Shoulda woulda coulda

Only realized today that I could’ve submitted some of the pieces I had published last year to the National Magazine Awards (the deadline was in January). Things like awards just don’t cross my mind, especially when most awards for writers are for published books, not pieces in literary magazines. I think I probably wouldn’t feel as bad about not submitting anything if I hadn’t gotten “Underworld” published, which I think is probably the best, most literary thing I’ve written and could likely have gotten me something.

Oh well.

I’ll try to tell myself I’ll write even better things.

The 2012 Aaron Book Awards

I’ve been keeping track of all the books I’ve read in the last year, and my grand total was 30, which I think is pretty good, especially considering I was (and still am, unfortunately) a student.  Here are some mentions I have from my booklist:

Best Book of 2012:  A tie: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Best Young Adult Book:  Every Day by David Levithan
Best Children’s Book:  Watership Down by Richard Adams (better than The Hobbit, you say?  Well, that’s a really tough one… but yes.)
Best Non-fiction Book: The Commitment by Dan Savage (I enjoyed the complexities of Payback but Dan Savage is just hilarious and so heartwarming)
Best Play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare (well, I only read two plays)
Honorable Mention:  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  This book (and film) really made me think about life, death, and love and is structured in such a fascinating way that kept me thinking and thinking for days.

Here’s a list of what I’ve read– many are books from BBC’s Top 100 List, which I’ve been choosing from– so you can stalk me better.  It’s organized chronologically:

Hunger Games Trilogy — Suzanne Collins  (before the films came out and everyone went crazy!)
Daaku — Ranj Dhaliwal
Les belles soeurs — Michel Tremblay
Obasan — Joy Kogawa
Generation A — Douglas Coupland
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth — Margaret Atwood
Hey Nostradamus! — Douglas Coupland
The Mariposa Club — Rigoberto Gonzalez
Great Expectations — Charles Dickens
Money Boy — Paul Yee
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family — Dan Savage
The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown (it was on BBC’s List and I was bored in box office at work and it was there, I swear!)
A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving
A Midsummer Night’s Dream — William Shakespeare
Best Gay Romance 2012 — Edited by Richard Labonté
The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
Winnie-The-Pooh — A.A. Milne
The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks
The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again — J.R.R. Tolkien
Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell
Watership Down — Richard Adams
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle
Every Day — David Levithan
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk — David Sedaris
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
On the Road — Jack Kerouac
Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? — Dan Bucatinsky