{"id":22863,"date":"2024-01-13T17:02:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T22:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22863"},"modified":"2024-01-13T17:05:45","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T22:05:45","slug":"reading-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22863","title":{"rendered":"Reading in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>I ultimately finished 47 books in 2023, a number which was better than what I&#8217;ve come to expect and fairly close to what I&#8217;d hoped for.<\/li><li>The list of books seemed very American until I started looking into the particulars. A surprising number of the authors were from other countries. There were <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A.A._Milne\">A.A. Milne (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Stewart_(novelist)\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Stewart_(novelist)\">Mary Stewart (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kenneth_Grahame\">Kenneth Grahame (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/heatherfawcettbooks.com\/about\/\">Heather Fawcett (Canadian)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Stroud\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Stroud\">Jonathan Stroud (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Margery_Sharp\">Margery Sharp (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Corlett\">William Corlett (British)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Margaret_Mahy\">Margaret Mahy (from New Zealand)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amal_El-Mohtar\">Amal El-Mohtar (Canadian)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lynne_Reid_Banks\">Lynne Reid Banks (British)<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salman_rushdie\">Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British-American)<\/a>. One book was translated&#8211; <em>Comet in Moominland<\/em> by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tove_Jansson\">Tove Jannson (Swedish-speaking Finnish)<\/a>&#8211;making the list feel even more multinational. I didn&#8217;t read any books in French, though, which is sad. I have quite a few unread ones, and I will try to read at least a couple in 2024.<\/li><li>Only one book was nonfiction (<em>How to Write One Song<\/em> by Jeff Tweedy). As I said <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22359\">last year<\/a> after reading just one nonfiction book, &#8220;Lackluster. I can do better.&#8221;<\/li><li>I did not finish the list of <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?page_id=4630\">Top 100 Children&#8217;s Books<\/a>, but as of the end of 2023 there were only 7 left. I have since finished one more and am in the middle of another. I would be very surprised if I don&#8217;t finish the list in 2024.<\/li><li>I finished only one book of poetry (<a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22591\">Musical Tables by Billy Collins<\/a>). I forgot that I was supposed to read a poem per day. Oops.<\/li><li>28 of the books got A-level grades. There were too many memorable ones for me to be able to pick a favorite.<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22495\"><em>Where the Red Fern Grows<\/em> by Wilson Rawls<\/a> was the only book I graded lower than B-, and it was definitely my least favorite for the year. Because it was on the list of Top 100 Children&#8217;s Books, I had to read it, and though I didn&#8217;t enjoy it, I&#8217;m glad to have it crossed off the list.<\/li><li>I read seven books with the word &#8220;Magician&#8221; in the title\/subtitle. That was totally deliberate and led me to read a few books I wouldn&#8217;t have otherwise, which was all for the good.<\/li><li>I wish I&#8217;d written more book reviews. It would be great if I could manage to write at least a few lines about each book that I finish in 2024.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ultimately finished 47 books in 2023, a number which was better than what I&#8217;ve come to expect and fairly close to what I&#8217;d hoped for. The list of books seemed very American until I started looking into the particulars. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=22863\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22863"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22874,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863\/revisions\/22874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}