My Reading Year 2021 📚
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This was a slow reading year for me. I read a lot more fiction than last year, a little less nonfiction, many fewer comics, and no poetry.
I only read 28 full-length books for myself (as opposed to for my kid). I range widely each year, usually coming in the 30 - 50 book range, so this is a little less than even a normal slow year would be.
But of course, year 2 of a pandemic, especially when finishing a PhD, is not a normal year.
All of the fiction I read this year was good, because I don’t keep reading things that aren’t. But my favorite was Gideon the Ninth . It took me a little while to get into, but once I was into it, it blew me away. It also helped me realize, along with the Star Trek: Discovery episode “Su’Kal,” that space gothic is a subgenre I love.
I’m still into Dark Academia, which explains the presence of The Historian , If We Were Villains , Bunny , and Ace of Spades on my finished books list.
My other fiction reading decisions were driven primarily by media tie-ins. I read the Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology in anticipation of Shadow and Bone on Netflix, then decided to stick with Leigh Bardugo and read her Wonder Woman book . I also read The Last Wish , the first book in the Witcher series. It will probably be a while before I get around to that show but I enjoyed the book.
None of my nonfiction reading blew me away, but it was all good.
I definitely read some fanfiction, but I couldn’t tell you what. And I read a lot of articles, most of which you can find in my Links category.
I hope to read for pleasure a lot more next year.
What did you read in 2021? If you had a hard time reading, what did you do instead?
I had assumed that since I, a 40-year-old mother of a young child, have been very into Dark Academia for more than a year, it must be over. But it looks like I was wrong.
🔖 Read The Scholarship of Sexy Privilege: Why Do I Love Dark Academia Books?
…there will always be fringe groups who parade their complete rejection of the source material and make it their own. This ownership over dark academia gives me the courage to keep going with real academia; to forge a space again in the gaps and achieve immortality in the sharing of ideas without boundaries.
Listen Vanessa Hudgens is winning regardless of the quality of the script or her accent.
Watched A California Christmas & A California Christmas: City Lights. They’re… Fine. There’s the use of a trope in the City Lights epilogue that actually makes me a bit sad. Happy to chat in replies if anyone is interested. ❤️💻🍿🎄
I had a dream where there was a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer motion comic where the writers had made a new character say “I’m going to kill @kimberlyhirsh in every timeline” and I was both flattered to be included & also upset/scared, but mostly thought “Nobody in Buffy fandom calls me that.”
A core question that must eventually be answered about every space, physical or digital, is “Who is this for?” and if your answer is “Everyone!” you are necessarily being disingenuous because every design decision communicates who belongs in the space.
EDITED TO ADD: I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that my thinking on this has been significantly shaped by working with Dr. Maggie Melo at the Equity in the Making lab.
Excuse me, there is a Netflix Rom-Com starring Damon Wayans Jr and Rachel Leigh Cook? Be still my geriatric millennial heart.
I have something else to say about Single All the Way. Not only is it lovely to see Michael Urie be a lead, but it’s also lovely to see him being weird and sweet and vulnerable. Also, plant shops ARE a thing, we have a shmancy millennial one in Durham.