I didn't make my goal of 150 books. That's ok, it was a stretch goal. I got close and this has been a year that tests a person. There was the planned massive cross-country road trip this summer that spanned almost 4 weeks and sucked down plenty of other logistical time. It was a wonderful experience that I'm sure I will think back on often. On the other side of things, there was the Fall semester of school. I often comment on how being a teacher is a demanding profession but this just wasn't the same.
Being the head of a department in a school is a position of leadership and responsibility, but that doesn't mean I necessarily have control. When we lost two English teachers over the summer, it wasn't a huge surprise. It's been a hairy few years and things have been brewing for a while. Neither of my teachers left in a good way, but I can't blame them for their choices and I wish them both well. One of their replacements is wonderfully competent. She's green but she's going to be wonderful. We hired her in May. The second position we didn't know we needed to fill until a week before pre-planning. Because of the situation, I didn't get to meet any of the candidates.
To say it was a disaster is probably casting disasters under a bad light. When things don't work out with an employee, many different things can be at fault. I've seen bad fits and unhappy employees before. This was something else. Suffice it to say, it's probably a blessing on all sides that the situation only lasted 7 weeks, but when the new hire left, they left a mess and we had no replacement on hand. When this happen, it falls on the department head to fill in the gaps. I went from usual teacher busy to busy with double the workload. 50 hour weeks became70 and I did it for 7 weeks while I assessed the damage and helped the long term sub prep. I did all the grading for both my set and the open position's. Once we hired a replacement, it all shifted to training - still busy but more positive feeling.
When I stop to consider it, it's actually a marvel that I got as close as I did to my goal. I also learned a lot about my own capabilities. I can work harder and longer for my students than I ever thought I was capable of. I can deal with a difficult situation and maintain a mostly impartial sense of judgement. I also learned that my capacity for forgiveness is uncommon. I let go of the anger almost immediately after it happened. I find myself more mystified, but that's not new; I've never really understood what makes other people tick.
To sum up, crazy year. Tough year. Yet, still a good one. I don't think I could have gotten through it without my reading. A good book is like a band-aid for the brain. A story provides relief in the form of escapism. It provides context and perspective in the form of the trials and tribulations the main characters suffer through. Sometimes a good book can nudge the reader towards understanding or insight. Books can be a kind of haphazard therapy.
In a more subtle sense of success, I lent out and successfully recommended more books to more different people than any year prior. Finding a book for someone else is a tricky proposition because you need to not only understand the person you are recommending to, you have to have a sense of what kind of narrative appeals to them. It can be hard and it takes time and patience on both sides.
In terms of books - I've read 142 books this year (I might manage one more before the new year, maybe not). Here are my favorites:
Far From the Tree by Robert Benway - I keep handing this book to people. It's a story of three siblings who were put up for adoption at a young age. They are now all teens in different home situations. Grace didn't even know that she was adopted until her own unplanned pregnancy. Once she finds out, she wants to find her siblings. The novel covers that quest. It's a bittersweet read. While it all turns out in a kind of best case scenario, the story doesn't hide from the realities of an imperfect system. It had me crying from about page 20 on.
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason - a kind of twisted recast fairy tale turned into a sci-fi intrigue. Rory Thorne is a princes with a fairy tale blessing at her naming complete with real fairies. When her father is assassinated, things go down hill and Rory finds herself in an arranged marriage to end an interstellar war. Unfortunately, when she gets to her new home, it isn't clear that her intended prince is even still alive. This is great and the sequel is good too.
Still Life by Louise Penny - I'm not sure about the whole series, but this in one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time. It's set in Montreal, in a small village where someone dies. Inspector Gamache is sent to figure out what happened in the dead of a Montreal winter with a trainee detective with unclear motives.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik - The whole series is wonderful. This is like a grown up scary version of Hogwarts run amok. Young magic users enter the Scholomance for training. There are no teachers and the school seems to be trying very hard to kill its students, but it's better than being out in the world where monsters hunt young magic users as a morning snack. If that's not enticing enough, the main character El has the capacity to be the most powerful sorceress in the world, but only if she's willing to give into her dark side which she flat out refuses to do.
Machine Man by Max Barry - a weird read that kind of lingers. Charlie Neumann is an engineer who loses a leg in an industrial accident. He becomes obsessed with his prosthetic and soon views it as an opportunity for an upgrade. But why stop at one leg? No one really understands what he's doing except his prosthetics expert Lola Shanks. Thus begins a very odd love story.
The Cassidy Blake Series by Victoria Schwab - A YA ghost story. Cassidy Blake can see restless ghosts ever since she died and was brought back. Her best friend Jacob is a ghost in fact. However, when she goes with her parents to Edinburgh, she discovers that her ability comes with a price and a responsibility. The first book is set in Edinburgh, the second in Paris, and the final in New Orleans.
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry - Another Barry book and also odd. Start by imagining that every decision a person is presented with spawns a whole universe for each choice. Basic multiverse theory. Ok, so in this novel there is a very small group of people who have figured out how to jump between universes into the different versions of themselves. One of these jumpers is a serial killer and his victim type is a woman named Madison May. Now imagine you are a reporter who has to report on the grisly murder of a woman named Madison May. Your name is Felicity in this scenario, by the way. You bump into Madison's murder and the next thing you know you are in a different version of the world that is just a little different and Madison is still alive. What would you do? I would try to save her.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz - A YA that won almost all the awards. I tend to be a little leery of something with that much acclaim but it's really quite good. This is a coming of age novel mixed with a buddy story spiced with a hint of romance. Dante and Ari have very little in common, at least on the surface. Ari is guarded. He's a loner. He doubts himself and he thinks about his older brother in prison. Dante is articulate and loves poetry. He has a perfect family and somehow he's just the person to break down Ari's walls. It's a good story and not quite like anything I had read before. It's nice when something lives up to its press.
Quest for A Maid by Mary Hendry - I'm not sure where I picked this one up. It's been sitting on my stack forever and I finally got around to reading it. Historical fiction requires a deft balance between historical detail and story. Too much detail and the story is hard to follow, the pacing gets bogged down and it's all boring. Too little detail and the setting is lost. Hendry is a master. I now know so much more about Scottish history and culture, yet the story flowed just fine. It's about a girl named Meg who hears her sister plot the murder of the King of Scotland by witchcraft. The resulting power struggle pulls Meg into the world of European politics in a way that she's not ready for but will have to navigate. The book is intended for middle grade readers but I would have no hesitation handing it to an adult; it's that good.
Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke - Traditional epistolary novels can be a bit of a drag, but digital communication has breathed new life into the form. Several People Are Typing is about a guy named Gerald who gets his consciousness stuck in the internal Slack channels of his public relations firm. He's lost connection to his body but his productivity is way up and his bosses are more than happy to let the situation continue. It's bizarre, it's nutty, it's absurd, and it's a lot of fun.
If you are interested in looking at a complete page of the my year's reads, you can find that here :-)
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