{"id":5798,"date":"2014-01-02T07:44:58","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T12:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=5798"},"modified":"2014-01-02T07:44:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T12:44:58","slug":"what-i-read-in-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/what-i-read-in-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Read in 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I’d write a wrap-up post before 2013 ended, but then I spent a chunk of the evening of December 31 curled up on the couch finishing reading Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y<\/em>, so I didn’t. (And then we went to see\/hear the steam whistles at Pratt, and then we walked from Church Ave to Brighton Beach, and then we didn’t get home until 6 am.) <\/p>\n

Anyhow: I read 38 books in 2013 (including a few picture books and several kids’ books). <\/p>\n

The breakdown:<\/strong>
\n Picture books: 3
\n Other kids\u2019\/YA books: 5
\n Fiction (for grown-ups): 24
\n Non-fiction: 4
\n Poetry: 2<\/p>\n

Works in translation: 6<\/p>\n

Favorites:<\/strong> Picture Me Gone<\/i> by Meg Rosoff – definitely the best YA book I read in 2013 (not that I read that many!), mostly because of the really engaging narrator. Where’d You Go Bernadette?<\/i> by Maria Semple – I do love epistolary or semi-epistolary novels, and this one was both funny and sweet. The End of Mr. Y<\/i> and Our Tragic Universe<\/i>, both by Scarlett Thomas – smart and fun and concerned with story\/language\/meaning in interesting ways. Artful<\/em> by Ali Smith – smart and satisfying mix of fiction and lit crit. <\/p>\n

Books I expected to like more than I actually did:<\/strong>The No Variations<\/i> by Luis Chitarroni, which I found pretty overwhelmingly obscure. The Reverberator<\/i> by Henry James, which I wanted to have more long descriptive sentences. The Stockholm Octavo<\/i> by Karen Engelmann and Buddhaland Brooklyn<\/i> by Richard C. Morais, both of which I wanted to be less plot-driven than they were.<\/p>\n

In general:<\/strong> In 2013 I read more collections of short stories and fewer collections of poetry than usual, which was neither a good thing or a bad thing, just a different thing. As usual, I read more novels than anything else. I finally got around to reading multiple books by Scarlett Thomas, whose work I’ve been curious about since an acquaintance mentioned PopCo<\/em> years ago. As usual, I somehow managed to read more library books than books from my own shelves. <\/p>\n

Plans for 2014:<\/strong> I don’t have any specific reading plans this year. More poetry? And maybe this will be the year I finish reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time<\/em>? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I’d write a wrap-up post before 2013 ended, but then I spent a chunk of the evening of December 31 curled up on the couch finishing reading Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y, so I didn’t. (And then we went to see\/hear the steam whistles at Pratt, and then we walked from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalmeta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}