BOOKS:
What I Read:
Books:
*Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
*Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (my review)
*Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (my review)
*A Tale for Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Comics:
*Saga (2) by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
*Saga (3) by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
*Fatale: The Devil's Business by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips (my review)
*Fables (9) by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
*Princess Ugg (1) by Ted Naifeh, Warren Wucinich
Stats:
Books:
40% male / 60% female
80% American / 20% International
80%white/ 20%POC
25% ebook / 50% audiobook / 25% physical
75% fiction / 25% non-fiction
Comics:
**A quick note on stats. I've decided that this year I'm going to include artists in the stats as long as it's a single artist attached to the volume. The comics that tend to cycle through a series of artists within a volume will be left out completely because ugh, too complicated.**
80% male / 20% female
80% American / 20% International
80%white/ 20%POC
20% ebook / 80% physical
I decided to separate my comics from my books in 2015 because while I'm trying to diversify my reading, I'm not really trying as much when it comes to comics. And since comics are still such a male and American dominated field it's really throwing out my stats and that's just not helpful. I'm feeling pretty good about my efforts to up my diversity though. I still need to work on the non-white/non-American angle, but I'm happy to see so many ladies up above. Also great? That I really loved all of my January reads, except Will Grayson, Will Grayson which was fine but not as shiny and great as the other three. I've almost finished Jason Mott's The Returned, and after that I think I might read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel. Feb will be a HUGE month for me uni-wise, I start teaching and I finally submit my PhD to the faculty, so I think aiming for finishing more than two books is probably incredibly unrealistic, so let's just go with those for the time being.
FILMS:
What I saw:
*Birdman - directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts
*Taken 3 - directed by Olivier Megaton, starring Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen
*Into the Woods - directed by Rob Marshall, starring Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, James Corden, Emily Blunt
2015 doesn't hold a lot of excitement for me, movie wise. I'm looking forward to the new Mad Max and Star Wars, but I'm going through a little superhero fatigue, so I'm not as excited for Avengers or Antman as I would have been 2 years ago. Birdman was one of the films I was excited for (ugh Australia and our eternal wait for movies) and it really delivered. I thought Michael Keaton was amazing and Alejandro González Iñárritu is an amazing director. I loved how the use of a single tracking shot translated the chaos of a play backstage, as well as the dysfunctional nature of most of the characters. I'm really pulling for them to win at least a couple of the Oscars, regardless of how pointless the Oscars have actually become. Into the Woods was alright, I thought the performances and staging were pretty good, but cutting Repunzel's story took a lot of the thematic edge out of the film. And while I loved Meryl Streep, I think Bernadette Peters will always be my witch.
LIFE:
Like I mentioned above, I'm getting ready to submit to the faculty. After I present at the end of February they'll provide me with some feedback to implement before my proper submission in May. Here's hoping they like what I've done and done tear it to shreds. To give myself a reason to keep living, I started learning German using the Duolingo app. I'd really wanted to pick up Japanese again, but they don't offer it unfortunately. If you've been thinking of trying to learn a language, or are even travelling overseas and want to pick up some basics it's pretty fantastic. It's free to use and I really like the way it teaches. I feel like I've picked up more in 2 weeks than I did in my first four years of Japanese in school.
