More stuff published!

I've had a pretty diverse set of articles published in the last month or two.

Here, you'll find a story I did about the Clean Energy Outlet in Ypsilanti - a retail space that sells energy-efficient products and offers classes on related topics.

And here's a story I did about a Michigan author whose book about the Great Lakes was chosen as the "community read" in my area- each year, a committee picks a book for anyone in the two cities to read, and there are author events and book discussions based on the chosen book.

I wrote several retail-oriented stories for AnnArbor.com including one about a jewelry store finding success by going online only and an article about how merchants in Ypsilanti's historic district, Depot Town, are faring. I also reported breaking news- I believe I was the first person locally to report that Cheeky Monkey gift store is going out of business.

Additionally, Travels.com is featuring some brief "tip" articles I wrote about traveling and destinations.

And I continue to write some occasional articles (usually health-oriented) for eHow.com and post education stories and news roundups at my Examiner page.

What I've been reading: Year End Wrap Up

My last three books for the year bring my total to 57 read in 2009:

I read "Paranoia" by Joseph Finder  via Daily Lit and really enjoyed it. It's a thriller about industrial espionage among high tech firms.

"Anatomy of a Murder" by Robert Traver is a classic legal thriller from the 1950s. It was written by a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, set on the shores of Lake Superior and was later turned into a film  shot partly in the U.P. And yet, somehow, I hadn't  gotten around to reading it until now. Loved it! I've got the movie in my netflix queue now, too.

Both J. and I read (well, he's almost done with it) "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond. Diamond opens with a question: Why have the fates of various peoples differed so much around the globe- why did some people conquer widely and go on to establish powerful mega-states while other peoples remained close to their primitive hunter-gatherer backgrounds? It's heavy reading just because it's dense. However, it's very readable, and I highly recommend it.

More comments on all three books plus a recap of my reading goals and how I did on them can be found here.

Some year-end analysis:

1) I did fine with my goal of reading award-winning books - at least 10, though it's possible some of the books I read won major prizes and I just didn't know it.

2) I fell down on the goal of reading more nonfiction. True, I read 17 nonfiction books which comes to about 29 or 30 percent nonfiction this year, and that was more than my percentage of 28 last year. However, I was aiming for 35-40 percent nonfiction. So, I'll be revisiting that goal for 2010.

3) I didn't have an official goal to read 50 books by People of Color as some people on LJ are doing. I'm OK with the idea of broadening my horizons by making sure I read books by men, women, people of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, plus disabled and GLBT authors. But frankly, I'm conflicted about the whole issue of defining who is a 'person of color,' and that has caused some ambivalence. Nevertheless, by a very loose definition of POC, about 11 out of 57 books were by people of color.

4) Spurred by some posts netmouse made earlier this year, I was also curious to see the gender ratio of the authors I read. I read two anthologies which were heavy on male authors, one novel was co-written by a husband and wife team, and one non-fiction book was co-written by a man and a woman. For the rest of the 53 books I read this year, 20 were by women authors and 33 by men.

The full list of all 57 books I read in 2009 can be found here.