The Books I Read - January 2024

I enjoyed making the infographic style reading updates in 2023 and I'm continuing on in 2024. I've automated a couple of things in my tracking process, so I'm going to update a little bit about how I track and organize these this year.

One thing I'm adding is a count of "pages". I'm trying to keep them kind of even between books so I'm taking the "Kindle Edition" page count for each book. (Although my brain does not like the fact that Daniel O'Malley's Blitz is *longer* than Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky"). I'm using the page count for the weights for the Author infographic, but I'm not sure that does a great job of balancing all the authors. Katie Mack seems at a huge disadvantage.

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Stats for January

Reading Stats

Books Read - 12

Pages Read - 4742

The Books Read

The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths	The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths
The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths	Blitz by Daniel O'Malley
The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths	Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose
The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths	The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
Magic Binds by Ilona Andrews	The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths	A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

January 2024 Covers

Authors - 12 (50)

Author - books read - pages read

Andrea Penrose - 1 - 370	Daniel O'Malley - 1 - 688
Elly Griffiths - 6 - 2207	Ilona Andrews - 1 - 333
Jacqueline Winspear - 1 - 352	Katie Mack - 1 - 237
Vernor Vinge - 1 - 555

January 2024 Author Cloud

Publication Range

Earliest Book - 1999

Most Recent Book - 2023

Publications by Decades

2020s - 2	2010s - 9
1990s - 1

Source

Borrowed From Public Library - 10	Shared with Friends - 1
My libro.fm Library - 1

Formats

Audio Book - 5

eBook - 7

The Video Games I Played - January 2024

So this is the new monthly games post.

At this point I've captured two things. Which games I've played and which games I've played "intentionally". I'll probably expand this as I go, but I wanted to do something a little different and give myself a bit of an interesting look. I'm not quite sure I've achieved a look I like either, but again here's a starting point.

Which games I played is self explanatory. Which games I've played "intentionally" is a thing I'm not that clear on myself, but Sea of Stars and Final Fantasy XII are the two games I made time in the evenings to sit down and play. Other games on this list, I didn't choose as an intentional activity, so much as thing to do to rest for a short or long moment. That's a thought I'm still working on and I'll see what makes sense as we go. Games are more-or-less in order of when I started playing them from top to bottom.

I finished and "completed" Sea of Stars, so I tried to add some iconic indicators; an end dot (from sequence diagrams) to signify hitting credits and a "golden" glow to show "complete". 

(Complete goes in quotes because I could probably do more, but in this case I found the "true ending". True Ending goes in quotes because what is truth in a video game.Golden goes in quotes because I'm not great at finding colours and faders in Omnigraffle (which I used to make this).)

The Games I Played in 2024

As I mentioned, I finished Sea of Stars and wrote up some things about it. I've played quite a bit of Into the Breach especially as a background thinking game. It's (sort of) easy to dip into and out of, especially while I'm working on a project. I've really picked up the rhythm of it and I'm really having fun with it. As always Mario Kart is great to sit down and quickly jump into something to redirect your brain and your hands. ... Also "Vroom".

Like I said, this is evolving, but I kinda like the shape. Does it make sense? Is it interesting? Is there something else that would be good to know? Feedback is appreciated.