colinflipper's book list

Looking back at my book list from last year (that I kept myself, not on LibraryThing), it'll be a stretch to get to 50. However, there were certainly some books on that list that really bogged me down. Has anyone working on a challenge found themselves systematically reading shorter books?

Anyway, getting down to business, I have until November 26, 2008, to read 50 books. I'm starting on Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman... now!

Some people have, but you don't need to - you can pick a different number for your goal. If you think 30 (or whatever) is a more reasonable goal for you, then go for that :)

I glad to have the 50 book goal to work towards (and I won't be too broken up if I don't make it all the way there). I guess what I'm worried about is that, next September, I'll be struggling to maintain pace and that will cause me to not pick up Anna Karenina or Dog Years, both of which are sitting on my bookshelf and begging to be read.

I think Anna Karenina counts for 3. It's worth it!

1. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I'm on pace so far, but it was a week that included a 4 hour plane flight. I'm starting The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno.

2. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

A very entertaining book. I'll get around to writing a review of it sometime soon. Also, before it became a novel, Joe Meno wrote the same story as a play that I saw performed by the House Theatre in Chicago.

I finished yesterday, so I'm at two books in 18 days. Way behind pace!! I'm starting Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin.

3. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

My vacation has not been a very productive one, as far as reading goes. I finished book 3 yesterday, which was day 33 of my 50 book challenge. That's a 33.27 book pace for the year (and I'm counting February 29).

I've got a 4+ hour plane flight today, so I should be able to make some good headway with Valis by Philip K. Dick.

4. Valis by Philip K. Dick

I finished book 4 yesterday (day 39). My pace is up to 37.54 books!

For some reason, I can't get the book or author touchstones working in this message. Also, for the message above, I could never get the right PKD link for the author touchstone. Hmm…

One last thing is that I have started reading McSweeney's 25.

5. McSweeney's 25

So it took eight days to finish that one. I'm at five books in 47 days, on pace for 38.94 books.

I'm going to start Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. I've been looking forward to reading this book for a while, but I'm skittish about taking my copy on plane flights or vacations because it is signed by the author (who I saw read at Chicago Story Week).

6. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

I slipped way off pace with this one, even though it was a fantastic read. But I reached the two-thirds point sometime yesterday and by then I was pretty much sucked in.

Six books in 62 days puts me on pace for 35.42 books in a year. Lionel Essrog's appeal to my own obsessive tendencies is now leading me to calculate my progress in terms of pages...

1. Fragile Things = 386 pages
2. The Boy Detective Fails = 323 pages
3. Notes of a Native Son = 181 pages
4. Valis = 233 pages
5. McSweeney's 25 = 200 pages
6. Motherless Brooklyn = 311 pages

That makes a total of 1634 pages in 62 days, for a pace of 9619.5 pages in a year.

Finally, to get back to work, I'm starting on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I finished this book yesterday, which means that it took me 19 days. This just isn't the way to finish 50 books. However, the book was awesome, so that's cool.

Seven books in 81 days is a 31.63 book pace. 1969 pages in 81 days is a 8897.0 page pace.

I'm starting to read ‘In Defense of Food’ by Michael Pollan. Maybe reading some non-fiction will get me back on pace.

I read In Defense of Food last month, and it was a fast read, and good.

I find that the beginning of the year can be a slow reading time, for some reason. Last year I read 4 books in Jan and 4 books in Feb, but I ended the year at 93 books, so a few slow months aren't that big of a deal. Good luck with your challenge!

Thanks for the encouragement!

I'm actually not that happy with In Defense of Food right now. I've just finished part 2 and it just feels like Pollan is trying to argue against the idea that scientific nutritionism works, but then his evidence to back this point up mostly consists of clinical studies about nutrients. In particular, I just read through several pages about why researchers think that Omega-3 fats are going to be the new key to the puzzle. Maybe the studies that he's quoting are better because they are doing clinical studies of lifestyle decisions, rather than individual nutrients, but if that is the case, then he really doesn't come out and say it.

I can't really blame Pollan because I am very sympathetic to his overall point and I wouldn't want him to just argue that science is wrong and our only recourse is to let ourselves be guided by pure intuition. I guess that in my ideal takedown of nutritionist science, he would propose an alternate theory and then demonstrate how much better it is supported by available data (yes, I am a scientist myself, in a totally different field). Of course, if he could do that, then Pollan would probably be a health scientist and not a journalist.

I read The Omnivore's Dilemma a while back and found that to be much more satisfying, probably because it seemed more constructive and less just reporting. Maybe the third section, which I'm about to start will help my opinion of this book. My understanding (from the introduction) is that this is where he makes actual suggestions for how to break your diet out of the industrial food system.

8. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

I'm at 8 books and 2174 pages in 90 days. That works out to a page of 32.53 books/year or 8840.9 pages/year. It's interesting that my books/year pace increased, but my pages/year fell. Interesting, but very understandable, since In Defense of Food is a pretty thin book.

Also, I should mention that my complaints from the last post were pretty much all addressed in the third part of the book (actually, the first few pages of part three were all about explaining why he used so many nutritional studies in a book that angles against nutritionism). Having just finished the book, I do feel inspired to redouble my interest in cooking and eating food.

I'm not totally sure what I'm planning to read next. I was sort of thinking about reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, but I would be reading of my laptop screen as a pdf file, so I might not have the stamina for that.

I am glad that your concerns were addressed! I was reading your first comment, and thinking "yeah, but, it's kind of inherent in the problem, and he explains it later..." and then I saw that you had finished the book and figured it out yourself.

I have been reading shorter books lately, but that will change soon--I just bought the new translation of War and Peace, which will definitely pull up my average. It will probably kill my pace, though....

Ooops, I accidentally posted twice, sorry about that!

9. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

I finished this up yesterday and starting The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer.

I read Free Culture as a pdf file on my computer. This seemed appropriate given the subject matter, but I don't recommend reading anything that way that is more than a few pages.

As far as the text itself, I thought it was good. More lawyerly and less manifesto-ish than I was expecting, but that's cool.

Alright, my updated pace is 33.61 books or 9277.0 pages in 366 days.

10. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

I actually finished this a few days ago, but I haven't gotten around to updating things here.

Ten down, forty to go. Well, that's if I was actually keeping up the 50 book pace, which I'm not. If I continue at this rate, I'll finish 33.89 books or 9705.8 pages in the year.

I started Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which is something I've been meaning to read for a while. The first chapter is good, but it's a long book.

Re #9: I've been tempted to buy McSweeney's #25 just because it's so darn beautiful. Did you think it was a good issue?

I think that McSweeney's 25 was a pretty good issue. But if you are going to buy just one issue, go for 23. That one is the best I've read so far.

Thanks! I'll pick up a copy one of these days. I keep meaning to subscribe, but it's usually the last thing on my mind when I have extra cash.

11. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Wow, I feel like I kind of fell off the wagon there. To tell the truth, I was reading this book pretty steadily and it totally kept my interest. However, it was very long and in the end it took 43 days to read!

My updated pace is for 26.66 books or 8837 pages for the year.

I'm not sure what to start next. I think it's a decision between McSweeney's 26 and In the Space Left Behind by Joan Ackerman.

12. In the Space Left Behind by Joan Ackermann

I cruised through this book in just eight days -- quite a change of pace after Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I'm not that used to reading young adult fiction, but there were parts of this book that I liked a lot and other parts that I wasn't crazy about (the love interest sub-plot was barely there). There was a stretch in the middle of the book, though, where I was having a hard time putting it down, so overall it's a positive review. Also, Joan Ackermann is the niece of my step-dad, so that's exciting.

I am approaching the halfway point for my reading year (since I started back on November 26). My current pace is 27.62 books or 9300 pages for the year.

The next couple of weeks should be productive ones for reading. I'm taking a vacation to Japan and that means a couple of loooooong plane flights. I guess I should probably do some sleeping on the plane, but a lot of reading will go down as well. I've started in on McSweeney's 26, but I'm going to try to finish that before I leave on Wednesday.

13. McSweeney's 26
14. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
15. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

Unsurprisingly, the trip to Japan proved pretty good for reading. Those plane flights were awful, but the trip overall was excellent.

Updating my calculations, I'm now on pace for 32.10 books or 10,002 pages for the year. I have started reading Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth. I'm a big Barth fan, but this is another long one, so it probably won't be good for my 50 book challenge.

16. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

I took a break from Giles Goat-Boy to read Little Brother, since my girlfriend had is checked out from the library. This book was a lot of fun, and a quick page-turner. I'm a boing boing reader, so a lot of the subjects that Doctorow explores on various tangents were pretty familiar. It's sort of fun to have that insight into the author's interests and then see it show up in their fiction.

So, now I'll get back to Giles Goat-boy. While the book is definitely long, and a much slower read, it is really good so far. The last couple of chapters before I set it aside for a few days were especially intense and fantastical.

Pace = 29.88 books / year (9439 pages / year)

17. Secrets of New Babylon by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

Well, I am still working slowly through Giles Goat-boy, but I took another short break to read one of the Left Behind for kids books because I'm having a Left Behind book discussion with some friends. Yeah, it was really bad, but it only took an hour or so to read. I'll add it to boost my book count, because I'm pretty far behind. I don't know that I have a whole lot to discuss about the book, though.

Pace = 25.5 books / year (7782 pages / year)

18. Giles Goat-boy by John Barth

Ok, I finally finished Giles Goat-boy, after a big push over the last few days. This book crushed any hopes I had of making it to 50 in a year, but it was really good. I'm planning to write a more detailed review of it soon.

I think that I'm going to get back into the Foundation trilogy now, with Foundation and Empire.

Pace = 26.6 books / year (8787 pages / year)

19. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
20. Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Pace = 26.8 books / year (8734 pages / year)

I just saw that someone added McSweeney's 28 to their library, so I guess I'm going to start on McSweeney's 27.

21. McSweeney's 27

I finished this one a while ago, but I've been behind on updating this thread. I mostly payed attention to the book of short stories, particularly Jim Shepard's story "Classical Scenes of Farewell", about a psychopathic lord in Medieval France. The issue also included a book of sketches from Art Spiegalman and a somewhat unexplained book featuring images of selected artwork.

Pace = 27.3 books / year (8737 pages / year)

My girlfriend brought home the science fiction anthology Alien Pets from her library and it looked like a lot of fun. I started reading it and, while I'm not disappointed, it is taking me longer to get through than I was hoping.

22. Alien Pets, edited by Denise Little
23. Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

Alien Pets was entertaining but none of the stories really stuck out enough that I remember them, just a few weeks later.

I really enjoyed Maps and Legends. Maybe it's kind of nerdy, but I find it kind of inspiring to read writer's thoughts about reading. Also in this vein, I would recommend both of the books collecting Nick Hornby's columns from The Believer.

Pace = 26.5 books / year (8340 pages / year)

I've started reading You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers and I'm heading out of the country for a month-long work trip. We'll see how much reading gets done...

24. You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers

I'm back from a month-long work trip (the Atacama desert is spectacular!) but I only added one book to the done pile in the meantime. November 26 is fast approaching; I will fall well short of 50 books, but I should at least reach the halfway point when I finish reading A Storm of Swords.

Pace = 26.1 books / year (8297 pages / year)

Well, I thought that I was going to reach 25 books by November 26, but A Storm of Swords ended up taking a long time. I'm going to start the challenge again, but this time at the new year and hopefully I can do better than 24 or 25 books. I did have some really good reads this last year, though.

