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2012 in Reading, Watching, and Consuming

So, how much did I manage to read, watch, and collect during 2012?

Books:

I begin each and every New Year with the simplest of reading goals: To try and read more books than I buy/get (and thus make some kind of visible dent in my always gigantic "To Be Read" stack).  Since I managed to do that in 2011, in 2012 I added a second goal: To read at least one book a week, for a somewhat impressive sounding total of 52 books.

I began the year with 197 books sitting in my "To Be Read" stack. 

Number of books read: 49.  Three books shy of my goal of 52, but six more books than I read last year.  According to my Good Reads account, however, I read an impressive sounding 57 books, because Good Reads counted 8 graphic novels, which I counted separately, see below.

First book of the year: Wolves of the Calla, the fifth book in the Dark Tower series.  

Last book of the year: Distant Thunders, the fourth book in the Destroyermen series.

Best book of the year: Reading Like A Writer, by Francine Prose.

Worst book of the year: Death Moon, by Alex S. Johnson.

The most read author(s) of 2012: Taylor Anderson (3), Joe R. Lansdale (3), Clive Cussler (2), Warren Fahy (2), Nancy Kilpatrick (2), and Stephen King (2).

Okay, that was what was taken off of my "To Be Read" stack.  But how much was added to it?

Total number of books bought in 2012: 22.

First book purchased: Raquel E. Gur and Ann Braden Johnson's helpful and informative resource guide, If Your Adolescent Has Schizophrenia.  As much as I would love to say that I bought and read it to research a writing project, it was for personal reasons.

Last book purchased: The Buffalo Hunter, by Peter Straub.  A double dip that I completely forgot about making, until I got an e-mail informing me that my order had shipped.  I don't even remember when I ordered the book.

Number of books given to me (as gifts) in 2012: 8.

Number of books solicited for review: 1.

Grand Total: 31. (Primary goal, to have read more than I got, achieved.)

Number of books in my "To Be Read" stack on January 1, 2013: 180 (A number that I'm okay with reaching, but I would have been a lot happier if I had managed to get it down to 177.)

The book that is taking me into 2013:  Just An Ordinary Day, by Shirley Jackson.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels:

Comic books/graphic novels read in 2012: 49.  That number looks awfully familiar to me.  It is also embarrassingly low.

First: House of Mystery relaunch, issue six.

Last:  How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You, by Matthew Inman.

A sync error erased my comic book buying list.  After much cursing and ranting, I just rolled my eyes and forced myself to let it go.  I hope that I will be able to tell you all about my comic book buying next year.

Movies:

Movies watched: 183.

I have already listed what I consider to be the 10 very best and 10 absolute worst movies that I saw during 2012.

First movie of 2012: Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  

Last movie of 2012:  Les Miserables.

Movies/DVDs bought in 2012: 33.

I filled in quite a few blank spots in my personal collection this year.  The first gap I filled (with my very first purchase of the year) was in the Third Doctor section of my ever growing collection of Doctor Who serials, Spearhead from Space (Story 51).  This was John Pertwee's very first adventure as the Doctor, and it was also the only original series serial to be shot entirely on film.  

But Doctor Who is a TV show.  The very first movie I purchased on DVD in 2012 was Lars Von Trier's excellent and unsettling film, Melancholia.

The last movie I purchased in 2012: You Only Live Twice.

Number of movies given to me (as gifts): 16.  (Ten of those movies were "given" to me when I started an UltraViolet account and downloaded the free copies of two movies I had received as Xmas gifts, but I don't know if I will be allowed to "keep" those freebies, or not.)

Soundtracks:

The number of soundtracks I bought in 2012: 24.

2012 got off to a grand start with several "Holy Grail" soundtracks getting a long thought to be impossible CD release.  The biggest and best of these grails were Harry Manfredini's scores for the first six Friday the 13th movies.  

But that boxed set was my second soundtrack purchases of 2012.  The very first was the expanded edition reissue of Leonard Rosenman's Academy Award nominated score for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

My last soundtrack purchase: John Barry's score for A View to a Kill.

Soundtracks given to me (as gifts): 1.  (Thomas Newman's score for Skyfall.)

Games:

I started gaming again the year (board and card, not video*).

Number of games I bought in 2012: 5.

First game I bought: Tribbles Customizable Card Game.

Last game I bought:  Gloom.

Game(s) given to me as gifts: 2.

Well, that's it for 2012, folks.  Until the end of the year, enjoy doing whatever it is that you enjoy doing most.

* I don't really enjoy video games, so I don't play them all that much.

2011 in Reading, Watching, and Consuming

Ever since I was in Middle [Earth] School I have attempted to keep a list of whatever I read, watch, or buy (to read or to watch) during the year.  I have done this because I have always been curious as to exactly how much I actually manage to read, watch, or buy in a given year.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe I just want to look and see if there are (or were) any trends, or something, in my reading, viewing, and buying, I guess.

