books – meiadeleite.com

this week, i finished the 2 long reads i had started at the end of january, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo and midnight in chernobyl. the former was just so-so but the latter was amazing — an astonishingly thorough, in-depth breakdown of the disaster and its many ramifications. i feel like going back and watching hbo’s chernobyl series again, to put a face to these characters i’ve become so familiar with.

and speaking of books, i signed up for portugal’s own new digital lending program biblioled and got my first audiobook! for now, the selection is not extensive (and the books can’t be sent to kindles) but the regional library has quite a few audiobooks from the fundação francisco manuel dos santos, which are usually good. i’ve picked one about palliative care to give it a try.

this week included art class, the return of chinese classes, swimming, running… it’s like everyday had a bit of something different in it. spring is in the air all around us, with the countryside exploding in bermuda buttercups and the almond trees hanging on to their last blooms…

we went to noélia on valentine’s day, and also enjoyed a nice lunch out on this week’s mini winter festival, in town.

it’s 10 weeks until the “maratona da europa” in aveiro. the boy and my brother registered for the half-marathon, and me and my sister-in-law signed up for the 10k. right now, i can run around 3.5kms… will i be able to make it to 10? i’m not too confident, but i think so. i’m currently running while following along to the abel town saga on the zombies, run! app, which is a kind of audio story in which you’re a runner, running errands in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. the story unfolds as you go, with different characters, audio effects and things that you pick up along the way. it’s kind of cute, and the zombies are not that scary!

and last but not least, good news!

the level at our local dam is at the highest it’s been in a long time — higher than i remember ever seeing it! it’s kind of magic seeing the local stream with water again, after so long. let’s see if the kingfishers will return too!

i read 73 books last year, which was pretty neat. here’s a colorful goodreads mashup:

there’s around 10 children’s books in there, courtesy of the little niece, and these were practically the only books i’ve read in paper this year (plus contos da montanha, which was a nice find at the bakery’s free bookshelf). the rest were mostly digital loans from libraries, either for the kindle or audiobooks. i went fewer times to our local library here, which is a pity and something i want to change in 2025.

i tried to do a A-to-Z of book titles last year, in which i would try to read at least one book whose titled matched a different letter of the alphabet. i didn’t manage it, in the end: U, Y and Z were missing. i plotted a graph with the frequency of title names, and this is how it turned out:

the letter A was the winner, followed closely by S (courtesy of the scum villain series). i though for sure E would have more books, but turns out not.

last year, i also had the vague goal of wanting to diversify the nationalities of the writers i read… but i ended up doing worse than in 2023.

the US is still about a third of my reads, with the Uk taking second place. i shall try to improve!

overall, i think i learned that i don’t really want to be reading books that i don’t feel like reading at the moment, just to fulfill a duty or some random goal. my readings this year were very much guided by whatever the vibe was at that moment, what my friends are reading and talking about, my comfort series and some interests that i wanted to explore. it felt right, and i hope it will continue that way!

this post is already getting long and i think i’ll end it with a quote from just ride, which i hope will work as a kind of motto for 2025:

Over-deliver politeness and appreciation for whatever you get, even if it’s only time. Actually, it’s not possible to be overly polite. Send a handwritten thank-you letter even if you’ve already said thanks in person, over the phone, and by e-mail. Be “1950s polite.”

recurring themes