Books read in 2013: Coursera courses taken in 2013

[tamaranth]

Books!

Books read: 43, 26 by women and 17 by men; 42 novels; 2 rereads
Best five, not in any particular order: Seraphina; Code Name Verity; Codex; Advent; The Element -inth in Greek

Edit to add: whilst on my reading-holiday in December, I noted that nearly every book I was reading, or had read recently, involved a violent / sudden death, sometimes accidental, usually of a woman or child. And the trend continues this year. Thoughts? (I mean, yes, I can retire to Austen / Heyer / etc, though some of those do feature deaths: but is this such a prevalent trope that it's transparent?)

See 'em all here: Dreamwidth | LiveJournal

books2013, a photo by tamaranth on Flickr.

Courses!

9 courses, ranging from Mathematical Thinking through Paleobiology to Beethoven Sonatas.

Introduction to Mathematical Thinking - didn't finish this one, my algebra's not up to scratch! The parts I completed really stretched my brain, in a good way.
The Ancient Greeks - a good, well-taught history course that inspired me to go away and read Rosemary Sutcliff's The Flowers of Adonis.
History of Rock, part one - Tin Pan Alley to Woodstock. Would've suited me much better if the lectures had featured excerpts of the music under discussion: all easy to find online, and I realise it's a performing rights issue, but it'd be the musical equivalent of pointing at a particular feature in a photo.
Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets - my absolute favourite class last year, not least because of the breadth of content: video diaries from on-site archaeologists, theoretical lectures, specialists talking about their skills (e.g. potsherd identification, how to sex a skeleton), some short pieces on various mad theories.
Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas - again, would've benefitted from inclusion of excerpts. I'm not a musician, and I found some of the discussion hard to follow and other parts too vague.
Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology - dinosaurs! and 3D models of fossils! and more dinosaurs! Lots of bones here.
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative - focussed on The Lord of the Rings as book, as online game and as film. This was fascinating, and got me thinking about the things that work and don't work in each medium.
Comic Books and Graphic Novels - I elected not to do the assignments on this course (since I was also doing Online Games and Beethoven Sonatas that term), but it was so interesting that I'll probably take the course again, and make my own comics. I learnt a huge amount about the history of comics and the technicalities of producing them.
E-learning and Digital Cultures - this one didn't work for me; fairly high-level and full of social-science jargon. I felt I didn't meet the minimum requirements, and that I'd missed the point.