What I read in 2020

2020 has certainly been a unique year. Who would've thought at the beginning of the year that we'd spend more time at home than we ever wanted to? If there's one silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it's been that I had more time to read. In 2020, I exceeded my original reading goal of 80 books by reading 99. Yes, I was that close to reading 100 books this year! The 99 books were also 15 more than the 84 I read in 2019.

The average rating for the books I read this year was 3.96 stars per book, broken down as follows:

• 5 stars - 30 books
• 4 stars - 35 books 
• 3 stars - 34 books 

The 3.96 stars average was a slight decrease from 4.01 stars in 2019.

This year, I had two reading goals. In January, I embarked on the NY Times Bestseller Challenge in the hopes of discovering some great new authors. It didn't quite work out that way, as I mentioned here. The average rating of the books I read for the NY Times Bestseller Challenge was only 3.5.

I started my second reading goal in the middle of the year, which was to read as many of the most popular mystery books of the past five years as I could. My average rating for the mysteries was 4.1, which helped boost my overall star rating for the year, but it wasn't quite enough to counteract the lower ratings from the bestsellers.

In my next post, I’ll reveal my top ten favorite books of 2020. Stay tuned!

2020 reading goals recap

I had two reading goals in 2020. I started off the year by wanting to read at least one NY Times Bestseller each month by an author who was new to me. In June, I added another goal to read as many books as I could on the Goodreads list of most popular mysteries of the past five years. It's time to see how each of those went.

I managed to reach my NY Times Bestseller goal despite not loving several of the books I read. Of the twelve books on the list, I only rated one of them as 5 stars. Four books were 4-star reads for me, and the remaining seven were rated 3 stars. The average rating of the NY Times bestsellers was 3.5.

In addition to being constrained by reading only authors who were new to me, another problem I ran into with the reading challenge was that the selection wasn't as broad as I expected. Two books, Where the Crawdads Sing (my only 5-star bestseller) and Little Fires Everywhere, dominated the charts. I didn't keep track of how many weeks they spent at the top of the bestseller lists, but my impression was that it was a lot.

On the mystery front, my experience was better. I read ten books on the Goodreads list since June. Three of them were 5-star reads, five received 4 stars, and only two were rated as 3 stars, for an average rating of 4.1. The mysteries were more entertaining than the bestsellers, and it helped that I was able to read books from authors I was already familiar with, although half of the books from this challenge were by authors new to me.

In my next post, I'll give a recap of all the books I read this year.

2020 holiday sale

2020 has been a dreadful year, but what better way to end it than with a book sale? Between now and the New Year, almost all of my e-books will be on sale for 99 cents or FREE on Amazon! Get these titles before prices go back up!

99 CENTS:

Beneath the Earth		All That Remains of Me		Beyond New Eden		Gifted

Transmissions		In the Hands of Children		Keep Your Enemies Close		George and the Galactic Games

A House in the Woods		Protect		Search		Rescue

FREE:

Drive*		Through a Tangled Wood		Celestial		Spectral Tales

Happy holidays, and happy reading!

* If you find that "Drive" isn't free on Amazon, you can download it for free from Smashwords.

NaNoWriMo 2020 recap

After taking a year off from the challenge, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. Instead of trying to write 50,000 words in November, I set a more realistic goal of 15,000, which meant an average of 500 words per day. I'm happy to say that I reached my goal... and then some! I finished the month with 20,037 words.

November started off strong for me. After the first ten days, I was on pace for over 20,000 words, but then a mid-month slump set me back. While 15,000 still looked achievable two-thirds of the way through, I didn't know if I could get to 20,000 anymore. Fortunately, with the Thanksgiving holidays and an extra two days off from work, I made a final push during the last Thursday through Sunday to get across the 20,000-word line.

All in all, I'm pleased with how NaNoWriMo went this year. Not only did I surpass my goal of 15,000 words, but more importantly, I've made great progress on my WIP. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, there's a good chance that I can finish the first draft by the end of the year! That is more important to me than any monthly word count goal.

