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Eight years! Can I confess I originally wrote this post for my seventh year blogging before realizing that this is now somehow actually the eighth year. How has that much time passed since I started my little blog as a side project? Post graduate school I had more time on my hands than I’d had since middle school to pick my love of reading back up, and the Critiquing Chemist was born out of the intent to build a personal archive I could reflect back upon if needed. Plus I wanted a way to capture the many theories my lab mates and I had speculated upon with titles such as The Game of Thrones. While my review style has evolved along the way, I always find it a good reminder of the start to revisit my first review, The Martian.

I’m beyond thankful and a bit stunned at how the Critiquing Chemist has grown beyond anything I could have every imagined. Yes, I’m reusing much of my post from last year but between starting a new management job and being almost 34 weeks pregnant my time has never been in more demand, not to mention the constant attention a potty training two year old can require. That said, my favorite part of starting this blog has been, and continues to be the platform it has provided to connect and network with fellow book lovers, authors, and bloggers. This blog would have likely passed into oblivion years ago had it not been for my new friends all over the world who have encouraged and supported me along the way. Thank you for helping create this community I’ve come to so thoroughly enjoy!

Highlights of the Critiquing Chemist over the past eight years would include surpassing the 5,000 follower mark, interviewing Peter V. Brett, and incorporating my love of traveling into this platform. Being a judge for Mark Lawrence’s Self Published Fantasy Blog Off for the past four years would definitely be another high. My absolute favorite reading moment of the past eight years has been receiving an advanced review copy of Dark Age by Pierce Brown. Really, finding any much anticipated advanced review copy in my mailbox has been a major source of excitement, ultimately fulfilling a bucket-list item that never quite seems to be sated. Specifically for this past year, I loved seeing Brent Week’s new novel, Night Angel Nemesis, come to print with my name in the acknowledgements as a beta reader. I loved seeing the behind the scenes of how a major book is edited and evolves throughout the process.

Lastly, I’m thankful to all the authors I’ve met and grateful that you are brave enough to share your literary worlds with your readers. It takes courage to open up to the world anything you create, let alone when it takes the time and effort needed to produce a book.

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Year Eight

This past year has been one marked by highs and lows. We were able to start having adventures with Quinn from a trip to Disney World in January to a road trip from Alaska to Michigan in April and a long weekend in Iceland in June. Thankfully Quinn is a fantastic traveler, with only one melt down ever in public. That said, she picked quite a memorable location as we were deep into Wind Cave National Park on a tour when Quinn decided she should test out her vocal cords in a quite inconsolable manner with 15 strangers and one park ranger for an audience. Memories for sure! Nothing quite beats being in a large open cavern with optimal echoing acoustics with a toddler who wants nothing to do with the situation. Other than that we have made priceless memories that Quinn still talks about. Just this morning she was discussing meeting Donald Duck and that he had to take a break right before it was her turn. And the night before she was talking about seeing geysers and swimming in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. We will forever associate bison with pooping on her shoes, which never happened, but she is quite insistent it did. Oh the mind of a toddler.

My year has been defined by the unexpected loss of my Mom. She quite suddenly passed away on December 20th, leaving a huge void in all of our lives. In many ways blogging and reading has fallen to the side in the wake of her passing as my mind hasn’t wanted to be quiet enough to fall into reading, let alone formulating my reviews. You can read more about her passing and the eulogy I wrote her here.

On a happy, bittersweet note we will be welcoming a new baby boy in August. We were going to announce the news on Christmas so I’ve found it hard to tell anyone as my Mom didn’t know. She would have been so happy.

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SPFBO8 and SPFBO9

The Critiquing Chemist and Lynn’s Books completed a stellar SPFBO8 with a fantastic group of finalists. We positively loved Olivia Atwater’s winner, Small Miracles and highly recommend everyone pick up this feel good read. SPFBO9 marks my fourth year (along with my lovely boffin, Jennie) in the contest and my third year teaming up with Lynn. We are starting off with Mark Lawrence’s ninth Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) and we are making great progress currently working through our Phase One batch with our first elimination posts to follow soon.

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Statistics

I can not praise Pivot Tables enough. Seriously so much less work than my previous unwieldy spreadsheets that I’d been updating to keep track of my reading statistics. Just wait till my analytical self starts adding in standard deviation and p-values to start tracking significant trends per year. In general, this year came in last in many of the categories above but really not that far off from my overall averages. I fully anticipate that year nine will be another slower year, especially with baby number two arriving in August. My medium of choice was audiobooks, which follows the expected percentages of approximately 75% of the time. This trend has remained steady since I first tried out this medium in year three. Fiction continues to dominate at greater than 90% of my reads, which has also been a rather predictable pattern, though I strive to keep this rate around 80%. One of my favorite stats is how many books I’ve read in eight years. A whopping 577 books and approximately 275,000 pages. So many worlds and adventures to new fantastical lands and stories!

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Travel

Disney World, Orlando, Florida

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

Laird Hot Springs Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada

Jasper National Park and Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Glacier National Park, Montana

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Wind Cave National Park and Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Blue Lagoon, Iceland

South Coast and Golden Circle, Iceland

Reyjkavik, Iceland

Snaefellsjokull Peninsula, Iceland

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Beekeeping

I couldn’t resist showing off how cute Quinn is helping us with our honeybees in her new beesuit! Quinn loves going to the farm and convincing Papa to take her on tractor rides. She even knows some of the farms by name and calls it home. Makes my heart happy.

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