reading meme!

[silverflight8]

I stole this from cloudsinvenice without asking so you should go read her entry first --> http://cloudsinvenice.livejournal.com/43998.html.

==

1. How many books did you read this year?
I finished 38 books :(

a) fic
b) time

I should run a regression on how many books I read:


books = α + β₁(hours at work) + β₂(hours of other work) + β₃(words of fic read) + β₄(number of visits to library) + ε

alpha is clearly > 0.
β₁(hours at work) < 0 because I can't read at work
β₂(hours of [things I have to do]) < 0 also.
β₃(ln(words of fic read)) < 0, because more fic = less novels
β₄(number of visits to library) > 0 because more visits to library = more books read

I suspect that β₂(hours of other work) has the greatest impact, honestly. Significant! Very significant! Also, I'm debating "β₅" which would stand for the time I'm spending reading Les Mis because it's consumed half my reading time and I am still 49% through it, according to Moon+ reader (Marius has only just joined les amis de l'ABC).

I am really actually tempted to do this. I can run a regression pretty easily, I can see how many pages of books (I don't think "# of books read" would be as informative) I read a week, compile a couple weeks' worth of data, and stuff it into Excel (no more STATA, boo). Then kapow! Actual numbers instead of alphas and betas everywhere.

Except, of course, omitted variable bias...but whatever. I can't be bothered to use 2SLS or IV.

ANYWAY.


2. Fiction to Non-Fiction Ratio?
I generally include only fiction, but I did include Freakonomics by Levitt this time.

3. Male/Female authors?
17 single works by female authors
18 single works by male authors (...ten of which were Garth Nix but anyway)
2 which were written by men and women together
1 which was written by multiple people--some anonymous but most likely men (collection of medieval fabliaux)

4. Books by People of Color?
I have no idea...?

5. Books in translation/a second language?
I'm still in the midst of Les Miserables but it's not on the list because I'm not done. So it doesn't count. Er, the fabliaux I guess. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

6. How many were borrowed from the library?
All but Siddhartha (borrowed from a friend) and Freakonomics, borrowed from my mother.

7. Oldest book?
Fabliaux for sure.

8. Newest book?
I gather that Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons is the most recent? Although I'm halfway through Kate Elliott's Cold Steel (summer 2013) but I'm not done :(

9. Longest book title?
A Natural History of Dragons I think.

10. Shortest book title?
Aenir by Garth Nix.

11. Most by any one author?
Eight by Garth Nix /o\

12. Favorites?
*Among Others by Jo Walton (historical/modernish)
*Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis (mythology? historical?)
*The Thief by Megan Whalen-Turner (fantasy)
*Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman (fantasy)

13. Least Favorite?
I generally ditch books I hated (DNF with great prejudice!) so that Agatha H and the Airship novel (terribad) doesn't count. Guns of Avalon (confusing and uneven). Lots of really good books this year.

14. How many were rereads?
Quite a few, actually, especially like the six books that comprise The Seventh Tower.

15. Favorite character?
This is an impossible question.

16. Favorite scene?
The one where Lewis titledrops Till We Have Faces. That was amazing.

17. Favourite quote?
Ditto.

18. Most inspirational in terms of your own writing?
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. I really liked the Ludovician and other thought sharks, and I enjoy the way he layers description. Lewis' is my favourite but he is out of my league. And I think my own journaling is way too close to Mori Phelps' (Among Others) to be inspirational; it was a bit strange actually.

19. Which would you read again?
I reread a lot. Most of them I would quite willingly reread. Most are because I thought they were meh (e.g. Agents of Change, as much as I wanted to like it), or because I didn't like them much (Spindle's End's ending).

==
(If you want to do this meme, here's a little textbox.)
1. How many books did you read this year? 2. Fiction to Non-Fiction Ratio? 3. Male/Female authors? 4. Books by People of Color? 5. Books in translation/a second language? 6. How many were borrowed from the library? 7. Oldest book? 8. Newest book? 9. Longest book title? 10. Shortest book title? 11. Most by any one author? 12. Favorites? 13. Least Favorite? 14. How many were rereads? 15. Favorite character? 16. Favorite scene? 17. Favourite quote? 18. Most inspirational in terms of your own writing? 19. Which would you read again?

Comments

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

I HAVE SPENT A LOT OF TIME ANALYZING REGRESSIONS I don't know if you can tell *cough*

Aww, well, I keep a record and I used to read ~100 or more a year (though admittedly there were a lot of shorter novels and romance novels too). So it's a bit...small this year.

Yeah, exactly! Long books take...a long time.

I am! That's probably what's taking me so long, I keep winding up in sections where Hugo stops talking about any characters and starts talking about Waterloo while in the back of my mind I go "..." because omg Hugo, get back to Javert and Cosette already! (He did this on a cliffhanger once too.)

Hee, fair assumption. Though I'm heartened that the Hunchback of Notre Dame is thinner; I don't understand how he managed to write so many in the first place if they're all as enormous as Les Mis.

Do snag the meme and tell me what you read :)

[sherrilina.livejournal.com]

Lol, even though Hunchback is only 520 pages or so, he still managed to put in a bunch of long tangents about the city of Paris and the cathedral1 ;) Luckily though when we read that work in English class in 7th grade they had us skip the worst of those passages in the reading assignments. I was not a big fan of the book, although there were some aspects I liked: Frollo is more complex and interesting--he adopts Quasimodo not because he murdered his mom and got guilt-tripped by a priest, but because the baby made him think of his own baby brother he was raising, and he thought if he didn't help this boy something could happen to his own brother. Also a character chooses to save the goat Djali over Esmeralda, lol forever. But generally I felt like Les Mis was Hugo's redemption for writing the awful Hunchback...:p

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting, I've never read the Hunchback before! It makes sense that the characterization would be more complex though--520 pages is more space than a movie. And I think the "reminded of family" sounds much more plausible. A way to make him villainous but human--that's really what I've noticed, there's always a reason behind terrible people. There are horrible institutions twisted by men, but not people you can only understand as evil (eg even though I badly want to punch Thénardier in the FACE he is undeniably plausible, more's the pity).

[sherrilina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was surprised as well! I think in the books that Frollo's worst crime is his gross obsession with/sexual harassment of Esmeralda--he's not all "GYPSY GENOCIDE AND CHILD ABUSE FTW!!" the way he is in the film, iirc...I still love him as a character though in both versions. He has long been my favorite Disney villain! ;)

Thernardier, meanwhile, is amusing but just plain awful.

But yeah, I prefer some complexity to my villains, not like in HP where the main villain is just BORN evil due to inbreeding. *sigh*

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting! I confess I have never actually watched the movie; I only know the one song Esmeralda sings and the opening song (both of which I really like).

I want to PUNCH HIM. Or rather, prevent him from doing all those horrible things. Ugh! I hate them all!

I think Voldemort worked really well in the first three, four books, when it was more children's novel and the magic-whimsy fit in. So Hagrid is rather alarming later (in the lens of rationality of the later books) but a perfectly fine character in book 1. /has thoughts about HP