My Reading Year

I’ve mentioned how I keep records of the books I read. Well, I date my “reading year” from October 14 to October 13 of the following year. That’s because my birthday is on the 14th so it corresponds to my actual number of years alive. I’m about to finish out the current reading period and thought I might share the results.

The 2008/2009 period was a good reading year for me and I read more than average. I estimated that I first started truly reading at around 7, so counting from that age I’ve averaged about 76 books a year. I believe the actual average should be higher because I didn’t keep records until I was a teenager, and didn’t keep accurate records until my 20s. But hey, the exact number isn’t that important.

For this past year, I’ve read 124 books. This includes 18 nonfiction works, almost all having to do with science, 15 westerns, 18 thrillers, 18 SF, and 17 fantasy. I’ve also read 11 young adult books, including the Harry Potter series, and then smaller numbers in horror, classics, and poetry.

In the past, I almost never reread books, but as I’ve gotten older I’m doing so more frequently. I only started a record column for reread books about 8 years ago, and this year I set a new record with 6. Several of these I reread in order to blog accurately about them for Forgotten Book Friday.

The Harry Potter books, especially the last five, were definitely among my favorite reads of this past year. Also notable was the graphic novel The Watchmen, which is by far the best graphic novel I’ve ever read (not that I’ve read many). My favorite mystery/thriller of the year was What Angels Fear, the first Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, by our own C. S. Harris. In SF, the Cap Kennedy series of Space Opera stories were an interesting discovery, and in fantasy it would be “The Best of Robert E. Howard series, although most of the stories there were rereads. In nonfiction, the best book I read was probably The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley, which I talked about a lot on my blog.

So there you have it. Soon a new reading year will dawn, and the possibilities are…endless. Hurray!
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Harry Potter

Well, I’ve finished the entire seven book Harry Potter series now. I’m sorry that it’s over. I have to give J. K. Rowling high marks, both for the individual books and for the overall arc of the series. In fact, I’ve never been so caught up in a series that I read them all one after another after another. The last two, particularly, put the reader through an emotional roller coaster, and as a reader I appreciate every minute of such an experience. Even three days after closing the cover on the last volume, I still feel that sense of loss that comes with being finished with a beloved book. And although I normally leap right into a new book after one is done, I waited a day before starting something different (a Star Trek book if you must know.) A day is a lifetime for me where reading is concerned.

I’m not going to give details of the books here because I don’t want to reveal any spoilers. The books are too good for that. But I will tell you my overall impression of the story arc. The first two volumes, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets are indeed books for young, young adults. They’re good, but they only hint at the more mature development that picks up with volume 3, Prisoner of Azkaban. After that, for me, it was a straight run to the finish, with each book capable of standing on its own but also laying the ground work for the next. At first I thought book five, The Order of the Phoenix, marked a fall off. I didn’t much like Harry at the start of that one, but in retrospect I think Rowling simply turned him into a true teenager in that book and handled that task deftly. I was also pleased to see that Rowling’s action scenes substantially picked up, although these are definitely character books and not truly action driven.

It’s hard to say which book was my favorite because in this case I really think you have to judge the whole series together. And as a series it is outstanding. However, for me, the last two books, where the overall story is coming to its climax, stand out in my mind. I wish I still had them left to read.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling! Not that you need it, but you have another fan.
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Readin’ & Writin’ Updates

Well not every one of my posts these days will be experimental stuff. Tonight’s is an update on what I’ve been doing in the reading and writing arena.

Writing, I’m pleased to say, has been going well. Since returning from vacation I’ve averaged three pages a day on Razored Land: The Blackest of Hates. I just hit fifty pages tonight.

Reading? I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was very good, and almost immediately started book five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’m enjoying it, but not liking Harry as much in this one. He seems to have turned into a true teenager. I suppose that’s the point.