NaNoWriMo 2020

It's November, which means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us again! After skipping NaNoWriMo last year due to a hectic work schedule, I'm back at it this year. It's not that I have more free time now, but I'm approaching NaNoWriMo differently than I did in the past. In the first three years that I participated, I was able to reach the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month. The next two years (2017 and 2018), I didn't. 2018 was particularly disappointing because I only wrote 18,907 words. I have no expectations that I will come close to 50,000 words this year. I may not even reach 2018's word count. In fact, the target I'm setting for myself is a modest 500 words a day, which will total 15,000 for the entire month of November. It's a goal that will force me to stretch myself, given my time constraints, but one that is achievable if I dedicate myself to it.

I'll report back at the end of the month on how I did. Wish me luck!

The Stand

While rearranging my bookshelves one day in an attempt to create more space for books (a topic for another blog post), I came upon a copy of Stephen King's The Stand. I don't remember when I bought it or why. However, when I saw it this time, I had an urge to read it. I've heard many Stephen King fans say that it's his best work, and if I'm not going to read it now, will I ever? 

The copy I own is the Complete and Uncut Edition in paperback format, weighing in at over 1,400 pages. As if I didn't have enough reading challenges for 2020 already, I'm adding another one: finishing The Stand by the end of the year. 

Despite everything negative that has happened this year, 2020 has been a good year for reading. I'm on track to read more books than last year, and there's a slim chance that I'll match the 100 books I read in 2015! So how could adding a 1,400+ book to my reading goals hurt? Check back at the end of the year to see how I do!

First person present tense

There used to be a time when I would only read stories written in the third person past tense point of view. Most books are written that way, so it wasn't a challenge to indulge my preference. On the occasions when I read a book with a first person point of view, the narration threw me off because I wasn't used to seeing the story take place through the eyes of a single character. It was even stranger to read a story written in present tense because past tense was how I thought stories were "supposed" to be told.

The Hunger Games opened my eyes to the allure of first person present tense. The combination of a gripping story, great writing, and the selected point of view made for, to me, as close to a perfect novel as I've read. It still remains my favorite YA novel of all time. I don't know how effective The Hunger Games would've been if it wasn't written in first person present tense. Suzanne Collins's choice drew me closer to Katniss Everdeen than I had been to any other character I can think of, and telling the story in present tense made the action come alive in a way that I don't believe past tense could have.

Since The Hunger Games, I've read a lot more books that use the first person present tense. I don't know if it's become a more popular choice among authors or if I'm gravitating toward books written that way. I'm embracing writing in first person present tense as well. The short stories in my Driver series were my first published works using that point of view, and they were fun to write. While I've written more stories since then in other points of view (primarily third person past tense and first person past tense), I'm working on a new project that's best suited for first person present tense. After abandoning my last manuscript (written in third person past tense), this one has been more fun to write, and I attribute some of that to the point of view.

Do you have a preferred point of view in the stories that you read or write? Are there any that you dislike?

 

I miss being around physical books

 

It's been over five months since I've last visited a library or been inside a bookstore. That's more than five months where I haven't been surrounded by physical books, and I miss them. I might go as far as to say that I miss being around physical books the way some people miss being around their friends during this pandemic. That's not strange, right?

Thanks to the Libby app, I've still been able to borrow e-books from the library, but e-books aren't the same as physical books. Also, I can't roam around the Libby app like I can walk between the bookshelves at a library or bookstore and see all the books that I haven't read before. I have my share of physical books at home, but I'm still a long way from owning enough to capture the feeling of a library/bookstore. (But one day...)

Even when libraries and bookstores re-open, the near-term experience will be different from what I'm used to. I'll have to keep a safe distance away from other patrons, and I'll hesitate to pick up books at random because I won't know who has touched them before I did. However, I look forward to the day when I'll be able to be surrounded by physical books again.

Admitting defeat

For the past two years, I've been working on a novel. It was going to be my first thriller, a different genre than the YA I normally write. I chose it because thrillers are my second favorite genre to read, and I had an idea that I thought would make for a great story. After chipping away at it for so long, I'm finally setting it aside. Giving up on something is hard for me. I'm the type of person who insists on finishing what he started, even if he doesn't want to. I don't stop projects before they're done. I don't DNF books (except on rare occasions), even if I don't like them.

