Wednesday, January 01, 2014

2013 Year End Wrap-up

[This is actually being written on February 12, 2014, I just wanted to get it into the correct order.]

Ugh, rough year.  My worst year since I started the 50 books challenge.  I do have a good excuse, which is that I got onto the procreation train in late 2012 and a lot of my time and energy has been dedicated towards raising a rocking little girl.  Honestly, though, I can't fairly attribute being a father to my dropoff in productivity, at least not directly.  The time when I should have been reading was spent dicking around on the internet.  Now it could be that the sleep deprivation and the energy consumption meant that I was just not capable of doing anything more than +1'ing Google+ posts and scrolling through my Twitter feed.  Still, you look at the Sun King, who also jumped on the daughter bandwagon (possible to say that I made the waters safe for him? ;) ) and his productivity has barely dropped off.  I even had a nice burst in August where I had a fighting chance of approaching 50, but I just bailed in the fall and winter.

I'm too lazy to figure out my numbers, but they have certainly taken a major dip.  In terms of what I actually read, nothing really stands out.  I basically added on to threads that I had established in years past.  Deadly Edge stood out as a front runner for top 3 Parker books.  Daniel Dafoe's Journal of a Plague Year was interesting, entertaining and educational, as was Bare-Faced Messiah about L. Ron Hubbard and the sick origins of the Dianetics cult.

2014, well we shall see.  As I write this, I do feel that I have gotten the taste for the printed word back.  But my daughter's advanced pre-post-apocalyptic preparedness training regime will continue to be a priority and my job looks to also be quite rich and busy this year.  I'm too cowardly and weak-livered to actually make any kind of commitment, but in the back of my head I shall try to choose reading over noodling on the internet.  My appreciation to all of you who may read this.