The problem with doing so is that I read and watch and buy a lot of stuff, and keeping track of it always becomes so labor intensive that I invariably give up on my list keeping some time in (or before) February or March.

But then I got an iPad and it not only became a whole lot easier for me to keep a list, but it became more difficult to lose track of it.  Now, for the first time in the history of ever, I have been able to make it through an entire year with a complete list of all the books and the comics that I have read, the books that I have bought, and all the movies that I have watched and/or bought.  

And now that it is 2012, the time has come for me to go all James Reasoner and blog about my 2011 adventures in reading, watching, and buying:

Books Read:  I have no idea how many "To Be Read" books that I had stacked around the house at the start of 2011.  But in November I listed ALL of them in the "What I Am Reading" column and, at that point in the year, I had a whopping 200 books sitting around, "waiting" to read.  That is a lot of books.  

I read, from beginning to end, a total of 43 out of 44 books in 2011.  My first book of the year was Steve Alten's silly, albeit very entertaining, monster novel, MEG: Hell's Aquarium.  The last book that I finished reading before the arrival of the New Year was Gene Healy's flawed, but nonetheless fascinating, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, a review of which will be posted on Monday, January 9th.   

I cracked open book number 44  on Thursday, December 28th.  The book that is crossing over into the New Year with me is The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King.  

In terms of volume reading (i.e. writers and/or series that appeared more than once on my Books Read during 2011 list) I read three books by Joe R. Lansdale, three by Peter David, two anthologies of Robert E. Howard's short fiction, and the first two books in The Strain trilogy, by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan.  

The best book I read in 2011: Room by Emma Donoghue.  

The worst book I read in 2011 (Books I Could Not Finish do not qualify): Anthem by Ayn Rand.

Books Bought:  I bought 58 books in 2011.  Believe it or not, that is a really low number for me.  I used to buy two to three times that amount during any given year.  But now that I am self-employed, I have had to drastically (or responsibly) cut back on my impulse spending.  So it goes.

Seven of the books that I purchased in 2011 were not placed on my "To Be Read" list.  Six of them were books that I had already read (and "lost" at some point, for one reason or another) and that I just wanted to put back in my "permanent" library.  The seventh was a technical writing reference manual.  

That leaves 51 new books that were added to my "To Be Read" list.  Of the 51 remaining books that I bought in 2011, I managed to read 19 of them.  That leaves 32.  Deduct from that amount the remaining 25 books on my "Books Read" list and I end 2011 with seven more books than I had at the beginning of the year.  (Note:  For some strange reason I neglected to count the books that I received as gifts.  Those will be counted in 2012.)

That number could be a whole lot worse, believe me.  I have always bought an insane amount of books, more than I could ever hope to read, and every year I plan to cut back on my purchasing just enough so that I can manage to read a few more books than I buy.  Once again, that is my goal for the New Year.

2011 ended with 197 books on my "To Be Read" list.  Let's see if I can cut that number down a tad by December 31, 2012.  Okay?

The first book I bought in 2011: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, by Laird Koenig; one of the six "previously read" books that I regretted losing and restored to my permanent library.

The last book I purchased in 2011:  The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, by Stephen King.

Comic Books Read:  I did not make a list of all the comics that I bought in 2011, but I did make a list of all the comics that I read:  137.

First comic/graphic novel I read in 2011:  The Light (TPB)

Last comic book/graphic novel I read in 2011:  Hack/Slash #28.

Movies Watched:  You already know what I consider to be the very best and the absolute worst of the 73 "premiere movies" I saw in 2011.  But that is just a little over half of the 134 movies that I watched in 2011.  I watched another 61 "older movies" on DVD or on Netflix streaming.

The first movie I saw in 2011:  The abysmal Tron: Legacy.

The last movie I saw in 2011:  The sublime Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Movies Bought:  I have also cut back drastically (or responsibly) on my movie/television series set purchases.  In 2011 I bought a paltry 29 movies/television season sets.  Doing so brought my current movie and TV collection to an approximate 372 titles.  (Once again, I did not count the movies and season sets that I received as gifts.)

First movie bought in 2011:  George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead (via iTunes).

Last movie bought in 2011:  The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

While I am on the subject of movies, and before I sign off...

By the time I realized that I wasn't keeping a list of the original motion picutre soundtracks that I was buying during the year, it was far too late to keep track.  This year I am going to start counting.  

I do know that the very last soundtrack album that I bought in 2011 was Perseverance's limited edition reissue of Ennio Morricone's score for 1977's Exorcist II: The Heretic.

At the moment I have a library of some 440 motion picture soundtracks.  Granted some of those are multiples (thanks to my double dipping whenever a soundtrack I have on vinyl gets reissued on CD, or gets an expanded edition reissue) but I think that it is a safe bet that I will blow past the 500 mark before the end of 2012.

Let's see, shall we?

Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!