugyan win her second Giller for the epic Washington Black. It would have been nice to see Eric Dupont's work in translation Songs for the Cold of Heart win, but Eduyan was worthy winner.
I was lucky enough to continue with some great online reader communities (my Pulitzer group) and started making BookTube videos. I am taking a bit of a break from the latter but will hopefully get back to it in the new year, although I must say I prefer blogging. I also was invited to join a great Goodreads group of readers that share my passion and keep up a very intense schedule of group reads and award follows.
I'll try posting a 2019 Reading goals in the next few days. I really want to do somethings differently but we'll see.
Anyways, here are the stats for the year:
Total Books: 125
Fiction: 77
Non Fiction: 27
Graphic Novels: 7
Short Story Collections: 5
Women Authors: 71
POC Authors: 38
Canadian Lit: 15
Works in Translation: 5
Children's Books: 13
DNFs: 4
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