I came into January all full of enthusiasm for blogging and promising myself that I was going to get back into writing proper reviews, and putting something up at least once a week.
I should have known that I was doomed to failure when I only got round to putting up my first post of the year on the 9th of January. But this time, unlike every other time that I have had a blogging slump, I actually have a pretty good excuse! Yayy!
As some of you know, I work as a freelance translator*, and something that people say about working freelance is that it gets to be a bit of a feast or famine situation - either you are completely inundated with work, or you have absolutely nothing going on. I knew that I had a fairly large job coming in around the 13th, but it turned out to be larger than anyone anticipated, and I have had another job come in on top of that, so I have been busy busy busy! I've been working over the weekends since it came in, and by the time everything is handed in I will have worked for about 3 weeks without any proper days off (luckily I have been able to manage things so that I have gone out and done some fun things as well, otherwise I would actually be climbing the walls right now).
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that I don't think I am going to get round to writing any proper reviews this month, but that's okay because so far I haven't read anything that has inspired me to write anything anyway. I will do a round up post for January though, so hopefully everything that I read will end up on here one way or another.
2015年1月9日金曜日
Reading in 2014 and goals for 2015
Happy new year everyone!
Yes, this is a little on the late side, but never mind. I have been away and not really with it since I got back (curse you jet lag!). I had a lovely time in England though, it was my first Christmas with my family for 6 years, which is far too long. Also, my husband was there and got to experience his first proper Christmas (Japan does Christmas wrong - it is not a time to go on dates and eat fried chicken! Silly Japan.) which he seemed to enjoy.
Yay!
Anyway, I thought I would do a little round up of my reading in 2014, and my reading plans in 2015, so here we go! (I would do the survey that everyone else is doing, but I can't be bothered)
Total number of books finished:
94 (the majority are not blogged, because I am lazy)
Number of books read (for fun!) in Japanese:
2. Absolutely pathetic. They were both manga as well so barely count really (as one of the reasons I want to read in Japanese is to improve my Japanese, and manga generally doesn't have enough words to make much of a difference at this stage).
Books that I particularly liked (in order of when I finished them):
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Saga volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Brian K Vaughan et al.
Hawkeye volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Matt Fraction et al.
Boxers by Gene Yuen Lang (must read saints at some point!)
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker
Landline by Rainbow Rowell (I discovered that I love Rainbow Rowell)
Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Overall thoughts:
I am very happy with my English reading, but I really wish I had taken the time to read more in Japanese. Oh well. I read a lot of Japanese when translating (obviously) so it's not like I'm not coming into contact with it or anything, but I definitely spent way less time reading in Japanese for fun in 2014 than I have any other year since I moved here.
Goals for 2015:
I don't want to be too strict with this, as I have the kind of personality where I rebel as soon as I feel that I have to do something, but I have a few vague things I want to do:
Read more in Japanese - I'm going to aim to read at least a book (novels, not manga, although reading more manga would also be good) a month, so 12 books in total. This is a rather pathetic goal, as when I used to get through way more than this every year, but I figure that if I aim low I have way more chance of actually managing it!
Re-read books more often - I always used to re-read books that I liked over and over, partly because I had no money to buy new books when I was younger, but I would definitely like to go back and read some of the books I really liked in the past couple of years again. I was also tempted to bring my whole Margaret Atwood collection to Japan for re-reading purposes, but my suitcase was too full when I came back to even sneak in 1 book.
Try to cover every book that I read on here, even if it is only a sentence. Otherwise I forget what I read. (I am actually giving up on reviewing the books I read in the back half of 2014, so this counts for all books finished this year!)
Sort out our bookcases - they need to be earthquake proofed (bolted to the wall - at the moment if there was a massive earthquake they would fall over where I sleep, which obviously isn't ideal. Our bookcases are very low and it would take a LOT to make them fall over, so I'm not particularly worried, but still). I think we also need to have a bit of a book cull and generally reorganise them.
So ambitious! Hehe.
Yes, this is a little on the late side, but never mind. I have been away and not really with it since I got back (curse you jet lag!). I had a lovely time in England though, it was my first Christmas with my family for 6 years, which is far too long. Also, my husband was there and got to experience his first proper Christmas (Japan does Christmas wrong - it is not a time to go on dates and eat fried chicken! Silly Japan.) which he seemed to enjoy.
Yay!
Anyway, I thought I would do a little round up of my reading in 2014, and my reading plans in 2015, so here we go! (I would do the survey that everyone else is doing, but I can't be bothered)
Total number of books finished:
94 (the majority are not blogged, because I am lazy)
Number of books read (for fun!) in Japanese:
2. Absolutely pathetic. They were both manga as well so barely count really (as one of the reasons I want to read in Japanese is to improve my Japanese, and manga generally doesn't have enough words to make much of a difference at this stage).
Books that I particularly liked (in order of when I finished them):
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Saga volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Brian K Vaughan et al.
Hawkeye volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Matt Fraction et al.
Boxers by Gene Yuen Lang (must read saints at some point!)
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker
Landline by Rainbow Rowell (I discovered that I love Rainbow Rowell)
Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Overall thoughts:
I am very happy with my English reading, but I really wish I had taken the time to read more in Japanese. Oh well. I read a lot of Japanese when translating (obviously) so it's not like I'm not coming into contact with it or anything, but I definitely spent way less time reading in Japanese for fun in 2014 than I have any other year since I moved here.
Goals for 2015:
I don't want to be too strict with this, as I have the kind of personality where I rebel as soon as I feel that I have to do something, but I have a few vague things I want to do:
Read more in Japanese - I'm going to aim to read at least a book (novels, not manga, although reading more manga would also be good) a month, so 12 books in total. This is a rather pathetic goal, as when I used to get through way more than this every year, but I figure that if I aim low I have way more chance of actually managing it!
Re-read books more often - I always used to re-read books that I liked over and over, partly because I had no money to buy new books when I was younger, but I would definitely like to go back and read some of the books I really liked in the past couple of years again. I was also tempted to bring my whole Margaret Atwood collection to Japan for re-reading purposes, but my suitcase was too full when I came back to even sneak in 1 book.
Try to cover every book that I read on here, even if it is only a sentence. Otherwise I forget what I read. (I am actually giving up on reviewing the books I read in the back half of 2014, so this counts for all books finished this year!)
Sort out our bookcases - they need to be earthquake proofed (bolted to the wall - at the moment if there was a massive earthquake they would fall over where I sleep, which obviously isn't ideal. Our bookcases are very low and it would take a LOT to make them fall over, so I'm not particularly worried, but still). I think we also need to have a bit of a book cull and generally reorganise them.
So ambitious! Hehe.
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