What finally made me stop working on this WIP was how messy the manuscript was getting. I started out with an outline, which made complete sense to me before I began drafting. As I started writing, however, I spotted holes in the plot. I'd fix one plot hole, and another would pop up. It got to the point where I feared the story was going to be an incoherent mess that no one would enjoy reading it. Now that the story is behind me, I can see that I'm not yet skilled enough to pull off the thriller I had in mind. I hope that I'll be a good enough writer in the future to revisit the manuscript again, but for the time being, I'm admitting defeat.

The good news is that I just started working on a new story. I'm going back to writing YA again, and two weeks in, it's going well. Then again, the first two weeks of writing the thriller were also fun and problem-free. :-)

A new reading goal

In April, Goodreads published a list of the 40 most popular mysteries of the past five years. I was surprised to find that I had read almost half the books listed. Many of the others were books that I want to read but haven't had a chance to yet. Given how my NY Times Bestseller reading challenge is going, I decided to add a new reading goal this year: read as many of the 40 most popular mysteries as I can. I won't add any restrictions regarding the authors of the books, and I won't necessarily read them in order but rather based on their availability. Given that this is my second-favorite genre to read (after YA speculative fiction), I'm optimistic that I'll find more books I enjoy on this list than the NY Times Bestseller list.

The problem with my NY Times Best Seller Reading Challenge

At the beginning of the year, I posted that I'd be embarking on a new reading challenge to read at least one NY Times Bestseller each month by an author whose books I hadn't read yet. Since these would all be bestsellers, I thought I'd discover some great new authors. Five months and five books into the challenge, the results aren't encouraging. I've liked only one of the five. Wading through the others reminded me of the books I was required to read in high school English classes, i.e., I wanted to get through them as quickly as possible and not ever think about them again.

My conclusion, however, isn't that all bestsellers are ill-suited for me. The problem is my stipulation that the books in the reading challenge be from authors who are new to me. During the first five months of this year, I also read two bestsellers written by authors I've read before, and they were both very enjoyable. It makes sense. Most of the books that topped the bestseller lists were by authors whose books I've read before. The reason I avoided the ones written by authors new to me were because I didn't think I'd enjoy them. It turns out I was right

What does this mean for the reading challenge? I'm still going to stick to the rules I laid out for myself at the beginning of the year. Who knows, maybe I'll still find a gem or two? However, my expectations won't be as high just because the books are bestsellers.

How the pandemic is changing my life

 

For those like me who live in Northern California, it's been a month since we started sheltering in place. It was rough at first, even though I'm a boring person who didn't go out much even before COVID-19. However, I still went to the office for work, exercised at the gym, visited the library, and dined in restaurants. I've done none of those things for the past month. While I'm becoming more used to the shelter-in-place routine, things are still different than they were before.

I believe that, like every crisis we've faced throughout history, we will get through this one too. Weeks or months from now, we will be able to return to the life that we had before. However, as with all major events, COVID-19 will change how we live our lives. Personally, I'm already noticing a few different ways that I view things.

• Social distancing - I've become so used to keeping six feet away from everyone that when I watch a movie on TV now, I cringe when the characters are close together. Why are you talking in each other's faces? Why can't you have that exchange while standing six feet apart? If social distancing is so ingrained in me now, it'll take me a while to feel comfortable being physically near strangers again. I shudder to think of the day I have to ride the train to go to the office again.
• Delivery services - I rarely used delivery services before the pandemic. I bought everything in person at the stores, and I preferred eating at restaurants or ordering take-out from the counter instead of having my meals delivered. With sheltering in place, I've been ordering something to be delivered almost everyday. A new world of options has opened up to me, and I have a feeling that after it's safe to go out in public again, I'll use more delivery services than I have in the past.
• Virtual meetings - Before the pandemic, I'd have virtual meetings with co-workers who were located in different cities. Now, every meeting is virtual. My wife has been holding virtual meetings with co-workers for the first time. It's a trend that already started before COVID-19, but virtual meetings will become more and more commonplace for us.
• Entertainment at home - In my last blog post, I mentioned that one of the benefits of this pandemic is that I should have more time to read, and indeed, I have. I've also discovered some good movies and TV shows that are available from the comforts of the living room. Does this mean I'll always stay home for entertainment? Probably not, but now I know it's possible to keep myself entertained without leaving the house.