Years ago I tried to read 52 books in a year and yes I was choosing shorter books. I gave up after a couple of months because I felt pressured to read books not that I wanted to but to fulfill my challenge.

I have learnt that it's ok to fall short, the main purpose is to enjoy the reading, 50 is just something to strive for. I easily did the 50 this year but I know I will definitely struggle in 2009 as I am more limited in the books I can read as I am only counting books already in my TBR shelf as at yesterday. There is no way I will read only them so in reality my aim is higher than 50 and I can't see that happening.

Well done, you read some great books.

Ok, time to start up the challenge again. I'm about 150 pages into A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin. Maybe I shouldn't be starting the challenge with this one, since A Storm Of Swords threw me off pace at the end of my last reading year, but I'm still on vacation and it's a fun book.

1. A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin

Just finished my first book of 2009! I'm already off pace for 50 books, but this was a long one, so I'm ok with it.

17 days, 1 book, 978 pages
Pace = 21.47 books / year or 20998 pages / year
So, compared to last year, I am a bit behind on my book count, but way ahead on pages.

Next, I'm starting The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

I hope you find lots of good reading in 2009!
--BJ

2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

20 days, 2 books, 1290 pages
pace = 36.5 books / year or 23543 pages / year

Alright, I'm cruising so far! And I have a lot of books lined up, so I think that I'll go ahead and start Dandelion Wine right now...

3. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

This one was excellent, but it felt long after reading The Graveyard Book. I think I did a good job of focusing and working through it, though.

28 days, 3 books, 1529 pages
pace = 39.1 books / year or 19932 pages / year

4. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I liked The White Tiger a lot but I wasn't as blown away as I thought I might be from all the blurbs on the cover. Man, they got some effusive blurbs for the cover.

38 days, 4 books, 1805 pages
pace = 38.4 books / year or 17338 pages / year

5. The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

This book is an advanced review copy that my girlfriend brought home (though I guess the book has already been released anyway). I didn't really think it was that great, and I was irritated by the cliffhanger ending. Even though it is book one in a series, they still could have tried to have a little bit more of a resolution. I probably won't be reading the next book in the series, so I don't have to worry about what's going to happen. It's too bad, because there were some promising ideas in here.

45 days, 5 books, 2284 pages
pace = 40.6 books / year or 18526 pages / year

6. The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

This is a very good year for reading so far. I would have expected that a fairly sizable non-fiction book would have bogged me down, but I worked my way right through this one. I feel like I learned a lot from it too. My mom, who gave me this book, later told me not to read it. But that is because the last few years of the Supreme Court (and also Bush v. Gore) were making her angry. I think that I benefited more from all the history leading up to it, which I never knew first hand because I was too young. The Court does look like it will be a pretty scary place for the next several years though...

54 days, 6 books, 2624 pages
pace = 40.6 books / year or 17736 pages / year

7. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

I'm still keeping pace now, though I was hoping to pick up some ground with a graphic novel. Well, the graphic novel in question is Watchmen and it is so damn intricate that it definitely took me all week to get through. Totally amazing read, though.

I do sort of feel like a poser for finally reading Watchmen just a week before the movie comes out. But I really have been meaning to read it for a few years. I missed my chance when I moved a couple of years ago because an old roommate had a copy. Well, I'm glad to finally read it.

60 days, 7 books, 3040 pages
pace = 42.6 books / year or 18493 pages / year

Good luck this year, colinflipper! I've been enjoying your reviews and I love seeing how your pace changes with each book. I'm a bit of a statistics nerd :)

I bought The White Tiger over the holidays and have been planning to read it very soon. Your post about it is a good reminder to keep my expectations in check when I do.

I have been wanting to read Watchmen, too. Maybe I will see the movie this month, but I am not sure that I will have time to read the book before the movie comes out. Let us know if you liked the movie as much as the book. :)
--BJ

same here...I've only read one graphic novel and that sounds pretty pathetic. The Watchmen sounds like a good second one.

Thanks for the messages everyone! I've sort of done a bit of wagon-falling-off-of over the last three weeks. What happened is that I started reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes. It's not surprising that I didn't manage to read the whole thing in three weeks, but the sort of disgraceful bit is that I'm only 330 or so pages in. I guess I could count the part that have read as up to three books (A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), but that doesn't seem quite right. Any suggestions?

My plan for now is that the whole thing will just count as one book, once I'm finished. But I'm taking a little break for now and I'm going to start Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.

Lots of people do count omnibus editions as a book for each title that was published separately. You can decide to count your books however you want. I also tend to count things like that as only one book, but I also read some really short ones, too, to balance it out.

I think that you are doing great with your reading. I have been in a similar position with The Brothers Karamazov that I am still reading much longer than 3 weeks down the road. I only need 150 more pages to finish it, and I truly hope that I finish it this month. I am the only person who has commented in my reading group on it since the beginning of March, so I think that the rest of the group is finished. I better hurry!

Have a super day!
--BJ

8. Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

Well, I've been doing pretty poorly for the last month+, but I did finish Amnesia Moon a while back and just never got around to posting it here. Let's see, I finished it on April 4, so my stats as of then should be...

94 days, 8 books, 3287 pages
pace = 31.1 books / year or 12763 pages / year

hmm... that's better than I thought it would be. Now I'm reading Martha Quest, which is taking me a while (obvious, since I started it back on April 4). Gotta keep reading!

9. Martha Quest by Doris Lessing

132 days, 9 books, 3620 pages
pace = 24.9 books / year or 10010 pages / year

It definitely took me a long time to read this one. I thought it was an interesting book, really detailed and complete psychologically, but it seemed somehow like parts of it weren't necessary or belonged in a different book.

I can't really put my finger on it right this minute, but I'll try to mull it over a bit and come back later. In the meantime, I'm starting McSweeney's 30.

10. McSweeney's 30

143 days, 10 books, 3817 pages
pace = 25.5 books / year or 9743 pages / year

This was a good issue of McSweeney's, particularly the last two stories. The last story was particularly interesting because an earlier version of the story (written from the perspective of a different character) showed up in an earlier issue.

11. The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons
12. The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

I got a fair bit of reading in over the past couple of weeks, between a bit of vacation and then getting pretty well absorbed by Joe Meno's new book.

I was looking forward to The Hollow Man, because I have read a couple of the Hyperion books and really enjoyed them. But it turns out that The Hollow Man is really bad. It seemed like the thoughts being picked up by the telepathic main character were just an excuse for Simmons to exercise some "dark and gritty" writing, I found the attempts to add realism to the physics and mathematics distracting, and then the final climax of the book just seemed new-agey. Maybe I'm just not the right person to read science fiction that hinges on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, but I didn't think the writing was good either.

Fortunately, I followed The Hollow Man up with Joe Meno's new novel, The Great Perhaps, which was excellent. I've read quite a few of Meno's other books, and I also got the chance to see The Boy Detective Fails when it was staged as a play by the House Theatre (of Chicago). I was a little worried at the start of this book, because the family that comprises the main characters are all very quirky. This led me to think that I might be in for a Wes Anderson type of experience (nothing against Anderson, but his movies are definitely more style than substance). However, I had faith in Meno and he totally delivered, with characters who end up being totally fleshed out, engaging, and a very addictive read. Recommended!

Ok, that was a lot more writing that I tend to do, but I think I had particularly strong opinions of both books.

164 days, 12 books, 4573 pages
pace = 26.7 books / year or 10177 pages / year

13. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Excellent book. It took me awhile to read it, but that is because I have been insanely busy, not any problem of the book itself.

191 days, 13 books, 4968 pages
pace = 24.8 books / year or 9494 pages / year

We're past the halfway point for the year, and if I keep this pace, then I might just beat last year's total by one book. But I'm leaving in a couple of days to go down to Chile for work and I'll be there 5 weeks. So maybe I can get a lot of reading done while I'm gone. The Complete Sherlock Holmes will definitely be coming in my suitcase!

Other books that I am taking to South America:

*A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
*Seventeen and J by Kenzaburo Oe
*The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

And possibly, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll also bring:

*After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
*The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

14. Seventeen and J by Kenzaburo Oe

(finished last night)

Lots of work to do down here in Chile, which means that the pile of books I brought is absurdly ambitious. Oh well, maybe I'll speed up soon...

200 days, 14 books, 5162 pages
pace = 25.5 books / year, 9421 pages / year

I can't report yet that I've read another book, because I just finished working my way through Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and, as I mentioned above, I'm going to add the whole Complete Sherlock Holmes as one epic entry when I'm done with it.

But now it's time to take a break from detective fiction (plus the book is so big that it's hard to read in bed). I'm going to start The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I love The Dispossessed! Enjoy!

15. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
16. after the quake by Haruki Murakami

I was working my way very slowly through the Dispossessed for a while. The book wasn't really gripping me, but I think that it was just because I was working too much and didn't have time to read. Once I departed for my return trip to the US, I started reading up a storm. I read the pretty much the whole second half of The Dispossessed during a long layover in the Santiago airport, and I loved it. Then I read a bit of after the quake on the flight from Santiago to Miami, and finished in from Miami to Chicago. Too much travel and I'm very exhausted, but the books were great!

230 days, 16 books, 5645 pages
pace = 25.4 books / year or 8958 pages / year

I started A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge last night. It's a re-read, but I don't remember the story and I do remember really liking it. I found a copy used at Powell's so I couldn't resist.

17. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

Such a good book! There are enough fascinating ideas, interesting characters, and twists'n'turns in this novel to make up 10 ordinary sci-fi books.

256 days, 17 books, 6258 pages
pace = 24.2 books / year or 8923 pages / year

Drat! My pace has finally slipped down to the point where I ended up last year (a measly 24 books). Fortunately, I still have something like 500 uncounted pages of Sherlock Holmes up my sleeve.

I think the next book on my list is Maus (I and II) by Art Spiegelman.

18. Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman

I'm counting this as one book, just because. It was a good one.

269 days, 18 books, 6553 pages
pace = 24.4 books / year or 8892 pages / year

hmmm... not sure what to read next

19. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

I found this book to be extremely readable and it basically just sucked me right in. Very highly recommended!

276 days, 19 books, 6892 pages
pace = 25.1 books / year or 9114 pages / year

This was a pretty good bump to my reading pace. I think I'm going to read Stitches: A Memoir by David Small, because my girlfriend has it out from the library and just finished it yesterday. This one sounds really interesting... plus it should give me a quick bump to my reading pace, on account of its sparse graphic novel-ness!

20. Stiches: A Memoir by David Small

Gorgeous drawings and watercolor in this graphic novel. I especially liked all of the old Detroit automobiles.

282 days, 20 books, 7221 pages
pace = 25.9 books / year or 9346 pages / year

My page is a bit below the 10 thousand page mark, but I think that would be a very worthy goal. I need to finish The Complete Sherlock Holmes!

I got some more Sherlock Holmes under my belt. This time it was The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Next in the collection is Hound of the Baskervilles, but I might take a little break first and read something else...

21. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

I have read a lot of Roddy Doyle's work in McSweeneys, so I wanted to try a novel of his. Other than that, I really didn't know what to expect from this book. Things started off in a young boy stream of consciousness mode (think A Child's Christmas in Wales or Dandelion Wine), but a moving story does slowly develop. The writing is pretty amazing, as Doyle works through some serious issues while never failing to stay in character as a 10 year old Irish boy.

312 days, 21 books, 7503 pages
pace = 24.6 books / year or 8778 pages / year

Nothing to add to my list just yet, but I have been plowing my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Hopefully I will add that as my 22nd book (plus another 1100 pages or so) in the next week. So my book count for 2009 isn't going to be that awesome, but reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories is definitely an accomplishment.

22. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Yes! I'm finally done (finished it last night). This book was definitely my big reading accomplishment for the year, and I'm glad to have read it. I'm a bit apprehensive about the upcoming movie, of course.

349 days, 22 books, 8625 pages
pace = 23.0 books / year or 9020 pages / year

23. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

I knocked this one off quickly (finishing it last night), but I guess I had already started it before I was done with Sherlock Holmes. I've been meaning to start drawing more often, possibly including some comics type projects, and this book definitely opens your eyes to some of the possibilities. I would also say that it's a bit intimidating, though, with a sweeping overview of the whole medium and a very ambitious message. Not really a "start out slow and simple" kind of book...

351 days, 23 books, 8840 pages
pace = 23.9 books / year or 9193 pages / year

I've got two books sitting here to read over the holidays, and I just might make it through both before the end of the year. They are The Magicians by Lev Grossman and Makers by Cory Doctorow. If I pull it off, it will put me at 25 books and 9658 pages, which would be a definite improvement from last year!

24. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Wow, I really blew through The Magicians, finishing it up last night, after a marathon reading on Sunday that accounted for at least 200 pages. Obviously, I found this book very engrossing and readable. It actually ended up being a lot closer to a conventional fantasy story than I thought it was going to be. I guess I had some impression that the novel was going to really tweak with genre conventions, but that wasn't the case. Regardless, it was a very entertaining read.

355 days, 24 books, 9242 pages
pace = 24.7 books / year or 9502 pages / year

25. Makers by Cory Doctorow

I had pretty mixed feelings about this book, but I think I ended up liking it. Doctorow's fiction doesn't really feel any different from his writing on boingboing, so the story ends up being a bit of a mish-mash between the normal novel aspects (plot, character development, and so on) and a heavy dose of "check out this cool idea/technology!" that would be normal in a blog post, but sort of sticks out here. It also invites criticism of the ideas (I found his predictions of future social and economic trends to be particularly unbelievable) and this can yank you out of the story. But I did get past all of that in the end and did manage to develop some connection with the sizeable cast of characters. For a science fiction book, Makers is surprisingly character driven, so my advice would be to let the pronouncements about revolutionary technology just slide by.

Whoops, I forgot to update my numbers. I finished Makers yesterday, so these are calculated for December 27.

361 days, 25 books, 9658 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year or 9765 pages / year

I have three days to try to tack on a 26th book for 2009!

Ok, all done with 2009. Twenty-five books and 9658 pages. I'm starting 2010 with McSweeney's 32. I hope everyone had a fun New Year's Eve!

1. McSweeney's 32

Ok, there is the first book of 2010. I'm pretty sure that this year will start off slow, at least until I finish my PhD thesis.
This was a really fascinating issue, made up of stories set in the year 2024. The McSweeney's take on science fiction, I guess.

11 days, 1 book, 258 pages
pace = 33.2 books / year or 8561 pages / year

2. After Dark by Haruki Murakami

I finished this book up Sunday night, on the airplane. It seemed really filmic to me -- I kept thinking about how one would shoot certain scenes. There was a lot of internal monologue, though, that kept screwing up my plans.

17 days, 2 books, 502 pages
pace = 42.9 books / year or 10778 pages / year

3. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Ok, this one took a long time, for a 150 page book. But I think that's not really too surprising. This is the first Pynchon that I've ever read. I enjoyed it, especially when I got closer to the end. There was a weird rhythm to the writing, shifting back and forth between extremely abstract passages and more straightforward storytelling.

35 days, 3, books, 654 pages
pace = 31.3 books / year or 6820 pages / year

4. Nation by Terry Pratchett

A much quicker read than Pynchon, but very fun. After getting 75-100 pages in the book, I went and saw a showing of the National Theatre's production of Nation (except I saw it on a movie screen in Berkeley, not a stage in London). There were enough tweaks in the plot between the book and play to confuse me for a little while, but the spirit was definitely still there.

45 days, 4 books, 1023 pages
pace = 32.4 books / year or 8298 pages / year

5. The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

Yikes, this one took me a while to finish. It was good, but probably not as good as some other Hugo winners that I've read. I have a feeling that this year is going to be a rough one for my 50 book challenge.

72 days, 5 books, 1492 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year or 7564 pages / year

6. I Am The New Black by Tracy Morgan
7. Silk Road To Ruin by Ted Rall

Tracy Morgan's autobiography was... not good. But there were some pretty funny parts, so maybe it was worth it. Ted Rall's book about central Asia (mainly Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) was awesome. It's definitely not a reference work containing authoritative history or anything like that. Instead, you get some wild and crazy stories, plus a pretty good feeling for what is going on now in the region.

86 days, 7 books, 1989 pages
pace = 29.7 books / year or 8442 pages / year

8. Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection by Scott McCloud

I've never read Zot! before, but I'm familiar with Scott McCloud from Understanding Comics. It took me a while to get into this one, and just at the point when I did, it totally shifted gears from the more superheroish first half to the more realistic second half. But I was enjoying it a lot by the end.

97 days, 8 books, 2564 pages
pace = 30.1 books / year or 9648 pages / year

9. Shakespeare Wrote For Money by Nick Hornby

This is the last compilation of Nick Hornby's columns from The Believer. Like the other two, it is very entertaining and makes me want to read more books (but not until I finish my thesis!). It is pretty short, so I read pretty much the whole thing while flying cross-country.

98 days, 9 books, 2695 pages
pace = 33.5 books / year or 10038 pages / year

10. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

I finished this one up back on Thursday night. It's been a while since I read any Vonnegut. I enjoyed Mother Night, but didn't really get sucked in.

105 days, 10 books, 2887 pages
pace = 34.8 books / year or 10036 pages / year

11. Ringworld by Larry Niven

I finished Ringworld last night. It was an interesting read, but too involved in world building for my taste. I guess this book is held up as an archetype of that style, so I shouldn't be surprised.

122 days, 11 books, 3229 pages
pace = 32.9 books / year or 9661 pages / year

12. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

I think my reading pace has been pretty good, which probably means that my thesis writing pace has been crappy.

132 days, 12 books, 3497 pages
pace = 33.2 books / year or 9670 pages / year

13. City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate

This was a good bedside read. Entertaining and easy to read in bits and pieces.

152 days, 13 books, 3822 pages
pace = 31.2 books / year or 9178 pages / year

14. Without A Spark by Jennifer Barnes

Whoa, it's been a while since I last finished a book. This one is actually a manuscript for a novel that my girlfriend is working on. And it took extra long because I was doing some editing and writing comments and so on. I'm a little late posting this -- I actually got done reading it on Wednesday night, so the stats below reflect that.

188 days, 14 books, 4056 pages
pace = 27.2 books / year or 7875 pages / year

15. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

206 days, 15 books, 4467 pages
pace = 26.6 books / year or 7915 pages / year

I really need to pick up the pace. Actually, I did pick up the pace on a cross-country flight today (reading We Owe You Nothing). So that's good.

Also good? The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

16. We Owe You Nothing, ed Daniel Sinker

Like I mentioned above, I burned through most of this book on a plane flight about a week ago. It consists of 25 interviews from the defunct magazine Punk Planet. The interviews were really good, and it makes me wish that I had read Punk Planet back when it was actually being released. I was also a bit surprised that the interviews were very much focused on political issues, the state of punk, etc, without a whole lot of talk about music. This is probably a result of biased selection for which interviews to include in the book. Interviews that were focused on a particular album or particular tour that went on in the late 90's won't be as interesting for the reader ten years later. I think that Sinker did a great job of choosing fascinating interviews for inclusion. Ted Leo is really long winded, though!

212 days, 16 books, 4808 pages
pace = 27.5 books / year or 8278 pages / year

17. The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin

Last night, I finally finished this book of essays on the state of fantasy and science fiction, written by Ursula K. Le Guin. It was a bit dry, but a good argument that people involved in these genres should be developing critical apparatus for discussion and evaluation. The book was published in 1979 or 1980 and a lot of the essays point to the growing acceptance of science fiction in critical circles and academia. I think it is interesting that now, 30 years later, these genres are still somewhat on the outside of the literary establishment. Maybe things have improved a lot, but the goalposts have been pushed forward as well, or maybe the trend stagnated somewhere along the way?

234 days, 17 books, 5070 pages
pace = 26.5 books / year or 7908 pages / year

18. McSweeney's 24, ed Dave Eggers and Justin Taylor

I've still got a big back log of McSweeney's issues to catch up on (22, 34, and 35, plus I got reprints of the first three issues because they were selling them for cheap). This one was divided into two parts. The stories, with a theme of 'Trouble', were all a lot more violent than you would usually expect from McSweeney's. The second part was devoted to the author Donald Barthelme, who taught writing at CCNY and University of Houston and also published many short stories, especially in the New Yorker. I wasn't familiar with his work at all before this, but there were a couple of his stories and a lot of recollections of him, written by various students and colleagues. Definitely a departure from what I've been reading lately, but it was mostly interesting.

247 days, 18 books, 5277 pages
pace = 26.6 books / year or 7798 pages / year

19. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

It has been a really busy two weeks, which accounts for why it took me so long to work my way through a 200 page children's book. But this one had a lot going on in it. I thought the time travel plot was carried out well and I liked the setting in 1970's New York.

262 days, 19 books, 5476 pages
pace = 26.5 books / year or 7629 pages / year

20. Zero History by William Gibson

Well, I really hit a wall there. It wasn't any problem with the book, which was a fun read; I have just been working like crazy, with almost no free time. But, to get a bit picky with the book, I had trouble getting caught up in the plot, because it seemed too unimportant. I guess this is an issue that I have with all of Gibson's set-in-the-present-day trilogy -- his plot requires some belief in some vaguely described struggle for power, but it is harder to suspend my disbelief without the science fiction trappings. Another way to put it is that Bigend just didn't feel like an actual heavyweight to me.

330 days, 20 books, 5880 pages
pace = 22.1 books / year or 6504 pages / year

It looks like it will be pretty difficult to match my reading totals from last year (especially the page count!). But I do have several very long flights coming up, so maybe if I can just get down to business...

21. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

I may be able to finish one more book this year, but it definitely was not a very prolific year for reading. I think my favorite of the year was probably Silk Road to Ruin, but Zot!, After Dark, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union were all good as well. This last book was pretty interesting too (and I saw it show up on at least one critic's year-end list). It started off slowly, and I guess it stayed pretty slow throughout, but it was also totally original.

359 days, 21 books, 6114 pages
pace = 21.4 books / year or 6216 pages / year

22. The Best American Comics, 2010 edited by Neil Gaiman

Ok, I did manage to fit in one more book for the year. My totals are still well below last year, but that's ok. It was a really busy one.

Final total for 2010 = 22 books, 6466 pages

Time to start the list for 2011!

1. Shiny Shiny by Michael O'Flaherty

I'm off to a good start so far, thanks to a huge amount of plane travel (made it to New Zealand, next stop Antarctica!). This book was a pretty crazy one, written by an acquaintance of mine from whpk (the University of Chicago college radio station). The was pretty much no structure and tons of explanation, but still lots of entertaining parts. Knowing Mike, it was funny to hear some of the characteristic ways that he talks coming through in the prose.

2 days, 1 book, 367 pages
pace = 182.5 books / year, 66978 pages / year

(let's go optimistic pace!)

