100 Books a Year Meme
OK, guys, I'll be honest. I'm really using this meme to figure out how many books I actually read in a year. I already missed a couple - adding them to this post. At this rate I shouldn't have any problem hitting 100 books by the end of the year.
7 / 100 books. 7% done!
A word on how I feel about books. A book's job is to entertain me. If I don't finish it, it was pretty bad. If I stop reading it for a week or more, and only come back because it's the last unread book in the house, or if I read it and then sell it or give it away, it was poor. If I read it through to the end, and keep it for future possible reading, it has succeeded. By my standards, that's a fairly good book. If I read it and feel so strongly about it that I swear never to read it again (see Duma Key), but keep it because I know I'll go back on what I've said, it's a really good book. If I read it and love it and read it again and again throughout the years, it's a great book. If I read it so much that I have to buy a new copy because I've broken the spine and worn the cover off the paperback, or if I buy a hardback copy, then it's a fantastic book. I generally only buy hardcover editions of books I already love - it's a mark of respect. My reading copies are generally paperbacks. Anyway, on to the list.
1. Bag of Bones, by Stephen King
2. The Golden Compass, of the His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
3. Cry to Heaven, by Anne Rice
4. The Good Guy, by Dean Koontz
5. The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke
I found this one at a flea market bookseller. Stacks of books, priced from a dollar up to about ten, drive me into a book-buying frenzy, and I snap up a lot of things that capture my interest, however briefly. I've been intrigued by the science fiction classics of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, so I grabbed this one. It's a little dry and talky, like most of the scifi of its time, but it puts more effort into characterization than I expected. It's still lighter on character than plot, by my standards, but it was a fun little read. Some reviewers elsewhere have complained that the main character is a Gary Stu - he's a science fiction writer travelling to Mars, but he's not romanticized in the manner of Mary Sues and Gary Stus the world over. And of course, we know now that the science presented in the book is very dated - Mars isn't covered with vegetation, etc - but a little suspension of disbelief is a good thing to have.
6. Duma Key by Stephen King
This one broke my heart. There's a traumatic character death that made me throw the book across the room and swear never to read it again. Of course, after Lois read it, I picked it up and read it again. It turns out that the death was foreshadowed, but I hated it anyway. This is another of King's vengeful ghost stories, but there's a lot more to it than that - the relationship between a father and his daughters, the dissolution of a marriage, and the all-too-realistic aftermath of a terrible accident. It's skillfully written and heartrending.
7. Watership Down by Richard Adams
A classic, one I've read about once a year for the last 15 years or so. Simply put, it's the story of a bunch of rabbits who leave their home warren and travel through many dangers to found a new one. The book itself is infinitely more complex than that, containing a whole culture brought to life through its own language, stories, songs, and proverbs. It begins with a line that is startlingly simple, and as far from the 'hook them on the first line' writing premise as you can get. "The primroses were over." And it ends on the note, "...the primroses were just beginning to bloom." After all these years, I only noticed that neat piece of bookending on this most recent reading. Which just goes to show that every reading of a book can bring something new to your eyes.