Sayonara, 2019 (In Books)

It’s been an interesting year, media-wise.  Late in 2018, I saw the live action Bleach movie on Netflix, and loved it so well that in January, I began watching the anime—the first anime I ever watched.  At 366 episodes and 4 movies, it came to well over 100 hours (not counting credits), and I finished in late March.  That gave me sufficient interest to later read the manga Descendants of Darkness—the first manga I ever read more than one volume of.  I followed this up by first watching and then reading Death Note, which I love the first half of (and the musical).  While we’re at it, I also read and watched a bit of Rurouri Kenshin (and the live action adaptations) and a sprinkling of others.  To round out the Japanese media, I read All You Need Is Kill, the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel on which the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow is based.

I will never be much of a manga and anime person, but I feel more trained to read them now.  366 episodes of Bleach taught me a lot.

(Subbed.  I grew up on opera; subtitles are very comfortable for me, and I loathe dubbing.)

I read a lot of old favorites, and some firsts.  I listened to the audiobook of Psycho, which felt culturally important since I haven’t seen the movie.  It was fine.  Going through my list of books read, however, I’m realizing I didn’t read very many excellent books I’d never read before.  In fact, aside from Death Note, the only one that really stands out is First Bite—alas, not a vampire book, although I also read Prisoner of Vampires, which was flawed but worth keeping.

So not a lot of new discoveries on the novel or author front (although adding Death Note to my fandoms did lead me to discover several spectacularly good novel-length fanfics, so . . . ) 

Here are a few other stats:

Most nostalgic books: In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories  and The Farthest-Away Mountain

Longest book: Gone with the Wind

Non-fiction books: 2

Manga: 33

Books I ended up ranking under 3 stars on Goodreads: 10

Total published books: 111
Total unpublished books: hard to number, since I read several of the same book multiple times and didn't keep track.  30?
Words of fanfiction: at a broad guess (give or take 25%), probably around four million words.  Assuming average novel length is 100,000, that puts me at 40 novels' worth.

I also have read, over and over and over again, a number of tiny board books that answer deep philosophical questions such as "What's hiding behind the stump?" and "Are you my mother?"  But I'm not putting those on Goodreads.  The line must be drawn somewhere . . .