Books are a large part of my life—I read them, I write them, I buy them constantly (probably too much). I dedicate a lot of my space to books: I’m always carrying one around, bringing one to family events and long car rides, and I have a moderate collection (the most recent count was 250+) so most of my room is full of books. I love books. Books are great, man. Hop on this train.
Since finishing school and focusing more time on art and design, I decided to rearrange my space. Moving my office and all my art supplies and the giant drafting table I use into my bedroom has made it seem much smaller, but I’m starting to like it. I’ve spending a lot more time in it now that all my things are in one place instead of the office downstairs and the drafting table/art supplies in the other room. Moving is what I’ve been doing in my spare time (taking several days I should’ve been writing or working) the entire month of January. And as of today, the 25th, I’m still not completely done—I have a pile of art supplies on the floor and my desk is a mess. The point is, I took this time to not only rearrange my life, but my books too. I scanned their barcodes with the Goodreads app to create a list of all the books I own—which I could add to every time I bought or was gifted another book. (This is how I learned I owned over 250+ books, a few of which were duplicates, I don’t know how or why.)
I wanted to categorize the books I owned and see how many books I have by different people, like female authors, LGBT+ authors, POC authors, and any combination of those, and see how diverse my collection is—I have a guess that it isn’t as diverse I would like them to be, something I need to work on. But I also want to look at the characters and stories within those books and categorize them by the same, which I think would have more diversity because it’s what I’m drawn to read. Anyway, I plan to use the Goodreads app to help do that now that all of them are in one place and I can search for them easily. (This especially helps with friends and family for gift reasons—they can go on my profile and find that list to search which books I already have!)
Speaking of books, I’ve compiled a list of books that I want to read this year. As I’ve said of my goals for 2017, I have a goal to read 35 books. Though I’m usually more aggressively specific about when I read each book—I used to decide which specific books I would read within each month at the very start of the year, which made it difficult to follow and less fun, so now I’m taking a more relaxed approach. I just have a single, long list in no particular order (though some land roughly when they are released and/or a time of year I’d like to read them—like I want to reread the first for A Series of Unfortunate Events books sooner so I can watch the Netflix show and all those comics/graphic novels are probably during the summer, which is when I like to read them.)
Also, I know there’s 37 books on the list, I promise I can count. I’m just planning on wanting to skip one or that I won’t get to a few or I might want to swap out with a different book. See, totally relaxed.
2017 Reading List:
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
- Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
- The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
- The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket
- The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
- The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
- Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
- A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
- Rooms by Lauren Oliver
- This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab
- Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
- Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
- Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
- Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare
- The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley
- The Graces by Laure Eve
- The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
- Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
- The Strange Maid by Tessa Gratton
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
- Vermilion by Molly Tanzer
- Behold the Bones by Natalie C. Parker
- Lumberjanes, Volume 3: A Terrible Plan by Noelle Stevenson
- East of West, Volume 3: “There Is No Us” by Jonathan Hickman
- The Walking Dead: Volume 7: “The Calm Before” by Robert Kirkman
- The Walking Dead: Volume 8: “Made to Suffer” by Robert Kirkman
- The Walking Dead, Volume 9: “Here We Remain” by Robert Kirkman
- Pax by Sara Pennypacker
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
- Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis
- The Copper Gauntlet by Cassandra Clare & Holly Black
- The Bronze Key by Cassandra Clare & Holly Black
- Conversion by Katherine Howe
- Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd
- The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
