2018 Recap: Books

Whoops, one more recap post! This is my annual "I do occasionally read words instead of writing too many" post where I cover what I read for the year, plus a bit of a ramble.  I wound up trying, and failing, to keep track of the manga read.  There are just too many!  It's especially "bad" in the winter when I curl up with the cats and my laptop and just... binge read all evening.  Imagine all the crafting I could have done!  Oh, well, I am enjoying myself either way. :)

image via Google image search

Italicized is a book I have never read before.   
Italicized and bolded is never read and a new-to-me author.

1. Jingo (Terry Pratchett)
2. The Last Continent (Pratchett)
3. Carpe Jugulum (Pratchett)
4. The Fifth Elephant (Pratchett)
5. The Truth (Pratchett)
6. Thief of Time (Pratchett)
7. The Last Hero (Pratchett)
8. Night Watch (Pratchett)
9. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Pratchett)
10. The Wee Free Men (Pratchett)
11. Monstrous Regiment (Pratchett)
12. A Hat Full of Sky (Pratchett)
13. Going Postal (Pratchett)
14. Thud! (Pratchett)
15. Wintersmith (Pratchett)
16. Making Money (Pratchett)
17. Unseen Academicals (Pratchett)
18. I Shall Wear Midnight (Pratchett)
19. Snuff (Pratchett)
20. Raising Steam (Pratchett)
21. The Shepherd's Crown (Pratchett)
22. The Unadultered Cat (Pratchett)
23. Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)

I started the year continuing the Discworld series.  They just kept getting better!  I was surprised at The Last Hero since I didn't realize some would be young adult novels too.  There wound up being several like this which made for quick and enjoyable reads!  I had hoped to finish the series by June but sometimes there wound up being too much of a delay between books (some had to come from the far corners of the state). I finished in the middle of July.  It's great to have them all read though bittersweet that there won't be any more to enjoy. I cried reading The Shepherd's Crown.

My husband got me The Unadultered Cat off of my wishlist for Christmas last year thinking it was part of Discworld.  I had that book on my list before I ever knew of the Discworld series!  I have no idea where I had heard of it though.

After Discworld, reading books kind of slowed down as I worked on getting caught up on our National Geographic subscription.  I had several months worth of backlog to get through.  There were a few library book sales during the downtime and I stocked up on some new (and old) material.  So, this year isn't as good as previous years in terms of numbers.  And now I have a new series of books to watch for hah.

My husband wanted to read a bit more in terms of stand-alone books (most of his reading is on the computer) and wanted to keep track of them.

1. Ringworld (Larry Niven)
2. Eat That Frog! (Brian Tracy) 
3. Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)
4. Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)
5. Extreme Ownership (Jocko Willink & Leif Babin)

I'm really glad he's joined a bookclub at his work!  He seems to be enjoying it too, even though they only read one chapter a week of their chosen book. I often feel like we're holding library books hostage but the librarians are great at encouraging keeping them until they're finished.  :)

owned media - why yes, we DO like Asimov, have you noticed?

Because we've gotten a healthy collection of books, one of my goals whims for 2018 was to sort of organize them so I wouldn't wind up with duplicates.  I think a lot of people might use GoodReads or something similar to track their books.  My solution was simple and less elegant: a Google spreadsheet!  We had already started one for our CDs ages ago (we have as many CDs as books -- we love music!).  It eventually grew to have separate pages for manga, movies, and video games.  I like this method because it's easy to search on my phone whenever I accidentally find myself in a bookstore or at a thrift store.  According to the sheet, we have 275 books (excluding manga, my craft books, and some miscellaneous items).  It sure felt like a lot more when we moved...

I think this year I will tackle my craft books.  I really like vintage craft magazines and books.  Ravelry is a great place to log them but not all of them are listed and I have no scanner to contribute.  I think it will be easier to have everything in one spot anyway.

thread stash

On a stitchy note, I also have a spreadsheet for my floss.  :)  I think we just really like spreadsheets (I also have them for sewing machine attachments and my Corelle set, and my husband has several for his things too).  If you're interested in this stitchy one, you can find a copy here.  You'll need to save it to your own Google account if you want to use it.  She has since updated it to contain the fabric calculator and floss availability, but the newest colors are not in there.  They're easy to add if you have basic spreadsheet knowledge.

Okay, that's all the recap posts for me.  I've already started on 2019's list with a whopping three finishes.  They're children's novels though, so nothing too extreme. :) There's still a little time to enter the first of 2019's Year of Giveaways, if you'd like!