I watched two movies this weekend, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Spirit. The Day the Earth Stood Still wasn’t bad. There were some pretty bad plot holes, especially early in the film, and I wanted to personally strangle the kid character, but it generally held my interest and Lana felt much the same way. The Spirit, on the other hand, was just profoundly silly. It’s got to be one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years, and that’s saying something. Lana only lasted about 20 minutes but I stuck it out. Lord knows why. Perhaps it’s because I really liked Sin City and expected this to be more of the same. I was wrong.

Finally, let me review Mysteries of Von Domarus, a chapbook of gothic tales by Gary William Crawford, which I also just finished reading. Crawford is well known as both an author and editor in the small press. He’s best known for his poetry, but is also a student of gothic literature and the five short tales in this collection evoke the gothic sensibility to the utmost. The best story is the title piece, “Mysteries of Von Domarus.” There are elements of poetry and even the nonfiction essay woven throughout this “story,” but it works on a gut wrenching level. It has been a long time since I’ve been so emotionally touched by a tale. The second best story is the last one in the collection, “The Change in Him.” A subtle ending, but one that’ll stay with me for a long time.

Throughout the collection one feels the stories working on different levels, and the surface level is the least important. It’s the same kind of feeling that comes through in Crawford’s poetry. Especially with “The Change in Him,” I felt I was being told something profoundly important, but every time I tried to focus on just what that importance was my understanding morphed into something else. I only know I won’t ever look at a stranger quite the same way again.

Crawford’s stories are not in any way graphic horror. You won’t find blood or gore here. You will find a sense of disassociation, a sense of loss, and a sense that there truly are mysteries in the world. It definitely “shook up” my perceptions.
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The Shakeup Has Begun

Well, the first thing I’ve been doing to shake myself up a bit is read things I don’t normally read. To that end, I’ve finished the first two Harry Potter books and will start on the third this evening. I have read Young Adult fiction before, but almost always science fiction or animal stories. This is the first fantasy oriented YA I’ve read in quite a few years. I must say I enjoyed both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets quite a bit. I gave them both 4 stars on Goodreads. They were easy reads, with interesting characters, and though the action scenes were few and far between and were not terribly well written, the stories held my interest anyway. I think I can see why youngsters would love them, and I probably would have loved them more when I was a wee tyke. I was going to order the third book on my Kindle this morning but these aren’t available on Kindle. I guess they are still selling too much in printed form. Lana and I are going out to dinner tonight, though, right next door to Barnes & Noble, so I’ll pick up the third book there. I certainly wouldn’t be going out deliberately to buy the third book if I hadn’t enjoyed the first two, and I feel comfortable recommending them for adults as well as kids.

I also picked up a couple of graphic novels. I’ve read only half a dozen of these in my life, but since I very much enjoyed Watchmen I’ve been eyeing such works with a bit more respect. So far I’ve read The Darkness: Ultimate Collection. Although the artwork was fantastic, I was much less enamored of the writing and the story. This essentially included the first few issues of the comic, and then a second, slightly later set of issues. I really liked the first half, which was another “origin” story. I don’t really know what all the “Pencils,” “Inks,” etc. means as far as people’s involvement with the story, but I’m assuming (someone correct me if I’m wrong) that Garth Ennis, listed as “Story,” is the main writer for the first half of this work. I thought he did a very fine job. Unfortunately, the second half of the “Ultimate Collection” had a different person, called “Writer,” and it seemed to undermine much of the good stuff that had gone before. Carefully nurtured characters had their personalities twisted and were used as plot fodder rather than acting consistently with the setup for them in the first issues. Other characters were spent cheaply when they could have been much more effective alive, and there were plot twists of convenience that mainly served to irritate me. Although the promise of the first part might have persuaded me to spill more money (These things are expensiveeeee), the drop off in the second part has ended my association with The Darkness.

I have another graphic novel, which I’ll probably start today, called The Magdalena. And just to let you know how out of it I am where graphic novels are concerned, I just realized as I was looking through it for this post that this is also an issue of The Darkness. I guess I’m not through with that series, after all. This is part of that universe apparently, but featuring a different main character. It’s also written by a different person from either of the first two I read in the series so all bets are off as to what I’ll get. I’ll let you know.


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