How has the pandemic changed the way you view how you live your life?

Benefits of a pandemic

We live in scary times. The coronavirus has dominated the headlines the past few weeks. People are dying around the world. Sports events, conferences, concerts, and other gatherings are getting canceled. The stock market plunged. Disneyland closed. While there's certainly a lot of negative impact from this current pandemic, I wanted to take a look at some of the silver linings.

1. Public places are less crowded - I do hope that businesses that are currently suffering from the pandemic see a rebound soon. That said, I'm enjoying the fact that public places I normally go to (gym, library, restaurants) are less crowded than normal. The anti-social introvert in me can get used to not being around too many people. :-)
2. Working from home - The company I work for recently recommended that we work from home. While there are pros and cons to working from home, on the whole, I'm liking it so far. The biggest benefit for me is not having to take the commute train anymore. Not only does that save two hours of my time each day, but the train was a health hazard even before the coronavirus!
3. More focus on cleanliness - Yes, we should've been washing our hands all along, but it's nice to see that everyone is now more concerned about cleanliness. Restaurants, hotels, and airlines I've patronized have also sent me emails assuring me of their cleaning policies (although the fact that so many businesses have my email address is cause for a different kind of concern). If there's one thing that I hope the pandemic leaves us with, it's a renewed emphasis on cleanliness.
4. More time to read (and write) - Going out less? Don't have to commute to work anymore? All of that adds up to more time at home, and what better way to spend that time than reading! It's too soon for me to notice yet, but I do plan to take advantage of this period of "social distancing" to read more and to catch up on writing.

What has it been like for you during the coronavirus situation? How are you coping?
Stay safe, everyone!

Leap day

Happy Leap Day! It's not often we get a February 29, so to celebrate this day that comes only once every four years (roughly), I researched some questions I've had about leap years, and I wanted to share what I found with all of you.

1. Why do we have leap years?
This one is easy, and you probably already know the answer. The Earth takes more than 365 days to orbit the sun. To be more precise, rounding to three decimal places, it takes 365.242 days for our planet to circle the sun. If we didn't have leap years, our calendars will eventually go out of sync with the seasons.

2. What's the rule for determining if a year is a leap year?
In most cases, years that are divisible by 4 are leap years, e.g., 2020. The exceptions are century years, which have to be divisible by 400, e.g., 1600, 2000, 2400. The reason that not every century year is a leap year is because it doesn't quite take 365 1/4 days for the Earth to complete its orbit. If we had leap years every four years, we'd wind up with too many.

3. How often do people who are born on Feb 29 celebrate their birthdays?
I've wondered about this for a long time. If you're born on Feb, do you get a birthday party only once every four years? Apparently, people who are born on leap day celebrate their birthdays on Feb 28 or Mar 1. If you happen to be born on Feb 29, I'd love to hear about when/how you celebrate your birthday!

4. Any other interesting leap year trivia?
I'm sure there are lots that you can find by searching the internet. I found this fact pretty astonishing though. According to Guinness World Records, the Keogh family of the UK has three generations of family members with birthdays on Feb 29. Peter Anthony Keogh (Feb 29, 1940), son Peter Eric Keogh (Feb  29, 1964), and granddaughter Bethany (Feb 29, 1996) all share the same birthday. I wonder what those birthday parties are like!

NY Times Best Seller Reading Challenge

One of my favorite aspects of past reading challenges has been reading books by authors who are new to me and (sometimes) whom I wouldn't ordinarily read otherwise. I was exposed to some of my favorite books through reading challenges. They include Legend by Marie Lu, This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales, and Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen (which I read as part of last year's reading challenge).

I have high expectations for this year's reading challenge, which I'm calling the NY Times Best Seller Reading Challenge. At least once a month, I will read a book that made it to the top of the NY Times Best Seller charts on either the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction, Hardcover Fiction, or Paperback Trade Fiction lists within the last six months. The catch is, it has to be a book by an author I've never read before. Since a lot of people must have liked the books in order for them to reach the #1 spot on a NY Times best seller list, I'm hoping that, by the end of the year, some more books by new authors will join my list of favorites.

As always, I will let everyone know how this reading challenge went at the end of the year. Happy reading in 2020!