Ok, I have been negligent in posting here.

2. The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
3. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
4. Just Kids by Patti Smith

I read The Long Ships during my time at the South Pole, and the Viking adventures were a perfect antidote to the confinement and repetition of life down there. That's also where I started on The Windup Girl, but I didn't finish it until after returning home. Over the last couple of weeks, I read Patti Smith's memoir of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, which was pretty inspiring. All I have to say.

71 days, 4 books, 1517 pages
pace = 20.6 books / year, 7799 pages / year

5. The Big Short by Michael Lewis

This wasn't as quick of a read as I thought it would be, but definitely interesting. Lewis really does manage to write about the financial crisis from a different angle than any other summary I have read.

85 days, 5 books, 1783 pages
pace = 21.5 books / year, 7656 pages / year

6. McSweeney's 34, ed Dave Eggers

I finished this issue of McSweeney's back on Tuesday, after a couple of plane flights. Half of the issue was a long piece of reporting from a journalist who was embedded with a cavalry unit in Mosul, Iraq (more recently, not during the original invasion). The other half was the usual McSweeney's type short fiction. My favorite was 'Afterworld' by Anthony Doerr.

95 days, 6 books, 2169 pages
pace = 23.1 books / year, 8334 pages / year

7. Blind Watchers of the Sky by Rocky Kolb

Rocky is a professor of astronomy at University of Chicago, where I just got my PhD (in physics). He was also the speaker at my graduation, where he told an interesting story about Hubble's discovery of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This book is made up of many of those interesting stories from the history of astronomy. The later chapters in the book get into cosmology, and I was reminded of how much has been learned in the last 15 years. The book was written in 1996 and much of the cosmology section is out of date.

119 days, 7 books, 2476 pages
pace = 21.5 books / year, 7594 pages / year

8. Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

I took a long time to read this one, mostly because I was distracted with other things. It did start of a bit slow, but what a climax!

148 days, 8 books, 2959 pages
pace = 19.7 books / year, 7298 pages / year

My books / year pace is flagging, but the pages / year is still solid -- that means I need to read some shorter books!

9. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsella

I went through a few different stages of thinking about this book. Before I started reading it, I actually thought it was non-fiction. I quickly realized that it is actually a novel and I then became worried that it was going to be too sweet and homespun (I mean, this guy wrote the book that was adapted into Field of Dreams!). Next, I started to appreciate the quirkiness of the premise and the main character. But then, finally, I just got bogged down in the second half. I think it would have made a better short story because there just wasn't enough going on to stretch into 300 pages.

170 days, 9 books, 3269 pages
pace = 19.3 books / year, 7019 pages / year

10. Bossypants by Tina Fey

Another book that I wasn't totally crazy for. There were funny parts, of course, but it didn't really go anywhere; it just jumps around between various topics and it's not funny enough to succeed as a humor book alone. But... it was a quick read, so I'm not mad or anything.

178 days, 10 books, 3544 pages
pace = 20.5 books / year, 7267 pages / year

Hey, I pushed my pace back up over 20 books / year (better... but still not very good). Also, this is the 100th post in my 50 books challenge thread!

11. McSweeney's 35, ed Dave Eggers

This was a solid McSweeney's issue. The long story, 'His Sister, Her Monologue' by Hilton Als, sort-of went over my head, but Steven Millhauser's 'Phantoms' was good and creepy, the Roddy Doyle story was excellent as expected, and all of the contemporary Norwegian fiction (second half of the issue) was really interesting. It sort of confirmed my ideas about Norway --- the stories featured lots of wilderness and snow --- but that is not a complaint.

184 days, 11 books, 3838 pages
pace = 21.8 books / year, 7613 pages / year

12. Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich

Maybe narrative non-fiction rubs me the wrong way or something, because I really did not like this book. It might have been more enjoyable if it was told from a neutral perspective (but honestly, not that much went on, so it would have just been a magazine article if you took out much of the protagonists backstory); as it was, I felt like I was forcibly taken for a ride by a stupid, naive kid who has no comprehension of the consequences of his actions. Well, maybe that means the writing was good, because that's pretty much what the story was about. Not recommended.

197 days, 12 books, 4146 pages
pace = 22.2 books / year, 7682 pages / year

13. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

I'm in the middle of reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I forgot to bring it with me on a quick weekend vacation. So instead I read Anya's Ghost, which was quick and fun with really crisp and evocative artwork, and two-thirds of A Canticle for Liebowitz. So I'm going to finish that up quickly and then get back to Kavalier and Clay.

203 days, 13 books, 4370 pages
pace = 23.4 books / year, 7857 pages / year

14. A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr

This was the other book that I started last weekend when I forgot to bring Kavalier and Clay. I am really glad that I found an old copy of A Canticle For Leibowitz lying around because it was a great read. I have been meaning to get into some more classic science fiction, inspired in part by the blogging the Hugos series on io9. A Canticle For Leibowitz reminded me a bit of the Foundation series, due to its really cerebral style of sci-fi. But, with apologies to Isaac Asimov, I think the writing here was much better.

211 days, 14 books, 4648 pages
pace = 24.2 books / year, 8040 pages / year

15. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

It took me a while to finish, but this was really really good. I guess that's not surprising, considering that it won the Pulitzer and all. But if anyone asks me for a recommendation, I'll be pointing them to Kavalier and Clay. I also saw a book of Escapist comics (inspired by the novel) at a used book store. I think I'll have to check that out.

226 days, 15 books, 5287 pages
pace = 24.2 books / year, 8539 pages / year

16. A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin

I finished last night, after about a month of reading. You can find reviews for the latest Song of Ice and Fire book anywhere, so I'll just reiterate that it was epic, entertaining, and harsh as usual.

256 days, 16 books, 6303 pages
pace = 22.8 books / year, 8987 pages / year

As expected, reading 1000 pages of fantasy dropped my books / year pace down significantly, but pages / year is looking good. Maybe I have a shot at 10,000 pages!

17. McSweeney's 37, ed Dave Eggers
18. Triangulation: Last Contact, ed Steve Ramey and Jamie Lackey

I have been away from LibraryThing for a while, so I'm catching up on my reading log. The McSweeney's issue was solid, like I usually expect from them. Triangulation: Last Contact is an anthology of short speculative fiction; I was thinking that I wanted to read some short science fiction right about the time when I heard that they were raising money for their anthology of Kickstarter. So it worked out well.

283 days, 18 books, 6860 pages
pace = 23.2 books / year, 8848 pages / year

19. Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

I decided that I should probably read the Feynman graphic novel, but it left me with the same feeling as Surely You're Joking... -- namely that Feynman is little too full of himself and likes to tell stories about how clever he is.

290 days, 19 books, 7126 pages
pace = 23.9 books / year, 8969 pages / year

20. Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
21. The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey

Demons in the Spring is a collection of short fiction by Joe Meno, with illustrations from different artists to accompany each story. There was a lot of stuff here that came across as a bit quirky for the sake of quirkiness, but it was still a very entertaining read.

I read The Devil's Teeth on a long series of flights and it was pretty much the perfect choice for that sort of thing. It is very far from objective reporting -- I get the feeling that not only does the author only report one side of the events, but that she is actually incapable of seeing the other side -- but a lot of fun.

303 days, 21 books, 7689 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year, 9262 pages / year

22. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Reading has been going pretty slowly since I've been down at the South Pole. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was excellent, but it actually made me feel old, with its perfect descriptions of how it feels to be young, powerful, and inspired. Now I'm starting Anna Karenina and I have no idea if I'll finish before the end of the year...

336 days, 22 books, 8126 pages
pace = 23.9 books / year, 8827 pages / year

Welp, the year ended and I am still about halfway through Anna Karenina. It was pretty obvious to me when I started it that my chances for finishing it by the end of December were slim. But I am enjoying my slow progress... plus it will make a great #1 on my 2012 reading list!

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I finally finished my first book of 2012... and I actually started this one back in early December. It is massive, of course, not just in page count, but in how many people and ideas the book covers. That is something that I wasn't expecting. It was frustrating in some ways because it took a smaller story and exploded it into an epic, but really welcome in other ways -- I think that Levin ended up as my favorite character, and his story only touches occasionally on Anna's.

28 days, 1 book, 838 pages
pace = 13.0 books / year, 10924 pages / year

2. The Best American Comics 2011 edited by Alison Bechdel

I blazed through this compilation of comics in just a couple of days. It's the second Best American Comics volume that I've read but I'm sort of on the fence. It's nice to have a beautifully printed collection all in one book, but I think that they maybe go overboard in trying to avoid the genre ghetto that makes up a huge fraction of comics printed.

30 days, 2 books, 1166 pages
pace = 24.4 books / year, 14225 pages / year

3. Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson

Ok, the pace is picking up now. I enjoyed William Gibson's essay collection a lot. Some of the pieces did get repetitive, but I always find his writing style to be so enjoyable, poetic even.

35 days, 3 books, 1421 pages
pace = 31.4 books / year, 14860 pages / year

4. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

I finished Art of Fielding last night. It was very good, but maybe not the work of genius that some seem to be describing it as. I may have gotten a little bit nit-picky about some of the baseball details...

55 days, 4 books, 1933 pages
pace = 26.6 books / year, 12863 pages / year

5. World's End by Joan D. Vinge

I was looking for a short science-fiction read and this delivered. I was a bit annoyed at first with the sections that essentially recapped The Snow Queen (the preceding book in this series), but the plots did end up connecting in a meaningful way, so I guess it's forgivable. The ending left me looking forward to reading The Summer Queen, so that's good.

67 days, 5 books, 2116 pages
pace = 27.3 books / year, 11559 pages / year

I also squeezed in Matthew Yglesias's The Rent Is Too Damn High, but I'm not going to include it here because it's closer to pamphlet length than full book length. Actually, I have no idea how long it is because I read the Kindle edition and it didn't have page numbers. But I finished the whole thing in about an hour, while at work.

6. McSweeney's 38, ed Dave Eggers

I would rate this as a pretty high quality McSweeney's issue. My favorite was the hilarious Roddy Doyle story "The Hens", about a Polish immigrant in Ireland who gets involved in a feud between wealthy Irish housewives (who all keep chickens). I actually finished this back on Wednesday (the 21st), but didn't get on LibraryThing to post until now.

81 days, 6 books, 2370 pages
pace = 27.1 books / year, 10709 pages / year

7. The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe
8. McSweeney's 39, ed Dave Eggers

I got a lot of reading done over the past week. Not a very great week by other measures, though. The Changeling was excellent, like all the Oe that I have read (I would rank it after A Personal Matter, but ahead of Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!). The common themes are there, post-war Japanese nationalism in this case, and the writing style is totally unique. After every bit of Oe that I have read, I sit back and wonder if the specific style of writing -- very plain and clear, but also quite complex -- is a characteristic of Oe himself, the translator, or Japanese literature in general.

McSweeney's 39 was good, with more non-fiction than usual (good non-fiction!).

99 days, 8 books, 3133 pages
pace = 29.6 books / year, 11583 pages / year

I've been working on The Summer Queen for a long time now, and I'm still only about two-thirds done (but enjoying it!). But in the meantime, I also read three books collecting The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, which I am going to count as one book for the purposes of this list.

9. The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 1, ed Diana Schutz and Dave Land
The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 2, ed Diana Schutz
The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 3, ed Diana Schutz

It's pretty incredible how thoroughly the comics commit to the notion that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was actually based on true events. Even though you know that it is fiction, you start second guessing whether Chabon took certain parts of the story from actual history.

