ByGD
I don’t know if Seattle Public Library usually does this. But this was the first year that I saw their year-end roundup of most popular reads. The library is an important part of my reading life; my borrowing history shows that I checked out 37 books in 2022. So I thought it would be fun to see how my library usage compared with everyone else’s.
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March is a little late to be summarizing the previous year’s reading. But I was busy in January and forgot in February, so here we are. I like looking back at my book-year regardless of when I get around to it. So if you have any interest in my reading life, here we go. My 2020 in books.
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Another year, another Goodreads Challenge. Since I started reading so many graphic novels, setting my challenge goal has been a challenge in itself. On the one hand, I happily recognize graphic novels as real books. On the other hand, it takes about one hour to read a volume of manga, where the average novel takes about 12 hours. So I set a ridiculously high goal that includes both, but I try to sort my results so I can see how much “regular reading” I did apart from “graphic reading.” I’m probably the only person who cares about my reading data, but since I got to read a lot of interesting books last year, you might want to read on to discover some cool stories.
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China is better known for sprawling developments of faceless apartment towers, and for good reason: there are miles of them in every city. But Qingdao also has some of the best street art of any city I’ve ever visited, possibly including Reykjavik, and many of the best murals are on apartment buildings.
Qingdao is in Shandong province, which the wonderful book Oracle Bones informs me is where the titular oracle bones were found. Those carved bones are the earliest evidence of writing in the world. Shandong province was also the birthplace of Confucius, whose writings are a pillar of Chinese scholarship. So it’s not surprising that even their street art has a literary bent.
{By the way, a recent Google “On this day” alert sent me down a rabbit hole of neglected photos from the 2015 homeland trip I took with my then 10-year-old daughter. You can expect to see pictures of China in this Sunday 1000 Words space for a long time to come.}