In which Keith reads some books 2025: part 1

(Images in these intro posts are all works of crochet, one of my favorite hobbies. This is the only one where the work is done by me, from a pattern by Dot Drake. I think of it as symbolic of looping together a variety of things into one piece, which is what this topic will do for my reading.)

What am I reading this year?

As ever, I'm tackling four of the Category Challenge Kits and Dogs: MysteryKit, SFFKit, AlphaKit, and Bingo Dog.

I'm continuing my survey of award-nominated short science fiction. I'm working through it sort of chronologically -- I try to knock off the earliest two or three unread years each year -- but supplemented with occasional "best of" volumes for specific authors, randomly chosen anthologies, or other "that just caught my fancy this week" choices.

And while it's not going to be a major priority, I am adding one other relatively small personal project, which I'll say more about below.

(pattern by sleeporstitch designs)

MysteryKit monthly themes

January: winter mysteries
February: vintage mysteries
March: espionage
April: paranormal
May: mysteries not set in my country
June: LGBTQ+ detectives (I'm hosting)
July: series sleuths
August: legal thrillers
September: silver age mysteries
October: police procedurals
November: psychological mysteries and thrillers
December: cozies

(pattern by Paola Navarro)

SFFKit monthly themes

JAN: Cozy Fantasy
FEB: The Art of SFF
MAR: Magical Realism
APR: Women Authors
MAY: Authors of Global South (I'm hosting)
JUN: Anthologies and Collections
JUL: Alternative History
AUG: Space
SEP: Back to School SFF
OCT: Mysterious Artifacts
NOV: The Day After
DEC: disabled main character

(pattern by homeartist crochet)

AlphaKit monthly letters

JAN: O/S
FEB: G/L
MAR: A/U
APR: E/K
MAY: D/I
JUN: C/Q
JUL: T/W
AUG: J/N
SEP: B/M
OCT: F/P
NOV: H/Y
DEC: R/V

YEARLONG: X/Z

(pattern by It's So Crochet)

BingoDog



(a temporary placemarker sits on square 1 until I actually have real markers to put in place)

(pattern by Monica McKirdy)

Award-nominated short SF (short stories, novellas, novelettes -- anything shorter than full-length novel)

I focus mostly on the Hugo and Nebula Awards, but my list also includes the Aurora (Canadian), Aurealis and Ditmar (Australian), BSFA (British), Ignyte (POC authors), Nommo (African), and Sturgeon awards. While I don't hold with the theory that all alternate history is by definition science fiction, I do add to my list those titles from the Otherwise Awards that seem to me to have sufficient SF content to be worth looking at.

(pattern by Sharon Carter)

Here's the other little personal project I mentioned earlier. I chose pencils to represent it, because it's rooted in something I wrote.

For the last three years I worked at the Los Angeles Public Library, I wrote weekly posts for the library's blog. My assignment was to point people towards our electronic collections, and I tied each week's posts into something from that week on the calendar -- a holiday, a National Something-or-Other Day, a famous person's birthday.

(The library clears out its oldest blog posts periodically, and I have been retired long enough that none of my posts are still there, or I'd point you to them. Don't worry, you aren't missing much. They were basically artfully condensed Wikipedia pages.)

A lot of those people were authors. I wound up writing about 90 posts surveying the life and career of some author or another. They were chosen with some attempt at diversity, not only in gender and ethnic background, but in genre as well. (Though my own favorite genres are probably over-represented.) Beyond that, they had to be have a significant and interesting enough life and career that there would be something to write.

I thought it would be an interesting project to read at least one book by each of the authors I wrote about. I probably won't get to more than three or four of these each year, and it is, like all of my projects, probably larger than my lifespan will allow me to complete. But a man's reach should exceed his grasp yada yada yada.

I've already read some of the authors on my list: Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Block, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Beverly Cleary, Joseph Conrad, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Hardy, Frank Herbert, Nick Hornby, P. D. James, Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L'Engle, Jonathan Lethem, George R. R. Martin, China Mieville, Edgar Allan Poe, Beatrix Potter, Thomas Pynchon, Mary Roach, Dr. Seuss, Jane Smiley, Harry Turtledove, Kurt Vonnegut, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Tom Wolfe.

But that leaves still to be read: Louisa May Alcott, Isabel Allende, Eric Ambler, Jeffrey Archer, Lester Bangs, J. M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Michael Bond, Rita Mae Brown, James M. Cain, Truman Capote, Raymond Chandler, Mary Higgins Clark, Philip K. Dick, Emily Dickinson, W. E. B. du Bois, Alexandre Dumas, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich, Ian Fleming, Richard Ford, Dick Francis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nikolai Gogol, Stephen Jay Gould, Graham Greene, W. E. B. Griffin, Lorraine Hansberry, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Pauline Kael, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Kurlansky, Mercedes Lackey, John le Carre, Elmore Leonard, H. P. Lovecraft, Debbie Macomber, Naguib Mahfouz, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, Iris Murdoch, Walter Dean Meyers, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Eugene O'Neill, Dorothy Parker, Mary Renault, Ruth Rendell, Nora Roberts, Oliver Sacks, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rex Stout, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Studs Terkel, Leo Tolstoy, Barbara W. Tuchman, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, and P. G. Wodehouse.

And with that, hello, 2025!

>7 KeithChaffee: That's a lot of great authors there! Ambitious project. The crochet makes an interesting photo statement. The first one that you did is quite a striking pattern. Is it a table runner or something else?

>9 WelshBookworm: That's a blanket. That's what most of my crochet has been over the years. I've just been getting into making sweaters for myself recently; I'm not yet good enough at it to dare making them for other people. So many complicated isues of getting the thing to fit properly. A blanket just needs to be a big ol' rectangle; an inch too long or short here or there doesn't matter much. An inch too long or short on a sweater, and the thing is useless.

>10 KeithChaffee: Okay. I couldn't really tell the size from the photo. Anyway, nice work!

>1 KeithChaffee:

Wow!! That's beautiful. I can't imagine the patience it takes.

>7 KeithChaffee: A lot of good authors in your TBR list! (and in your read list - though fewer of my favorites). Enjoy!

>11 WelshBookworm: >12 LolaWalser: Thank you for the kind words!

>13 jjmcgaffey: It is an interesting hodgepodge of talent, isn't it? I have Ambler, Bond, and Lovecraft already tentatively pencilled in to meet specific challenges in '25, and hope to squeeze in one or two of the others as well.

Your crochet work is beautiful, and your TBR list is daunting! Several of the authors on your not-read list are among my favorites. Dick Francis, Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, Barbara Tuchman and Mary Renault, especially.

That’s near project, Keith—also, I didn’t know you worked for LAPL (I’m sure you’ve said so—I just have a lousy memory). And I like the crochet patterns. I’d love to learn how to knit or sew or needle felt someday, but that’ll have to wait until I retire, I think.