Reading Again
by
, March 22, 2021 at 08:31 AM (10978 Views)
Last year when the whole lockdown and...other interesting activities in the United States started happening, I started collecting books to read. Nothing excessive*, just a handful** of books to pass the time while I waited for things to become normal***.
Of course the reality was I ended up only reading a few books, two when I was bored and the internet was slow and three when I was forced into further quarantine when the girlfriend started showing signs of potential COVID (we were both fine and tested negative). Those five books made a small dent, but by the end of December I had amassed about sixty books ready to be read.
After waffling about for another few weeks (and living through a major and disturbing historical event) I finally decided it was time to start reading for real. I was bored of TV and movies, bored of video games, and with so many books cluttering my bedroom I figured I might as well start. Not having to go in to work for months on end also gave me many extra hours of potential reading time per week.
My rules were simple: read books I have never read before, attempt genres/authors you have never read before, and try to switch back and forth between genres. A new rule that emerged recently was try to get books from the used book store down the street if they have the books I want or find interesting. And so far I have done pretty well on that. After starting to read near the end of January I am happy to report that I have finished ~20 books, five of which (the Percy Jackson Pentalogy that I have always wanted to read) I read out loud while the girlfriend listened.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
A rough order is above, simplified for convenience sake.
All told I am hovering around 2 million words read so far if my estimations are correct.
I'm even keeping a record of all the new words I stumble across (most of which are coming from the Bernard Cornwell books for some mysterious reason )
I of course have a lot more to go, and with work starting back up again I will have a lot less time to read. Realizing how many books are at my disposal with my Kindle Unlimited is also going to become a problem for making it through my physical collection thus far.
And now for some highlights....
1) Favorite book so far: Oddly enough probably Into the Dark. It is a YA novel set in the High Republic era of Star Wars and I kind of like the confined nature of the people being trapped on a space station and trying to figure out what is going on. After that it's a toss up between The Last Command and any of the first three of the Grail Quest by Bernard Cornwell.
2) Least Favorite book so far: 1356. It's not that it is a bad story, I just don't see why Cornwell needed to return to the character and setting when the story was so neatly wrapped up in the original trilogy. It just felt like a less interesting and sped up retelling of the first three books with a new Macguffin (a special sword rather than the holy grail).
3) Most intriguing book so far: Saracen Storm, in a weird way. The first of potentially many books I will read on my kindle unlimited plan (and the most recent book I have completed as of writing this) I am at a loss for how I feel about it. On one hand the setting (700s Spain) is fascinating and the worldbuilding was decent. On the other...well it's not very well done. It's hard to explain in so many words for right now. But as a first attempt by the author it could have turned out worse.
4) Most anticipated future book: I bought The Terror by Dan Simmons. It's kind of an intimidating size compared to the rest of the books I have read so far so I am putting it off for now. Might have to save it for the summer.
5) Least anticipated future books: I have sampled a dozen or so pages from AG Riddle's two completed sci-fi trilogies (Atlantis Trilogy and The Long Winter) and I can't say I'm impressed. It's a shame because I was actually kind of excited to read them when I first read about them but I'm not sure anymore.
6) "Why did I buy these" books: I bought 20 Clive Cussler books. Help.
That's pretty much it for now. Hopefully I will continue to make good progress. I suppose with less time and energy to read I will probably have to return to my original plan of one book a week but seeing as how I have read ~20 in eight weeks I would say I'm making good progress so far.
Enough of the rambling for now...I will attempt sleep one more time.
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* Excessive of course being subjective
** Handful also being subjective
*** What is normal, anyway?