134 days, 9 books, 3611 pages
pace = 24.6 books / year, 9863 pages / year

10. The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge

I finally finished The Summer Queen, after like a month and a half. So that throws me pretty far off pace, but it was really good. I'm kind of at a loss for what to read next -- I have several books lined up, but I'm hoping to tackle something a little shorter this time.

149 days, 10 books, 4282 pages
pace = 24.6 books / year, 10518 pages / year

11. God Save The Fan by Will Leitch

I was looking for a quick and funny read. This matched those criteria, but I found it kind of boring. It also seemed surprisingly dated for a book that was published in 2008. Maybe that's because it basically reads as a series of slightly more elaborate than usual blog posts, which would usually be published within days of the events they relate to.

159 days, 11 books, 4577 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year, 10536 pages / year

12. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
13. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

1Q84 was a long, long read. I didn't find it as compelling as other Murakami novels, but it did finally grab my attention in the last third. Once I finished that, I blazed through A Hologram for the King, on account of having a ton of time to read during a weekend at my dad's house. I don't think that Hologram was especially great, but it is a fun read and fast.

203 days, 13 books, 5814 pages
pace = 23.4 books / year, 10482 pages / year

14. McSweeney's 40, ed Dave Eggers

The stand-out feature of this McSweeney's issue was definitely 'In My Home There Is No Sorrow', Rick Bass's book-length travelogue of a trip to Rwanda to teach at a writer's workshop. It was intense and moving and highly readable.

214 days, 14 books, 6199 pages
pace = 23.9 books / year, 10602 pages / year

15. Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou

I was actually hoping for more math / logic in Logicomix, but I can also see why they wrote the particular story that they did. It fell a bit short of the hype for me, but still good.

222 days, 15 books, 6543 pages
pace = 24.7 books / year, 10787 pages / year

16. The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge
17. Groove Interrupted by Keith Spera
18. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

A week-long conference in Beijing was a good opportunity to get a lot of reading done (especially those 12 hours plane flights!). The Children of the Sky was great, though it didn't quite have the epic arc of A Fire Upon the Deep, and it was clearly setting up for a third book in the series. I was disappointed by Groove Interrupted -- it seemed like it was just a series of newspaper articles tacked together (which I think it was) and the theme of recovery from Katrina barely showed up in some sections. Invisible Cities was extremely entertaining and packs a huge amount of creativity into 165 pages.

240 days, 18 books, 7412 pages
pace = 27.5 books / year, 11303 pages / year

My pace is looking pretty good... if I keep it up then it will be my best reading year since starting to keep (mildly obsessive) records.

19. End Zone by Don DeLillo
20. The Giver by Lois Lowry

More travel and more productive reading. End Zone is the first book I've read by DeLillo and I thought it was pretty hilarious, though without much of a plot. I must be just slightly too old to have read The Giver while growing up, since a lot of people that I talk to are shocked that I hadn't read it. Well now I have read it, and it was quite good.

255 days, 20 books, 7834 pages
pace = 28.7 books / year, 11244 pages / year

21. The Cyberiad by Slanislaw Lem

I'm falling way behind pace here, but that's partly because I've been reading two books at once. So I'm pretty close to being finished with Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon too. The Cyberiad was great -- highly entertaining, at least for nerds like me.

302 days, 21 books, 8129 pages
pace = 25.5 books / year, 9852 pages / year

22. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

...and now I finished Telegraph Avenue, on a flight out to Australia, en route to New Zealand. For most of the book, I wasn't really sure where the story was going, or if it had much of a plot, but the action comes fast when you get near the end! My only problem is that I'm out of reading material for the last leg of my flight.

307 days, 22 books, 8597 pages
pace = 26.2 books / year, 10249 pages / year

23. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This was the Signet Classic version that includes not only Notes from Underground, but also White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and three selections from The House of the Dead. All of the characters were pretty miserable, but in an enjoyable way. I feel a little bad admitting that I see some of myself (or at least my adolescent self) in the Notes from Underground narrator.

313 days, 23 books, 8836 pages
pace = 26.9 books / year, 10332 pages / year

24. The Magician King by Lev Grossman

My pace is still pretty strong. I think I'm going to set a record (for me) in terms of both books and pages!

336 days, 24 books, 9236 pages
pace = 26.1 books / year, 10061 pages / year

25. H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
26. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

A combination of slow reading for most of December (because I was really busy) with ultra-fast reading recently (because I've been on airplanes for hours and hours). But I'm already at 26 books, which is the most the I've read in the four years logged above. Plus I'll probably get at least one more book in (maybe two) before the end of the year!

354 days, 26 books, 9789 pages
pace = 26.9 books / year, 10121 pages / year

27. McSweeney's 41, ed Dave Eggers

Not the best McSweeney's, but I enjoyed some of the funny pieces, especially Robot Sex by Ryan Boudinot.

360 days, 27 books, 10024 pages
pace = 27.45 books / year, 10191 pages / year

Still a few days left and a good opportunity to pile on, but this is already my best reading year since I started keeping track!

28. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

I squeezed in one more book to finish out the year! This one was given to me as a Christmas present from my mom and stepdad, who recommended it *very* enthusiasticly. I thought that it was interesting at times and dull at others. But I read mostly fiction these days, so maybe I would have trouble paying attention to any nonfiction.

Final results for 2012 (best reading year yet!!)
366 days, 28 books, 10400 pages

1. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

The start of 2013! This was a slim book and quick read, but very very good. I saw Junot Diaz speak last year and have been pretty obsessed with him since.

Time to start my stats over...
5 days, 1 book, 213 pages
pace = 73.0 books / year, 15549 pages / year

2. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

There was a lot of buzz about this book and I was eager to read it. I found the writing to be a little rough at times, but it was really original and entertaining. The cultural details felt authentic and were really integral to the story -- not just window dressing.

17 days, 2 books, 646 pages
pace = 42.9 books / year, 13870 pages / year

3. Building Stories by Chris Ware

Building Stories is a huge box full of Chris Ware comics in all variety of shapes and sizes. I have read enough of his stuff that I knew it would be pretty unified in terms of mood and themes, but I was curious whether all of the various bits would hold together as a story. After finishing it, I can say that it works extremely well (even Branford the Bee) and was totally engrossing. While reading, I was constantly remembering parts that I had read earlier. Only after I finished did I notice that there is a recommended order for reading the parts that is shown on the back of the box, but I think it's fine to go in any order you want.

21 days, 3 books, 906 pages
pace = 52.1 books / year, 15747 pages / year

4. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

It's going to be some slow progress now, as I work my way through Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy. The books are captivating reads, but they take a while because they are just so long. I actually finished this one over a week ago (and I'm well into The Confusion), but didn't get around to posting it here until now.

58 days, 4 books, 1833 pages
pace = 25.2 books / year, 11535 pages / year

5. The Confusion by Neal Stephenson

Still plugging my way through the Baroque Trilogy. Needless to say, this is destroying my reading pace.

106 days, 5 books, 2648 pages
pace = 17.2 books / year, 9118 pages / year

6. The System of the World by Neal Stephenson

...and I'm finally done! I really enjoyed reading the whole Baroque Trilogy, and I do think it helped to just plow straight through it, because there are so many characters that I would forget if I stepped away in the middle to read something else. But I am very happy to switch to something shorter/faster now.

150 days, 6 books, 3540 pages
pace = 14.6 books / year, 8614 pages / year

7. McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, ed Michael Chabon

Relative to the last few books, I just breezed through this collection. Highbrow genre fiction -- I think my favorite was the creepy detective story 'What You Do Not Know You Want' by David Mitchell. The Mike Mignola illustrations are cool too.

160 days, 7 books, 3868 pages
pace = 16.0 books / year, 8824 pages / year

8. Ubik by Philip K. Dick

I feel bad that there are still a ton of PKD books that I haven't read yet. Ubik is a major one and it was a lot of fun, with all of the usual trippiness. I am still *way* off pace, though. Lots of work ahead to catch up from that Stephenson detour.

179 days, 8 books, 4084 pages
pace = 16.3 books / year, 8328 pages / year

9. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

As a former Hyde Park resident, who lived for eight years between Washington and Jackson parks, I found The Devil in the White City to be very engrossing. I was slightly disappointed to discover that the two main threads -- Burnham's efforts to build the fair and Holmes' serial murders -- didn't actually intersect at any point, but I was alternately sucked into each story. Also, I went into the book thinking it was historical fiction, for some reason, but Larson's style of narrative non-fiction reads just as quick and smooth.

188 days, 9 books, 4474 pages
pace = 17.5 books / year, 8686 pages / year

10. Inversions by Iain M. Banks

I had been meaning to try reading some of the Culture books, especially since Iain Banks passed away, but Inversions was probably an odd one to start with (I chose it because it was in stock at my local library). So rather than far future science fiction, I got two paired stories set in a medieval society. But it was entertaining and I'm planning to try another one soon.

I've also been working through McSweeney's 22 at the same time, but not done with that just yet.

211 days, 10 books, 4817 pages
pace = 17.3 books / year, 8333 pages / year

11. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King

I read this one because A.S. King is currently my wife's advisor in her MFA program. Also, my wife is often trying to get me to read YA and I usually resist. This one was fun though. I thought it wrapped up a little too neatly at the end, but the main character was really likable.

216 days, 11 books, 5097 pages
pace = 18.6 books / year, 8613 pages / year

What do you resist about YA? I find the marketeers to be kind of wacky sometimes.

My wife is a YA librarian and attempting to get published as a YA/middle-grade author, so she just has a lot of recommendations in that vein. Maybe one of the issues is that we have pretty different taste in books, so her picks don't always line up with what I want to read?

Also,
12. McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 22, ed Dave Eggers

This particular McSweeney's issue has been sitting on my shelf for a long time. It was a bit intimidating, between the experimental literature (Oulipo) and a pretty large book of poetry, which is something that I hardly ever read. In the end, a lot of it turned out to be really fun (especially Oulipo!).

230 days, 12 books, 5564 pages
pace = 19.0 books / year, 8830 pages / year

13. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

This one seemed a little less epic than American Gods (which I read many years ago, so maybe I'm misremembering), but it really picked up near the end and was a fun story over all.

245 days, 13 books, 5900 pages
pace = 19.4 books / year, 8790 pages / year

14. The Better of McSweeney's Volume One
15. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

I made some good reading progress on vacation!

261 days, 15 books, 6567 pages
pace = 21.0 books / year, 9184 pages / year

16. Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem

Yikes, I just went through a pretty serious reading drought, as work completely took over my life for about two months. It's not quite as bad as it seems, because I also read about half of The Russian Debutante's Handbook during this period, but it's going to take a push just to reach 20 books for 2013.

324 days, 16 books, 6933 pages
pace = 18.0 books / year, 7810 pages / year

17. The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

I am glad that I got around to finishing this one, after a long detour to Dissident Gardens. There were several laugh-out-loud funny bits in Russian Debutante's Handbook, and I find Eastern Europe and post-Soviet Union to be fascinating.

342 days, 17 books, 7385 pages
pace = 18.1 books / year, 7882 pages / year

18. Embassytown by China Mieville

That finishes out 2013, with a fairly disappointing book total. But it was a busy year and some of those books were very long (*cough* Baroque Trilogy *cough*). I'm hoping for more in 2014!

