A Year in the Library - Stats

I'm going to post two A Year in the Library posts, one with stats, one with more of a reflection how the year has gone for me. Here then are the stats for the year (with the 2013 stats to compare). These are all taken from the excel spreadsheet I use to track my reading during the year (and yes I have an excel spreadsheet I use to track my reading! :)) :
 

Reading

 
Month by Month

Month	N° of Books 2014	N° of Books 2013
January	32	21
February	28	22
March	29	33
April	25	30
May	20	21
June	24	18
July	21	21
August	26	27
September	24	28
October	29	20
November	34	21
December	23	22
Total	315	284

Most months I read more than in 2013 and overall I had a jump of about 30 books between 2013 and 2014.

By Genre

Book Shelf	N° of Books 2014	N° of Books 2013
Fantasy	50	79
Sci-fi	94	75
Graphic Novel	33	49
Non-Fic	52	34
Horror	11	3
Crime & Thriller	36	33
Other	39	11
	315	284

A huge jump in sci-fi book read this year, mainly because I started another reread of Star Wars and Star Trek books. I may separate them out next year to get a better feel for exactly how much non-media related SF I read. Otherwise, I am really happy to have read so much non-fic and other (historical, literary, etc.) over 2014.

Number of 5 star books read: 40

Number of 4 star books read: 147

Number of 3 star books read: 118

Number of 2 star books read: 9

Blog

Number of books reviewed: 54
Number of Top Ten Tuesday posts: 22
Number of "in the Library" monthly review posts: 3
Number of New on the Library Shelves posts: 13

So a big improvement on last year in term of number of posts, but still not as good as I had hoped! :)

I'm Baaack...

Well, after a two week holiday up in the mountains with hardly any access to internet, I'm finally back home (just in time for the 14th July weekend fireworks!)

Holidays were good, though the weather could have been better. Still, I was able to get some reading done and wrote a few reviews which I'll be getting up in the next few days. Hope to be able to get back to a more regular update schedule in the next few weeks.

So... How have you been?

:)

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Amazon

Goodreads

 

 The world begins anew, starting now.

In an unspecified future, two women are drawn together across two continents. In a world that has moved away from the former powers of Europe and America, and is now centred on Africa and Asian, the two primary continents are joined by a vast energy bridge. As one young woman flees her past in Asia by going on a foolhardy trek across the dangerous bridge, a young girl is saved by a group of missionaries and traders and carried off on a trip across Africa. Told in first person by both women, The Girl in the Road combines cutting edge science fiction with a mind-bending plot to tell the story of two unimitable women and the ties that bind them together...

I picked up The Girl in the Road as a Netgalley ARC, one that I was delighted to receive. I had been hearing good things about the book, described in numerous blogs as a mind-bending science fiction novel, dealing with identity, family, gender and the fallout of our own modern world. Set in a world where climate change has forever shifted the axis of power from the familiar Europo-American centre to an Africano-Asian combination, The Girl in the World describes what could be a logical future from our perspective. Monica Byrne does a great job developping her world, throwing in enough new technology to satisfy any sci-fi fan, while spending a lot more time on the social and political developments. This is a world in turmoil, chaos that both of our main characters are involved in.

The two main characters seem to be worlds apart in more than one sense as the novel begins. Meena is a grown woman, struggling with her past mistakes and her present fears, who decides after she is attacked in her home to go on a trek across the Arabian Sea on a vast energy bridge. Mariama, meanwhile, is a young girl whose prostitute mother told her to run and who finds herself crossing the Sahara with a disparate group of missionaries, traders and mercenaries. As the story progresses it seems clear  that the two women are linked, though exactly what the link is will probably surprise most every reader.

While the story is sometimes hard to follow due to diversions into hallucinatory visions, and can become bogged down in a series of encounters that Meena has on the bridge, the writing is such that the story is constantly propelled along, leaving the reader happily following the trail of breadcrumbs that Byrne has laid out. Byrne's imagination is at full throttle throughout and she makes great use of the technology she creates. Sexuality plays a huge role, either in flashback or more immediately during the journey, and Byrne does not shy away from confronting the complexity of sexual relations and desire. While both main characters are definitely female, Byrne creates a society where changed genders, transgenders and anything in between are frequent and accepted.

Social and political chaos plays a large role in the book, especially in the latter parts of the novel when Mariama reaches her destination. As she grows into a young woman, she becomes involved with riot and revolution, which eventually brings her into contact with the man who will change her life and cement her connection with Meena. It is trying to make sense of this connection that really propels the novel forward and the final revelation is well worth the wait. Though some of the connections still seem mysterious and uncertain by the time the book ends, it is hard to be disappointed considering the great ride the novel takes the reader on.

One of the most mind-bending, imaginative and unusual novels I have read so far this year, The Girl in the Road is science fiction done right, combining new technology with social developments, armed with an intriguing plot and two strong female characters. As the book progresses, mysteries are revealed and yet Byrne never loses sight of the story she is telling and the world she has created. An engrossing read that kept me turning the pages despite the occasional confusion, I gave The Girl in the Road 4 kreens out of 5.