2006 in Books

I've been slow in writing this up (although only one day slower than last year). Here's the summary of my reading for 2006. These details don't count the four reviews I've written so far in 2007.

I read less this year than last year on any metric: 8 fewer books and 4,710 fewer pages (meaning that the books I read were on the average shorter as well, despite reading four George R.R. Martin books). Not entirely sure why that was, although the Winter Olympics did take two weeks away from reading on top of the regular company, vacations, and other interruptions. The first half of last year was just slow for reading.

This coming year, I'm going to drop any explicit goals on how much I read. I enjoy finishing books and seeing the numbers of reviews go up anyway, so I'll have plenty of motivation, and I don't want to add stress to a recreational hobby.

My reading was far more diverse this year, which was one of my goals. Only 61 of the books I read were SF: 17 genre classics or award winners and another 20 books that were published in the last couple of years (the remainder being various books from my long backlog). To that, I added 14 books in other genres (including three literary classics, a category I want to increase), 15 non-fiction books (only three of which were SF analysis, although James Tiptree, Jr. could arguably count as a fourth), and 3 graphic novels. This feels like a good mix, although I'd like to add more graphic novels.

Three books stood out above all others this year: Geoff Ryman's brilliant Air and Nicola Griffith's mainstream series The Blue Place and Stay. Other notable and recommended SF books were Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler), Slow River (another Nicola Griffith), and Komarr (Lois McMaster Bujold, one entry in the long Miles Vorkosigan series). Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game is an exceptional young-adult novel.

The remaining notables are all non-fiction. I put some effort into learning time management techniques this year, and can wholeheartedly recommend Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli and Getting Things Done by David Allen. I also finally read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and wish I had done so years ago. Other non-fiction notables were James Tiptree, Jr. (Julie Phillips), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig), and About Writing (Samuel Delany).