365 days, 18 books, 7753 pages

Ok, I've been away for the last couple months, so it's time to catch up on what I've been reading:

1. Living My Life, Volume 1 by Emma Goldman
2. Hiroshima by John Hersey
3. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
4. Ronin by Frank Miller
5. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré

Pretty productive so far. I was a bit disappointed to realize that Volume 1 of Emma Goldman's autobiography just ends at some random spot -- it wasn't meant to be broken up into two books. Reading Hiroshima was just totally brutal, but I thankfully got through it quickly. A High Wind in Jamaica was a random find from the South Pole quiet reading room and I enjoyed it a lot. I was a bit disappointed by Ronin because I really like Frank Miller's Batman books but this story was a bit incoherent (but wow... Samurai Jack really ripped him off!). The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was a perfect read for all of my travel home, except that I finished it too quickly.

45 days, 5 books, 1440 pages
pace = 40.6 books / year, 11680 pages / year

6. The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle was a lot more speculative than I was expecting. Eggers has done a lot of journalistic work, but this was closer to science fiction than facebook exposé. That said, it was very funny and raises some valid questions about social media, even while hitting you over the head with them.

61 days, 6 books, 1931 pages
pace = 35.9 books / year, 11554 pages / year

7. McSweeney's 43, ed Dave Eggers

McSweeney's 43 includes a book of stories (and a poem) from South Sudan along with a book of the usual McSweeney's fare. I think my favorite piece was reporting from the revolution in Libya, but this issue didn't really grab me.

71 days, 7 books, 2178 pages
pace = 36.0 books / year, 11197 pages / year

8. Paddle Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman

Nick Offerman seems like a nice guy and a funny one, but this book was kind-of boring and preachy.

82 days, 8 books, 2515 pages
pace = 35.6 books / year, 10857 pages / year

9. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One is a fun book, but it felt a little bit gimmicky. Specifically, it seemed like all of the pop culture references were a clever ploy to hold the attention of the target (nerd) audience by sprinkling the text with references to associate with. I don't want to really bash it though, because it was very entertaining.

94 days, 9 books, 2889 pages
pace = 34.9 books / year, 11218 pages / year

10. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I got a lot of reading done on a cross-country flight. Neverwhere was the perfect book to bring along because it kept me totally engrossed. Well, maybe not perfect because I finished it too soon and had to look around for another book to read on the flight home.

98 days, 10 books, 3225 pages
pace = 37.2 books / year, 12011 pages / year

11. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Another book that I (mostly) read on the plane. I was pretty blown away by this one. The story jumps all over the place but all of the characters seem so real and it manages to deeply explore a theme without hitting you over the head with it. I'm not sure why it took me so long to find this book (seeing as it won the Pulitzer) but I'm really glad that I did.

103 days, 11 books, 3565 pages
pace = 39.0 books / year, 12633 pages / year

12. The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

Pretty clever premise and plot for this one, but I wasn't really impressed by the writing. It did pick up after an awkward first half, so I might be interested in reading the sequel.

110 days, 12 books, 3903 pages
pace = 39.8 books / year, 12951 pages / year

13. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

I have been meaning to read more by Bacigalupi since reading The Windup Girl a few years ago and seeing him speak when he was receiving the Printz Award. Ship Breaker comes across with less of a sci-fi edge but is still an action-packed adventure. I'm going to go right ahead to reading the sequel, but I'll also look forward to something a little more high-brow when I'm done.

121 days, 13 books, 4229 pages
pace = 39.2 books / year, 12757 pages / year

14. The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

I liked The Drowned Cities more than Ship Breaker, but for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on. Tool, who provides the link between the two books, is definitely the most interesting character. I was wondering whether Bacigalupi was going to provide any hints of his motivations; that did happen at the end of the book and was a pleasant surprise.

132 days, 14 books, 4665 pages
pace = 38.7 books / year, 12899 pages / year

15. McSweeney's 44, ed Dave Eggers

A good mix of very McSweeney's-ish stories plus a long section devoted to people writing about Lawrence Weschler. I haven't read any Weschler, but I would now be pretty interested in reading Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder and/or Solidarity: Poland in the Season of Its Passion.

142 days, 15 books, 4916 pages
pace = 38.6 books / year, 12636 pages / year

16. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

This was a really great read. The story was fascinating and kept me emotionally involved and on my toes. The two main characters were both really interesting. Ursula K Le Guin is just awesome.

149 days, 16 books, 5100 pages
pace = 39.2 books / year, 12493 pages / year

Agreed. Do you have a favorite Le Guin?

I think that Left Hand of Darkness is still my favorite. But the only ones I've read (recently, at least) are Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and now Lathe of Heaven.

17. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

A quick read, but not as much fun as some of the other Gaiman novels that I've read (like Neverwhere, above). It kind of feels like he has just gone too far in the direction of consciously trying to write new fairy tales. Maybe the core of my complaint is that the main character doesn't really *do* anything for the entire book -- he is mostly passive and things happen to him -- which exaggerates the dream-like feeling of the story.

154 days, 17 books, 5281 pages
pace = 40.3 books / year, 12517 pages / year

18. McSweeney's 45, ed Dave Eggers

This issue dragged unexpectedly. I figured that a McSweeney's full of genre stories (sci-fi and thrillers) would be breezy, but they actually skewed very slow. Still there were some good ones. I think that my favorite was one of the new stories: Brian Evenson's claustrophic "The Dust".

176 days, 18 books, 5729 pages
pace = 37.3 books / year, 11881 pages / year

19. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Intense and captivating. I had been meaning for a while to read some Octavia Butler and this was a good first introduction. I was a bit skeptical after reading the back cover summary, because it sounded like it could have been just a so-so historical fiction with time travel added on to make it stand out, but the relationships between the characters, especially Dana and Rufus, were really complicated and compelling.

186 days, 19 books, 5993 pages
pace = 37.28 books / year, 11760 pages / year

20. How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser

Aargh, I found this book really infuriating. Bell's theorem and similar topics in quantum mechanics are really interesting, but the author instead seemed to focus most of the most irritating consequence of QM, which is the way that people have attempted to use it to justify psychic phenomena, mysticism, etc. On top of that, when the real physics did show up in the book, it seemed to most often come from other researchers, accompanied by a strained tie-in to try to explain the connection between those researchers and the Fundamental Fysiks Group. So I just didn't like it. Also, an absurd quantity of endnotes!

200 days, 20 books, 6277 pages
pace = 36.5 books / year, 11456 pages / year

21. Palestine by Joe Sacco

Sacco's comic book journalism takes place back in 1991-92, but the situation in West Bank and Gaza is still a lot the same. Sacco finds just enough absurdity and banal humor in the situation to keep you reading, as the story would otherwise be just unbearably bleak. Also, the artwork is amazing. The street scenes are so detailed and I love all the exaggerated caricatures.

207 days, 21 books, 6562 pages
pace = 37.0 books / year, 11571 pages / year

22. Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem

This was a good set of stories, but I was hoping for something more along the lines of The Cyberiad -- whimsical and mind-stretching. I do appreciate the overall theme of Pirx struggling to puzzle out the bizarre glitches that pop up in any complicated machinery. I think that "Terminus", the spooky closing story, was my favorite.

216 days, 22 books, 6768 pages
pace = 37.2 books / year, 11437 pages / year

23. Halting State by Charles Stross

I brought two Charlie Stross books with me on vacation, Halting State and Rule 34. This is the first I've read by him, and I enjoyed it. There were a few parts where I felt like he was just dumping ideas that he has had about cool hacks but that weren't particularly essential to the plot. The Edinburgh setting was cool though.

222 days, 23 books, 7119 pages
pace = 37.8 books / year, 11705 pages / year

24. Rule 34 by Charles Stross

I finished the second Stross book before the end of my vacation. I think that I liked this one better than Halting State, maybe because the plot made a bit more sense in the end and because a lot more of the action took place in the real world (not online). I also liked having the paranoid psychotic Toymaker as one of the viewpoint characters, which gave the story some edge.

228 days, 24 books, 7477 pages
pace = 38.4 books / year, 11970 pages / year

25. The Dismal Science by Peter Mountford

I picked up this book from the library on impulse, so I knew nothing about it going in. But I ended up really enjoying it. Ordinarily, I would be irritated by a main character who spends the entire novel just tearing down everything around him, with no end goal in sight, but Vincenzo is still really likeable, perhaps because he's so honest with himself (and the reader) about his destructive choices.

235 days, 25 books, 7752 pages
pace = 38.8 books / year, 12040 pages / year

26. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

The last book in Grossman's magicians trilogy did not disappoint. Somewhere in the middle I was feeling like there were too many story threads running around, but they came together in a very satisfying way. Maybe he has beaten his theme to death now over the course of three books, but he still manages to mine a ton of poignancy out of the differences between the way we hoped the world would work when we were kids and the way that we discover it to be when we grow up.

256 days, 26 books, 8153 pages
pace = 37.1 books / year, 11624 pages / year

27. The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel

This was a quick graphic novel, but I'm on a roll here so I'll count it. I've read a couple of Ames' short stories and I really enjoyed Bored To Death on HBO. From watching BtD, I was kind of expecting this book to be more funny ha-ha, but it was mostly sad (albeit with a bunch of poop humor). Still it was an entertaining read and very nicely illustrated. It mostly makes me wonder how autobiographical the story is (it feels *very* autobiographical).

258 days, 27 books, 8289 pages
pace = 38.2 books / year, 11727 pages / year

I mostly finished McSweeney's 46 before I got sidetracked by The Magician's Land, so it's time now to wrap that up.

28. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

I had to put aside McSweeney's again when this came in to my local library. It was a fairly quiet Murakami novel, but not so (physically) heavy as IQ84 -- which was welcome! I think I picked up on some of the main ideas, but probably still need to think about it some more... especially the ambiguous ending.

271 days, 28 books, 8675 pages
pace = 37.7 books / year, 11684 pages / year

29. The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Welp, work hit pretty hard over the past few weeks and my reading ground to a halt. On top of that, I was expecting The Atrocity Archives to be a quick and breezy read, but it was actually pretty ponderous. Still pretty fun though, so I'll probably try another one of the Laundry series at some future date.

I swear that I will finally finish up McSweeney's 46, which I started back in August but have put aside over and over on account of library books that needed reading.

295 days, 29 books, 8948 pages
pace = 35.9 books / year, 11071 pages / year

30. McSweeney's 46, ed Dave Eggers

Latin American crime stories is a good theme for a McSweeney's issue. I have finally let my McSweeney's subscription expire though, so this will probably be the last one for a while.

298 days, 30 books, 9219 pages
pace = 36.7 books / year, 11292 pages / year

31. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I burned through most of this book on a couple of plane flights. It was really good, really sad. This makes me want to read some more Ishiguro, so perhaps I will pick up The Remains of the Day from my library.

309 days, 31 books, 9507 pages
pace = 36.6 books / year, 11230 pages / year

32. The Peripheral by William Gibson

It's always exciting when a new William Gibson novel comes out. Plus, I got to see him read and get my copy of The Peripheral signed! This one was a fun read, more action packed than some of his books. I was left with a few reservations, mostly that Flynne and her friends displayed implausible levels of competence when thrust into this barely comprehensible situation. At the reading, Gibson talked about how his last trilogy (set in the present day) was useful to "recalibrate his yardstick of weirdness", which he then put to work writing this more futuristic book. And there is a lot of weirdness! But the characters seem to just roll with it too easily and are never just dumbstruck and at a loss for how to react.

