I see your pie charts and lists of almost 100 books read this year, Martin Weller. And it is impressive.
My summary will not take a spreadsheet, as I just today finished one book for 2019, this one bought maybe a year ago (big review below). The list is one book long (well there is another partly read one maybe that might fill the 2020 year end post).
Cori is quick to remind me how much I read online that certainly counts as reading. So there is that. I’ve watched my step-daughter visiting home from university devouring a book in 48 hours.
Maybe it’s a goal setting thing for next year, to do more off-screen reading. It was certainly a thing I enjoyed as a kid and young adult. And when I slid into finishing the last 50 pages of The One Book Not Yet Named, I pleasantly lost myself in it.
The List follows.
(1) The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
I chose this book months or more ago solely on my experience reading two earlier ones by David Mitchell- Cloud Atlas (blogged) and Black Swan Green (also blogged). The sweep and narrative bending structure of Cloud Atlas was mesmerizing while the character and voices of Black Swan Green grabbed my soul.
Maybe it was my uneven pace of reading (when the book sat un-opened for months), but I never quite felt the same draw in the Bone Clocks. The young Holly Sykes story in the first section seemed right out of Black Swan Green (same era), and the complete shift in narration when it jumped to the next section felt like it would be Cloud Atlas like weaving that ties together in the end.
Bit to me the voices in the 6 narratives, seemed more like the same one in different bodies, and the unfolded, beyond human awareness tale of the mystical battles of the Horologists and Anchorites, just felt a bit contrived. The evil side seemed just more like shrouded creeps, and the good side just seemed like we knew that was the team to root for.
It became more of a battle to keep reading, and when I did, it always required a lot of re-reading to find out where I was in the story. So the book sat a lot.
I was compelled enough to see where it would go, and maybe the best part was the reality of a grim 2043 future where all the things we take for granted now are gone, and those who are left glance back in almost disregard for the technology and convenience infused present reality. If anything, I’d guess the time span of the book was a way for the author to speculate on a dark future.
The book was, even with this, worth getting to the end. They can’t all be epic cheering ones (especially when there is only a list of one).
Maybe I can double my list and generate a chart in 2020.
Image Credit: Pixabay image by by Sanya2017
That’s one more book than I read this year.
I uess I’m just not a big reader. And maybe a little undereducated, I guess.
Not a big reader? You read the entire internet daily!
Go for the double next year! It’s good to have goals
I read pieces of books, slices of them like pizza. For example, I have been reading Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language for over twenty years. Barely scratched the surface of it.
Now, as for listening to whole books, I do a lot of that.
Am listening to Nathan Robinson’s “Why You Should Be a Socialist?” and just finished listening to Thomas Frank’s collection of essays “Rendezvous with Oblivion”.
Listened to “The Bone Clocks” earlier this summer while moving electric fencing for the sheep and bringing them feed and water. Finished it when I started back to school on my hour’s commute. Yeah, better than Cloud Atlas, IMHO.