As usual at this time of year, imma look back over my spreadsheet for the last twelve months and provide a short breakdown of what I've been reading and why, mostly for my own amusement:

Sooooo, in 2018 I read a total of 103 books (including graphic novels but not including books I read to my son), which is the exact same number as in 2017, conveniently. Like 2017, the majority of the books were Young Adult (18 books) but that's a really sharp drop from last year, when about half the books I read were YA. Non-fiction clocked in at the next highest (16) and literary fiction surprising me with 15. I've upped my game with reading more sci-fi (11) and crime/thrillers (13), and I've had to add a separate category for feminist dystopia (4) because it's apparently a new feature of my reading pile.

Disregarding co-authored books, about 60% of what I read was written by women.

Approximately one third of the books I read were by authors I'd previously read. Which means a respectable two-thirds were from authors I'd never checked out before. From those two-thirds, the highest number (13) were chosen at random from the library. Others were recommended to me either in person or online (or by a very enthusiastic librarian), or I picked them up because they were authored by our amazingly talented local author community, or they were being discussed at our book group (hence the rise in feminist dystopian fiction). I made an extra effort to read books I considered as "classics", including three from pre-1900 (the most I've managed in any year since high school).

I'm making an effort to read ebooks (in quiet moments when I'd otherwise be trawling twitter) but I've still not renewed my dalliance with audiobooks. I've also joined Netgalley, just in case I don't have enough books.

My book resolutions this year are to read more crime/thriller, since it looks like it's my area of interest now (oh, yeah, I have news to share in a later blogpost, check back for that), and to avoid bringing more books into my house unless I have an exit strategy in place for them (because hoarding).

karmic gifts

At this time of year, we're reminded to be nicer to others and to help those less fortunate than us. But we're also encouraged to spend way too much money on presents and food and everything else. It's an expensive time of year, and many of us (me included) stretch ourselves too thin. Under those circumstances, it's sometimes hard to think of others as much as we should.

So, here are a bunch of things you can do that take very little time (another commodity in short supply), are free or nearly-free, and can make a tangible difference to people:

Tell people about awesome places to shop
Small local businesses thrive on word of mouth recommendations. Right now, everyone is shopping, and they like buying for somewhere that's been personally recommended. Use this to your advantage and plug your favourite things, whether it's an online store, a local business, the best place to get a gingerbread latte, or a book that'd make a perfect Christmas gift. Tell people how much you love a certain shop or website. Leave recommendations on social media.

Write a review
I know all authors bang on about this, but that's because it's an amazingly helpful thing to do. Ten minutes scribbling your opinion on Amazon or Goodreads can mean the world to an author. If you like a book, please tell the world. And if you've got time, tell the author as well. An ego-boost is the gift that keeps on giving.

Visit the library
This one's a win-win. Go borrow a bunch of books and movies from your local library for the Christmas period. You get a bunch of awesome stuff to read/watch for free, and the library gets statistics to prove how valuable a resource they are to the community. Plus, authors get a few pennies under the PLR scheme every time you borrow their books (at least in the UK, although not currently in the Isle of Man) (BOOO).

Go to the Hunger Site
Next time you're online, click through to The Hunger Site and its associated sites. They use the revenue from advertising to fund various charities, so by clicking on one link, you send money to a bunch of good causes. You can do this daily, and without having to sign up to any newsletters or email lists.

Visit Change.org
Hey, the world's in a shitty state right now. What good can one person do to make things right? Well, how about telling the people in charge how you feel? If you care passionately about something, chances are someone else feels the same, and quite possibly they've started a petition to lobby the government about it. It only takes a couple of minutes to add your name to an important cause.

Give to charity shops & food banks
Time to declutter? Make a pile of old clothes and toys and take them to the charity shop. Want to clear room in your kitchen cupboards? Take a bunch of those cans and jars that you've been hording (so long as they're still in date; if they're not, maybe it's time to reign in the hording, heh?) and schlep them along to the local food bank. Food banks are also a good place to take those posh cans of cat food that you bought in bulk, which your cat then decided he didn't like. F'ing cats.

Giving time
We're all ridiculously busy right now, I know. But that means your time is an even more valuable gift to give. Can you go to the shops for a neighbour who doesn't drive? Can you pick up a prescription for your nan so she doesn't have to go out in the cold? Can you babysit for an afternoon so your friend can do their Christmas shopping without a toddler hanging onto their ankles? Half an hour of your time can make all the difference.

Being nice
Ultimately, this is what it comes down to. Kindness doesn't have to manifest in grand sweeping gestures or huge monetary donations to charity. We can all be a little nicer, a little kinder, a little more patient in our everyday lives. Remember everyone is stressed right now. Everyone's under pressure to spend, to give, to be happy. Cut everyone some slack. Be as nice as you possibly can, and demand nothing in return.

Man, this turned into a bit of a lecture, didn't it? Sorry about that.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, whatever you're doing, however you celebrate. Hugs.

so, farewell then

It looks like my beloved old website might be ceasing its existence, mostly because I can't really justify spending $130 renewing it this year. I'm not sure what this will mean for the site, but I suspect it may be going offline shortly. Which is a great shame, since I've had it for over ten years now. But on the other hand I haven't exactly been using it to its full extent. Certainly not to $130-worth of extent.

So I've spent my weekend hurriedly downloading the various content off the site and saving it to my hard drive. To be honest, I've not used the site as a proper website - I've used it as a dumping ground and/or backup area. Sorting through it has been like dragging boxes out from under the bed. You never really know what's in them.

I've mentioned that I'm a hoarder, right? Turns out it applies to virtual content as well.

In the assorted boxes of my old website, I've found a vast and varied array of crap. There are at least three of my trunk novels, for a start, which were at one point (shamefully) available online but which had their links disabled some time ago. There're also hundreds of pictures, drawings, scraps of writing, webcomic pages, and random things I'd completely forgotten existed.

I'd forgotten, for example, a series of semi-fictionalised stories I wrote ten years ago about me and my friends, featuring an account of the time I attempted to ask out the man who would later become my husband. Boy, I'm glad that's still in existence. I'd forgotten most of my WWE fanfiction. I'd forgotten I spent a period of time dressing up teddy bears in hilarious costumes and making a calendar of them.

It's taken me approximately six hours just to download all this random content. How many hours did I put into creating the site? It's just ridiculous. Especially considering that the majority of it wasn't accessible to the general public, it was just a mess of untitled pages and dead-end links. I'm considering copy-pasting all of the stories, fanfics, terrible poems and the rest into one big document just to get an idea of the volume of word count that's there.

I've always argued that you need to write a million words of crap before you start doing anything good. My old website might be the proof of that.

So, anyway, it looks like it might be farewell to the old applepastie site. On the plus side, it may be the impetus I need to create something better. Something I might update every now and again.

Although, I suspect if I got a new site, the first thing I would do is to upload all the old crap back onto it so it's not cluttering my hard drive. Because, hoarder.