324 days, 32 books, 9992 pages
pace = 36.0 books / year, 11256 pages / year

33. work in progress by my wife
34. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Reading really slowed down over the last month, mostly because of a big uptick in work. I also ended up spread out between several books and I don't multitask well. So I read a draft of a young adult novel that my wife is writing and I also sped through Hyperbole and a Half, which was pretty hilarious but maybe a bit repetitive. I'm still in the middle of House of Stone by Anthony Shadid and hoping to finish that before the end of the year.

359 days, 34 books, 10700 pages
pace = 34.6 books / year, 10879 pages / year

I didn't finish House of Stone until today. So I guess that leaves me at 34 books for 2014 (10700 pages). Both of those numbers are the best since I've been keeping track. And I'm off to a head start for 2015!

1. House of Stone by Anthony Shadid

This was a slow read, but beautifully written. I'm still pretty fascinated by that area of the world (Middle East, Lebanon). I'm pretty psyched now to start Ancillary Justice.

2. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Maybe I came in with too high expectations for this one. I did really enjoy it, but somehow felt a little disappointed at the same time. The protagonist perspective was both disorienting and interesting, so I can definitely understand why writer types would get excited over it.

17 days, 2 books, 725 pages
pace = 42.9 books / year, 15566 pages / year

3. Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers
4. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

I sped through two quick reads over the past week+. The very long titled Eggers book was interesting, and I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure that it was good. I could critique the implausibility of the characters, but I don't think that is really the point -- the novel is experimental and allegorical and doesn't really try to be true to life. My hesitancy to say that it is good stems from the fact that I don't really think it has a super interesting point to make. I do appreciate the readability though (always a strong suit of Eggers).

Next, I read A Wizard of Earthsea because I love LeGuin and I can't believe that I never read those books when I was a kid. While I'm here getting deep in my book discussions, I will say that I was surprised by the somewhat regressive gender roles in the book, particularly coming from the author of Left Hand of Darkness. Women are mostly absent and the wizards are all men. The women who do show up in the story are witches who range from harmless to evil. Maybe it's a product of writing for kids, or the time period, or trying to write in a classic fantasy mode.

26 days, 4 books, 1110 pages
pace = 56.2 books / year, 15583 pages / year

The gender issue is LeGuin was a product of her time, and she tried to go back and fix it in later books (especially Tehanu and The Other Wind). Her ideas changed quite a bit over thirty years. See also her discussions about pronouns in LHoD.

5. The First Bad Man by Miranda July

Characteristically weird but relatable at the same time. The main character is fictional, but the voice is so tied in with July's work that it just feels like she is writing about herself. This book kept my attention fixed, both for the first half that I read bit by bit and for the second half that I read all in one go.

39 days, 5 books, 1386 pages
pace = 46.8 books / year, 10388 pages / year

6. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
7. DMZ: On the Ground and DMZ: Body of a Journalist by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli
8. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I fell behind a bit with my book list. Really enjoyed Annihilation and I'm looking forward to the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy. Vandermeer has tapped into a rich vein of weirdness. I read the two first DMZ books in one day a few weeks ago. I wasn't really blown away -- I might try reading some more, but maybe not. I just finished reading Oryx and Crake this morning. It took me a while because I haven't had much time, but it was engrossing. I got some weird deja vu because a colleague was telling me some things about the book last year but I had mostly forgotten until bits and pieces would come back to me.

Going forward, I'm going to read my wife's middle grade work in progress, then finish up the MaddAddam trilogy. After that, I think I'll go back to the Southern Reach, so I guess I'm scheduled for a while.

66 days, 8 books, 2253 pages
pace = 44.2 books / year, 12460 pages / year

9. Draft of middle grade work-in-progress
10. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
11. Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street and Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, Rodney Ramos

I read through a (fairly advanced) draft of a middle grade novel that my wife is working on, then back to Margaret Atwood. I'm still puzzling over some aspects of Year of the Flood. The story expands considerably from Oryx and Crake to show more of what was going on as the world falls apart. But Atwood keeps the scale of the story very personal by strictly limiting the cast of characters and having these people's lives repeatedly intersect with distracting levels of coincidence. It's clearly a conscious choice on her part but I don't completely understand it -- my best guess is that is takes a large-scale end-of-the-world story and represents it as personal relationships between the characters who we get to know. In any case, I am excited to read MaddAddam next.

The first two Transmetropolitan books were really fun. I noted above that I didn't really get into the DMZ books and I think the reason is that I wanted something more like this, fast-paced, witty, and unhinged.

95 days, 11 books, 3170 pages
pace = 42.3 books / year, 12179 pages / year

12. MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

I finished up the MaddAddam trilogy, reading most of it on the plane to and from a work trip. I'm still curious about the structure of the entire trilogy, which is really different from a lot of speculative fiction, focusing on personal stories in each book and mixing remembrances with present tense action. I guess this is why Atwood is a lot more literary than most genre writers.

104 days, 12 books, 3560 pages
pace = 42.1 books / year, 12494 pages / year

13. Transmetropolitan: Year of the Bastard and Transmetropolitan: The New Scum by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, Rodney Ramos
14. Get In Trouble by Kelly Link

Transmetropolitan continues to entertain. I didn't know much about Kelly Link and I read this book of stories because my wife brought the ARC home from ALA mid-winter. But it was really good and now I'm hoping to read more. Some of the stories gripped me more or less than others, but they were all really original. It's fun to get repeatedly tossed into completely new scenarios, with new problems and rules, at every chapter.

118 days, 14 books, 4197 pages
pace = 43.3 books / year, 12982 pages / year

15. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

After reading The Buried Giant, I think I understand why some people were disappointed with it, but I really liked it. I appreciate the matter-of-fact-ness of Ishiguro's prose and think that the characters' emotions come through clearly. So this one definitely gets my thumbs up.

137 days, 15 books, 4514 pages
pace = 40.0 books / year, 12026 pages / year

16. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer

Hey, I just found out that Vandermeer won the Nebula for best novel with the first book from this trilogy (Annihilation)! I'm two books in now (and just started Acceptance) and I can say that it is well deserved. I thought it was curious that they were all three published in such quick succession, so I wondered if it was really just one big novel chopped up into three books. But that doesn't seem to be the case at all, since Authority approaches the story of the Southern Reach from a completely different angle. Like any good part two of a trilogy, it ended with a cliffhanger that sent me right into the next book.

155 days, 16 books, 4866 pages
pace = 37.7 books / year, 11459 pages / year

17. Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer

The third book in the Southern Reach Trilogy dragged a bit for me. I thought that Vandermeer handled the three alternating storylines pretty well, but the plot just didn't hang together as well as the first two books. It's pretty hard to build up such a mystery and then try to resolve it, so I don't really want to be too critical. Still a satisfying read on the whole.

176 days, 17 books, 5207 pages
pace = 35.3 books / year, 10799 pages / year

18. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Good Omens was definitely entertaining, but fell a little short of expectations for me. I don't think it helped that my paperback addition includes a foreword where the authors discuss the book's cult following in not particularly self-deprecating terms. So I'm happy that I read it, but I can't see myself rereading it again and again until the book falls apart and gets dropped in the bath.

I'm off to Rome now for a week-long conference and trying to decide how many books to bring. Two? Three?

191 days, 18 books, 5591 pages
pace = 34.4 books / year, 10684 pages / year

19. Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt
20. The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin

This was a good reading week because of international flights (to Rome and back). Also, they were two pretty quick reads. I didn't think Oswalt's memoir (I guess this is his second memoir?) was very good, but it did make me want to watch more old movies, so it must have something going on. I gobbled up The Telling in just about one day. It is beautifully written but didn't seem to have the depth of, say, Left Hand of Darkness (yeah I know, that's a very high bar to measure a book against). I think the main thrust of my complaint is that there was some attempt to paint the situation on the planet Aka as something other than black and white, good primitives vs evil corporations. But instead of black vs white, we get very very light grey vs very very dark grey and you have to squint hard so see the ambiguity. Still a good read, even if it's not Fahrenheit 451.

201 days, 20 books, 6021 pages
pace = 36.3 books / year, 10934 pages / year

21. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

This is the second Culture novel that I've read but the first was Inversions, an oddball that never really gave itself up as science fiction. Inversions wasn't what I was expecting, but Consider Phlebas was also unexpected in a completely different way. This was basically an adventure romp, with the protagonist getting in and out of tight squeezes all across the galaxy and the final goal only tenuously holding things together. It does twist a bit at the end but in a somewhat predictable way. I came away a little disappointed -- parts of the book were fun but it wasn't particularly innovative or mind-expanding.

229 days, 21 books, 6535 pages
pace = 33.5 books / year, 10416 pages / year

22. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't read much non-fiction, and I really don't read many book-length essays. So I'm pretty sure that significant parts of Coates' extremely deep and nuanced discussion went over my head. But it was eye-opening and very compellingly written. Seriously, I don't know how you take such a depressing topic and make the sentences that beautiful.

237 days, 22 books, 6687 pages
pace = 33.9 books / year, 10299 pages / year

23. Burning Chrome by William Gibson
24. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

I had a nice vacation week and finished a couple books. Burning Chrome was a re-read, of course, but so good. This time through, I was especially struck by "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" -- Gibson's first published story?!? I had been meaning to read Ancillary Sword for a while and got sucked in during my flight home. I just scrolled up and saw my lukewarm review of Ancillary Justice. The second novel was not as bewildering and confusing (which was both a strength and weakness of the first book), but I really appreciated the way it dove deep into the culture of the Radchaai and how it breaks down in less formal situations between friends or with assimilated cultures. I came out feeling like I had a much deeper understanding of Leckie's world and now I'm looking forward to Ancillary Mercy!

247 days, 24 books, 7234 pages
pace = 35.5 books / year, 10690 pages / year

25. Ms. Marvel: No Normal and Ms. Marvel: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, and Jacob Wyatt

I started up on a big, long, dense, nonfiction book (Let The Swords Encircle Me), so it was fun to also catch up on the first two volumes of Ms. Marvel. I found the story a bit too simple in places, but it has a great message (both racial and also generational) and I really love Alphona's fun and loose artwork. It's even better in the form of uncolored line art pages included as bonus material at the back of book 2.

250 days, 25 books, 7490 pages
pace = 36.5 books / year, 10935 pages / year

26. Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

I'm still working on Let The Swords Encircle Me, but I needed some lighter reading to take on a trip. I picked Monstrous Regiment, which is the first Discworld book I have read. I've been meaning to try out some of these books for a while, but my general OCD-ness makes it hard to jump into a series with 40+ books and no canonical reading order. But I'm really glad I did! Monstrous Regiment was fun, readable, exciting, and heart-warming. I would recommend it widely, even to people like my wife who aren't big into fantasy. I have another trip coming up, so maybe I need to bring along a Discworld novel for this one too...

266 days, 26 books, 7843 pages
pace = 35.7 books / year, 10762 pages / year

27. The Martian by Andy Weir
28. Let The Swords Encircle Me by Scott Peterson

Two very different books -- I've been reading Let The Swords Encircle Me for almost the past two months, but I squeezed in The Martian on a single cross-country flight. The copy of The Martian that I read has been passed from person to person around my lab and it totally makes sense. This is a perfect book for a bunch of people who travel to Antarctica to do astrophysics research. After seeing the movie, my wife complained about the lack of any emotional plot, which is totally true, but sometimes it is fun to just read about problem solving.

