100 Books - August & September

[xenith]

When we left our intrepid reader, at the end of July, she'd read 62 books and was well ahead of schedule (that being 8.33 books a month, which comes to 58.33 books by the end of July).

So what did August hold??

It got off to a good start with the first book just taking a couple of days to read.


A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

There are some books where you get to the end and wonder whether it was worth the effort of reading. This is not one of those books :)

The Kelly Gang by Nancy Keesing

This is made up of extracts from original sources -- newspaper accounts, the Royal Commission report, the Jerilerie letter -- and lots of illustrations from the time (and some of Nolan's paintings, which I never cared for until I saw them all together, with the artist's comments). Looks to be a useful book.

Not sure it'd make a lot of sense read on its own though.

But then I slowed down. By the middle of August, only three books had been read!

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

The second half is much better, but everyone dies? Bleargh. Bad author. No stars!

The world building is quite something though.

So something short is need, something that is just 82 pages, including introduction and end notes, which don't need to be read.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

I would think that the strength of the story originally hung on the question on what is the connection between these two characters followed by the shocking revelation that they are the same. If you take that away, what is left? Not much, really. It seems all the interesting ideas come in the letter at the end.

What is curious though, is to think about how the story in this brief narrative has been grown over the years. The story of Jekyll and Hyde has picked up a lot of baggage in the retelling.

but, uh, that took two weeks to read. Really. OK in that two week period, two days were put into reading

Passage by Connie Willis

This is a bad book, one of the worst I've read.

While waiting for someone who was in the supermarket, I picked it up to see what the first page was like, and that was the rest of the evening gone, and the night as well.
It was 1 am when I finally put it down for the night. (And 2.30 the following night when I finished it.)

Stickiness, we have it.

It has lots of Titanic (non-movie) stuff too!

Passage is 512 pages. It just goes to show that there isn't necessarily a connection between length and reading time.

So there's 3 days left in the month and only 5 books have been read. Oh noes. Time for something I know I'll like so I can read it quickly.

Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling

The start is a bit slow and the middle drags on just a little too much, but the end... I was wondering just who the next book in the series was going to be about.

The middle... It's a little too downbeat for a little too long. Which got me thinking. It can be tricky making things worse and worse for the characters as the story goes on. On one hand, it should increase the tension (making it harder for them to be to succeed) but it can make for depressing reading. It's fine to think they must get out all right at the end, but the end is a long way off. If things are getting worse & worse, I think there needs to be an upswing at some point. Just a small one, and it might even make things worse for them in long term, but in the short term, it gives the readers some light to continue reading by.

I won that in a photo competition on Lyn's blog. It sat there and stared at me for a month while I put it off reading it until I needed a fantasy fix.

So 6 books for month. Bad.



September got off to a slow start, with another book that took too long to read.

The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

I like the idea behind this book but I'm not keen on the way it was used.

Next was

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

A nice little book, but ultimately unsatisfying, which might be why I haven't put a comment or date on this one.

This was where I realised I had nothing I wanted to read, so I put out a call for suggestions! And so I add

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

to the list and then

Dragon Bones by Patricia Briggs

Nice, easy read. Which sounds a bit condescending :)

I like stories that take you places emotionally or intellectually, and this book doesn't do this. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Too much of anything isn't good for you and this has interesting characters, some of which I cared about, and the plot has enough of a twist to make it interesting. Certainly worth reading, and I'm off to track down the next one.

I seem to like Briggs books. They're a fun read. But, it's the 15th September and I've 4 books. This is good. And then that night I also read

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

which brings it up to 5 books by the middle of the month. Yes! But then I turn to

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This book was quite wonderful.

It's a very slow book, and it's nearly 700 pages long, so it took me a week to read it, but that isn't a bad thing. It's not a book you want to read quickly.

There are places where it nothing is happening, so I put it down, only to pick it up 5 minutes later to keep reading. It is quite moreish.

There's a few errors in it, of the continuity or editing type, and some places it seems as if the writer added something but didn't check it fitted in with the bits on either side. I have to find something wrong with it :)

which takes a little longer to read, as in, almost 10 days. Almost the end of the month and I've only read 6 books. Fortunately, when I take the last pile back to the library, I have a 'hold' waiting for me, and so I slip in one more before the end of the month.

Dragon Blood by Patricia Briggs

So, just 7 books for September. Gah.


So 13 books for the two months period, rather then the 16-17 I should have read, and 75 books to the end of the September.

One more quarter to go and 25 books to read. Not behind schedule, at least, but back sliding is frustrating, especially as I'm sitting there now with nothing I want to read.

(Pause while doing a quick proof read to remember a distant time when I was happy to have read half a dozen books a year. Now when was that? Oh yeah, last year. Now I'm grizzling because I haven't read 16 books in a few weeks? :)

(Followed by a second thought, that if someone handed me a pile of 16 boooks and told me I had two months to read them in, I'd be very tempted to tell them what they could do with their books.)