Reading Rambo

2017 was one of the hardest years of my life. I was cobbling together employment for six months, my mom got cancer, and I had a mouse living full time in my bedroom and ended up couch surfing for weeks. BUT ON THE PLUS SIDE, I read more books than I have any other year. Because of the cobbling together employment thing. Which, when it didn't go well, involved me sitting by the lake in June, reading. So it could have been worse. MAYBE. So! Books this year. A whole lot were comics . Because when you are dealing with depression, you want to have some minor victories. And my minor victories were almost entirely in the form of finishing a ton of comic volumes. 48 of them, anyway. SO SOME QUICK REVIEWS: COMICS Silk  Volumes 0-1. Hot DAMN, I love Silk . This took me by surprise because I don't really care about Spider-Man as a character or comic series, and Spider-Gwen  is ughhhhhhh but SILK. She was in a bunker for years! Kind of like Kimmy Schmidt. But Silk is super awes...

To put things into perspective, at the beginning of this year, I hadn't even read Carmilla . CARMILLA .   Insanity. Counting the two books I will assuredly finish New Year's Eve, I read 73 books this year, which is probably my highest ever, except that's kind of negated by the sheer number of comics. 2013 still beats me out in pages by a couple hundred. A shockingly low 24 out of 73 were written by women. That's an all-time low. Has to be. Unsurprisingly, I also read very few feminist histories this year. I think we can all blame this on the sad state of female representation in comics. How many were comics! 30 Were any of those comic collections over a thousand pages long! Yes. Does that kind of negate your guilt about also counting volumes that comprised only about 6 issues? Obvs. Some Things: 1. At the beginning of this year, no Carmilla , no Aquarium , no Sandman , no comics at all, no King Mob , no Robbie Kaplan book that led to me speaking w...

I was all set to write an actual post, and then I saw that there was an end of year survey. SO. This was stolen from  Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) ! Huzzahs all around for other people thinking of how to summarize one's year in reading. Number Of Books You Read: 66 Number of Re-Reads: Ahahaha One. Which was Bleak House . I was about to write a giiiiant zero, but then I remembered -- ah yes. I have read that one before. Genre You Read The Most From:  That's REALLY hard because my books were particularly all over the map (while staying almost exclusively American, let's not get ahead of ourselves). But most likely Fantasy, because of the thoooousands of pages I read by George R.R. Martin this year. 1. Best Book You Read In 2014? Oh, I thought this question would be hard, but World War Z. Like. No contest. World War Z  is one of the best books I've ever read. WAIT LET ME PRAISE IT MORE. Yes, that. 2. Book You Were Excited About ...

My, a year is a long time. As with every year, I praise the existence of Goodreads, because otherwise I'd have to do something barbarian like write down the books I read on a piece of paper I've shoved into a book (i.e. what I used to do). Can you believe the Bleak House readalong was this year? Damn. I also read the first four Game of Thrones books this year, World War Z , Ella Enchanted , etc etc. TOP FIVE BOOKS THIS YEAR World War Z Storm of Swords Meaty Old Mr. Flood How to Build a Girl I read 66 books this year, which edges out previous years by a few. I usually end up somewhere in the 60s. 21 of the 66 were by men, so about 1/3. Technically I want to read more diverse authors, but in reality I am uncomfortable reading about experiences outside of my language/any-country-that-is-outside-Western-Europe, so we'll see how that goes (it probably won't). I went to BEA this year, which was boss. I had lunch with Amanda, formerly from Dead Wh...

2013 was SO WEIRD. Can you believe the stuff not read at the beginning of the year that has now been read? GAH. My mind can almost not fathom it. ALMOST. Anyway. Here's a survey I stole from  Alley . Number of books read in 2013: 62. I would've beaten 2011 instead of tying, but someone pretty from Minnesota decided to start dating me, so. That took up some reading time. 1. Best Book You Read In 2013?  Ok, I read a ridiculous amount of non-fiction this past year (17/62), and of that, the best was almost definitely the unfortunately-titled survey of romantic friendship from the 1600s to the 1970s,  Surpassing the Love of Men  by Lillian Faderman. It led to so much other research AND made me read Diana Victrix , which is SO good. Best FICTION, though...agh. I am not sure. Visit from the Goon Squad ? Valencia ? There were a lot of excellent books discovered this year. 2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?  NIGHT ...

I completely forgot that my theme song for this year was Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk, and that right after I chose it back in January, I got sick and fell behind in everything. THIS YEAR WAS COMPLETELY THE BEST. Remember how 2010 was the worst for everyone and we all listened to Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You" as the year changed and said "YEAH. THAT SENTIMENT, 2010"? Yeah, so the OPPOSITE of that to this year. Events (as opposed to books, which are lateeeer) for 2013: - Zombie musical . Oh, how you consumed my January/February, but ah, you were worth it. - Juice fast . Remember that, Tika? Remember how we made that terrible decision? The low point was me putting salt directly on my tongue, because oh how I missed it. - Getting over crushes on straight girls . That was a good move. - Singing wayyyy better than in previous years. Like. Way better. Good times ahead. And this year I joined VOX 3 and I get to write stuff for them, which is the c...

I have Feelings. Feelings about books I've read this year. So without further ado, let's do a Look Back on 2012 Because Tomorrow the World's Gonna End and I Might Not Have Access to Blogger. So here's this. I did not read a lot this year. I WAS BUSY OKAY. Also I was super-invested in Doctor Who , The L Word , Once Upon a Time  and everything Sue Perkins was in (which was a lot). Also I went to New York twice, Toronto once, and met five internet friends in person. So NO READIN' FOR ALICE. Except for some things that I am going to mention and not mention right now. What did I LOVE this year? Ragnarök by A.S. Byatt, Ready Player One  by Ernest Cline, The Sisters Brothers  by Patrick deWitt, The Woman in White   by Our Fearless Leader, and Attachments  by Rainbow Rowell (yes, those were all this year). You should read ALL OF THEM if you haven't. What's kind of hilarious is I think most of you have, because we flail over books and then we all read ...