Let The Swords Encircle Me was a somewhat different book from what I had hoped for. I wanted to get a bit more history and big perspective on Iran, but Peterson is extremely grounded in his reporting which dates back to the 80's. Much of the book consists of anecdotes and opinions from various people that he met while reporting from Iran. This probably does produce a more nuanced and true to life picture of what life is like there, but I also felt like I needed some more context. The end notes are insane (like 30+ pages of them!), so I'm sure that I could find some references there to books on Persian/Iranian history.

297 days, 28 books, 8859 pages
pace = 34.4 books / year, 10887 pages / year

29. Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton

I squeezed some comics in over the weekend (currently also reading The Jennifer Morgue). Beaton's drawings are so good and her jokes are truly nerdy. I've seen a bunch of them online before, many of which showed up again in these collections. I found it a little bit hit or miss, but that shouldn't be a put down because it's impossible to hit with every gag. It's also a little harder to get the jokes that are on subjects that are truly obscure to me. But the funny stuff is very funny!

311 days, 29 books, 9191 pages
pace = 34.0 books / year, 10787 pages / year

30. The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

Looking back at my review of The Atrocity Archives above, I see that I had the same complaint as I have with this book, namely that it is too slow. Here, we are talking about a winking riff on James Bond, with magic and humorous skewering of bureaucracies mixed in, which ought to be the definition of a fun and light read. Instead, I felt like I was working through each chapter. I doesn't help that the cover art for this edition is terrible.

320 days, 30 books, 9504 pages
pace = 34.2 books / year, 10841 pages / year

31. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
32. McSweeney's 48, ed Dave Eggers

We're getting pretty close to the end of the year, but I'm still hoping to finish Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. Then I'm off to Antarctica for a month and a half. I'll be bringing some books of course -- A Brief History of Seven Killings, Slade House, and The Invention of Nature. If I finish all of those, then I'm sure that I'll find some other good stuff around the station.

359 days, 32 books, 10290 pages
pace = 32.5 books / year, 10462 pages / year

33. Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

That's the end of 2015! I didn't actually finish Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl until about an hour into a flight in the morning of January 1, but I figure that before noon should still count. I really enjoyed parts of the book, and had to queue up some Sleater-Kinney to listen to as I was finishing it, but there were also some weird gaps. I kind of goes along with what I see in all the book reviews -- Brownstein has this oddly detached tone when discussing the events of her life. So there are spots where she describes her mom's treatment for anorexia, then goes on to say that her mom later leaves her and her dad... but then we aren't told anything about that until a brief spot where she S-K crash on her mom's couch during a snow storm. There were a few other examples like this, but you get the picture. Still a fun book to read if you are as much of a Sleater-Kinney fan as I am.

Final tally for 2015: 33 books, 10534 pages

1. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
2. Slade House by David Mitchell

Off to a bit of a rocky start -- my first book of 2016 took a month and a half to read but I finished the second in just one day. Brief History was great, but between the unfamiliar dialect, long and complicated story, and the fact that I was working my ass off with almost no free time, it was a pretty major challenge. Still I'm really glad that I read it. Actually, I don't even want to give people the wrong impression that it was a slog. The whole thing is very compelling and pulls you along. It's just long!

I read all of Slade House during a long day of flights, with an extra boost from crossing the international date line (easy to read a book in a day when that day is like 40 hours long). I had been looking to reading that one and it did not disappoint. So, despite the low volume, 2016 reading is off to a great start. I'm thinking of starting Black Swan Green now because I can't get enough David Mitchell.

45 days, 2 books, 924 pages
pace = 16.3 books / year, 7515 pages / year

3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
4. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
5. The Maypop Kidnapping by C. M. Surrisi

Black Swan Green was great. I kept laughing aloud at parts. My only complaint is that parts of it almost seemed cliche, though I wonder how closely it was based on Mitchell's own childhood.

The Invention of Nature was a long one, and I don't usually read much nonfiction. My viewpoint of it shifted partway through. For the first half or so, I was feeling disappointed by the shallowness of von Humboldt's scientific achievements, or maybe by the description of them. He is repeatedly described as the greatest scientist of his age, but his expedition seemed to generate a large amount of data and relatively few conclusions. On one hand, it's possible that my modern view of science is getting in the way of appreciating the importance of Humboldt's ecological realizations. On the other hand, the book made a pretty weak case against scientific reductionism, which has been a driving force of progress since those times. I did come around a bit in the later parts of the book, when Wulf switches her focus to the many many scientists who got inspiration and direct aid from Humboldt. In the end, I came to admire him for his principled political views and networking among the earliest hints of a global scientific community.

After Humboldt, I switched it up to a quick middle-grade mystery that was written by a friend of my wife. The Maypop Kidnapping was a lot of fun, especially for the final crescendo. I had quite a few ideas about how the case might turn out -- some of them right and some of the wrong.

97 days, 5 books, 1930 pages
pace = 18.9 books / year, 7282 pages / year

6. Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis
7. Lock In by John Scalzi
8. The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin

Catching up here... Bones & All was another book written by an acquaintance. It walked an interesting line in terms of partially acknowledging the horror of the protagonist's actions (eating people) while also keeping some metaphoric detachment. Next, I read Scalzi's near-future detective novel. It sucked me in at the start, but there were a few too many minor characters to keep track of for the second half. Finally, I tore through The Blizzard, reading most of it on a couple of flights. That is a very odd book, difficult to classify but very intriguing.

114 days, 8 books, 2739 pages
pace = 25.7 books / year, 8794 pages / year

9. Death By Water by Kenzaburo Oe

I love Oe, but this book took a while to get into. It's written in a very odd style, deliberately off-putting, with lots of monologue-style narration from the characters. I can imagine how much my wife, who likes to read and write in a very natural/realistic style, would hate it. But I tend to enjoy the way his characters reflect on their pasts, relationships, and philosophies. I'm still not sure exactly what was the goal or point of this particular novel, and it is so close to memoir that maybe you can only really understand it if you are Oe or someone close to him. To sum it up, this is a positive review of a book that I enjoyed, but don't jump straight into it if you are expecting something conventional.

130 days, 9 books, 3171 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year, 8928 pages / year

10. Immaculate Heart by Camille DeAngelis

The second book that I have read this year by local homie Camille. This novel is pretty far from what I normally read, but was still very enjoyable. I'm still wrapping my end around the twist that is slowly unveiled over the last couple of chapters, and I definitely didn't see it coming. Now I want to drink some pints in an Irish pub!

145 days, 10 books, 3462 pages
pace = 25.2 books / year, 8739 pages / year

11. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

I was looking forward to this one, but ended up disappointed. I liked the first section of the book, with Laurence and Patricia as middle-schoolers, but then the rest of the book left me mostly rolling my eyes. I will admit that I was particularly annoyed by the twee/tech depiction of San Francisco, which might be mostly accurate these days for all I know (I haven't lived there since 2002).

156 days, 11 books, 3778 pages
pace = 25.8 books / year, 8864 pages / year

12. Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Like the other Scalzi novel that I read this year, Old Man's War sucked me along with very readable prose but I didn't come away thinking it was really that great. Overall, it felt like somewhat generic military sci-fi (the Heinlein acknowledgement is apt). The main idea of the book was to experience alien wars as a 75-year-old who is given a second life as a soldier, but the character's viewpoint seems like a basic smart/competent/upstanding hero template.

167 days, 12 books, 4094 pages
pace = 26.3 books / year, 8972 pages / year

13. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

This one didn't grab me quite as quickly at Monstrous Regiment. Maybe the lack of chapters was partly to blame (where do you decide to stop reading?!). Also, while my understanding is that you can read Discworld novels in any order, I think it might have been helpful to have a bit more introduction to the setting and some of these characters. But the story picked right up near the end and it was charming all the way through, so I'm still quite satisfied.

186 days, 13 books, 4494 pages
pace = 25.6 books / year, 8843 pages / year

14. The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

This wasn't as much fun as his cold war spy novels. Mostly I think it could have been about 100 pages shorter. But it did pick up pretty well at the end, when shit finally hits the fan.

208 days, 14 books, 4826 pages
pace = 24.6 books / year, 8492 pages / year

15. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
16. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
17. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

It has been a crazy month, but some good reading. I took Station Eleven with me on a trip to close the purchase of a house and then attend a conference. It was fantastic -- probably the best book I've read this year, though The Blizzard and Slade House are both also in the running. I realize that I'm not exactly the first person to discover it, but Station Eleven really is a post-apocalyptic novel that you could recommend for pretty much anyone.

Next, I read The Water Knife while on vacation with my wife's family. Being a Californian, it's easy to hook me with stories of drought, disaster, and water politics. Some parts of this thriller were a bit predictable, but the ending definitely was not.

And I just finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart, which kept me company for my first two weeks in a new (empty) house, new city, new job. "Kept me company" is maybe not a great description for a novel that is all about loneliness. I guess it helped me keep my situation in perspective.

These last two books also mark the two last books I will ever check out from the fantastic Watertown Public Library. End of an era!

238 days, 17 books, 5759 pages
pace = 26.1 books / year, 8856 pages / year

18. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

The new job has been insane, which means not much time for reading. I finished Man in the High Castle last night, spread out over several weeks with many interruptions. It's a book that I have been wanting to read for a while and I'm not sure that I did it justice. It's hard enough to keep your head wrapped around Dick's hallucinations (and his uneven prose) when you are able to give it full attention. But I probably got most of it. Very interesting choice of interwoven threads that only barely interwove.

256 days, 18 books, 6033 pages
pace = 25.7 books / year, 8234 pages / year

19. Ribofunk by Paul Di Filippo

I picked this up on a whim at the library. It was interesting, but not great. Felt a bit like a writing exercise to specifically riff off of Gibson's cyberpunk trilogy. Invented slang is layed on so thick that you spend a significant part of each story just trying to cut through it. Then you suddenly get to the end, where the plot is usually wrapped up in some trivial manner.

I was amazed to find this (hopefully not prescient) sentence: "Before us reared the tallest building in all of old Nuevo York, what used to be old man Trump's very HQ, before he was elected president and got sliced and diced like he did." Di Filippo wrote that back in the nineties!

275 days, 19 books, 6328 pages
pace = 25.3 books / year, 8422 pages /year

20. Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture by Jace Clayton

I originally got into DJ /rupture via his collaborations with The Ex, then through his fantastic radio show Mudd Up!. He has a great and optimistic perspective on what is happening to music as our world becomes more interconnected. At the same time, he doesn't try to gloss over the powerful commercializing and homogenizing forces, so you can take this book as a manifesto, making the case for music that we should care about. It helps that his writing and clear and focused, which is a really hard thing to do when you are trying to convey the emotional impact of a 20 minute North African banjo jam.

288 days, 20 books, 6602 pages
pace = 25.4 books / year, 8390 pages / year

21. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
22. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
23. Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

On November 8, after the election results became clear, I went upstairs and read the last few chapters of The Underground Railroad. That ending features a violent white backlash against black progress and was just a little too on the nose. Chronic City also felt relevant to the present day through the denial of a mutually agreed upon reality. Fortunately, Hag-Seed delivered a little revenge escapism.

360 days, 23 books, 7722 pages
pace = 23.4 books / year, 7851 pages / year

24. The Only Rule Is It Has To Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

I actually finished this book in 2017. But it was before noon, so I'm going to count it as a 2016 book. Lots of fun, though I think I would only recommend it to people with some familiarity/interest in sabermetrics. Some time when I am in the Bay Area, I want to check out a Stompers or Pacifics game!

Final 2016 results: 366 days, 24 books, 8072 pages

Definitely a step back from last year, but I read some pretty good books. My favorites were Station Eleven, The Blizzard, and Slade House. What to read in 2017??