Sunday, January 4, 2009

Another Year

What a year 2008 was. In point form:

March:

  • Moved from New Westminster to East Vancouver

April:
  • Publication of Jailbreaks
  • Wedding

May:
  • Back to work on the railroad
  • Publication of After the Blizzard
July:
  • Pre-publication copies of Anything But Hank! arrive
  • Birth of Kaleb Dovin Wells
October:
  • Publication of Anything But Hank!
November:
  • Laid off from work on the railroad
  • Won my longstanding battle with Revenue Quebec
December:
  • Anything But Hank! promotional events in Toronto, Halifax and PEI

In general:
  • Took part in some two dozen public events
  • Published reviews of 18 books
  • Made some 315 blog posts

Perhaps not suprisingly, one thing I didn't do nearly enough of in 2008 was read books. Going back over my personal reading log, I finished reading all of 56 books this past year, barely more than one a week. Given that many of those books were slim volumes of verse, not a very impressive feat. Besides general busyness, this is attributable to a couple of things. 1) The internet. Way too much time spent farting around. I have read a fair bit of good stuff on the net, but content is of course notoriously uneven. So I've eliminated my home highspeed wireless access, which has already led to greatly increased book reading. An unfortunate side effect is that it will also lead to less blogging--but does the world really need more blogging? 2) Quitting. I can't tell you how many books I've picked up and put down without finishing in recent months. This used to be very unlike me, but I'm doing it more and more. I've never been a particularly fast reader and I have less time to read now than I used to, so I guess I'm just more ruthless. I've put down some books I was quite into, however, with the intention of returning to them. But life is short and books are many.

Besides reading more books, '09 looks pretty eventful from here. We're going to Mexico in February for a brief reprieve from the gloom of Vancouver winter. We're clearing out of our apartment by the end of March, and shipping all our belongings to Halifax, in anticipation of moving back into our house on May 1. The first poetry collection I've ever edited (I'm still working on it) will be published this year, as will my own second trade collection, in the fall--both with Biblioasis. What else? We'll have to wait and see.

1 comment:

Michael Reynolds said...

Many more than I finished, though I may have started nearly that many. Leaving things unfinished is a theme whose development in my life I'm trying to thwart, but failingly. While not immune, writing fares better than reading for me -- but I'm prolific in neither.

I am reading a truly excellent story collection in translation: "Last Evenings on Earth" by Roberto Bolano. I've only got two stories to go and already want to start rereading.

Best of the new year.