My year in reading – 2018

So a full month into 2019 and I’m finally able to talk a bit about my reading year last year, which even with alllllll the madness I still managed to get my read on. 

Final tally? 47 books. I had a couple of goals and I achieved them. Will talk about those further down below, but first, here’s the rundown to get more into specifics:

- Male authors: 28 books

- Female authors: 17 books

- Indie books: 17 books

- Library books: 14 

- Poetry: 11

- Fiction: 22

- Graphic novels: 14

- Non-fiction: 2 books

- Spanish books: 5

In regards to the ratings, here’s a recap of the quality of reads as perceived by moi. Btw, there are reviews on Goodreads for all the books I read last year. 

5 star – 13

4 star – 23

3 star – 8

2 star - 1 

1 star – 1

So all in all, a pretty awesome year I have to say. I had the goal to have a more balanced male to female ratio, to take more books out from the library, to balance out with poetry, and to read more Spanish. The reading more Spanish continues and will also be looking into reading more non-fiction, but overall, I’m very happy with what I read. 

Stay tuned for my best of books of 2018. But first, how about you? How was your reading year last year? Did you have any specific goals you wanted to reach? Thanks for reading, and til next time…

Peace, love, and maki rolls

JD

Monday Reviews – Chinese Hero Volume 3

To offer something a little different, I’d thought I’d focus today’s review on a Graphic Novel. You see, while other people’s favorite comic book characters are Spider Man, Iron Man, Super Man or any other type of man, I am a huge manhua comics fan and my heroes as a kid were Hero Hua, Ghost Server, Lohan, all of the Oriental Heroes, the Iron Marshall and the list goes on and on. Name after name of obscure Chinese comic heroes that to this day remain some of my most prized stories.

I loved the rich narratives, mature subject matter and beautiful artwork and although it may be a bit questionable some of what I was reading (think of an assassin that demanded to eat freshly killed newborn babies), it helped me be the writer I am today, so it can’t all be bad.

The latest compilation I’ve read was Volume 3 of the Chinese Hero saga, a translation and adaptation that has some issues I might take note of simply because it’s different from what I read as a kid in the original translation of the Blood Sword… and because, quite frankly the name changes from one version to the other irked me and the translation flows a bit clunkier.

Regardless of those quips, Chinese Hero Volume 3 still possesses enough Kung Fu extravaganza to make me further wonder how the movie adaptation could have been so sloppy. I won’t go into any detail of the plot and will simply invite you to look up Chinese Hero or the Blood Sword comic books as an option if you want to broaden your reading horizons and read something that is as beautiful as it is brutal.

Peace, love and maki rolls.

JD