Category: 25 books

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25 books 6000 pages Read Every Day reading

Read Every Day (aka 20000 pages, aka 50 books)

So this will be my reading challenge for 2012.

After a bit of thought and discussion I’ve decided to aim for 50 books this year but I’m naming the challenge Read Every Day (RED) because if I fall short on the book count but do the later I’ll still be very pleased. Behind the scenes I’ll probably keep my spreadsheet going which tracks pages, time spent etc but I won’t bore you with it. But at the end of the year I’ll be able to compare with the last 3 years if I want.

Oh I suppose that since I reckon 50 books = ~20000 pages I might put up a ticker for that but it won’t be an official target.




Yes I’ve started!

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books – 18 is *nearly* 25 right?

So this is the official “25 books“ 2009 wrap-up post. I nearly wrote it last night but in the end I only had time to collate the stats and work out the points. But we’ll get to that.

As you can see from the title the magic number was 18. I read 18 books in 2009. Not quite 25. Not even 20. But still quite a few more than I would have read and therefore an achievement. Instead of a book every two weeks I read one every three (roughly, on average).

Some Numbers

So since we’re talking numbers let’s do the stats thing. No point in keeping complicated spreadsheets and not doing the stats thing right? In 2009…

  • I read for a total of 98 hours and 23mins, or 16mins a day
  • My reading speed was 50pages/hour
  • I read a total of 4924 pages, or 13 pages a day
  • Since I read 18 books this means the books had an average of 274 pages each
  • I read one book every 20 1/4 days on average but…
  • I only read on 71 out of the 365 days meaning that…
  • I averaged 1hour 23mins on days I actually read
  • I read an average of 69 pages on those days
  • There were long gaps between bouts of reading. The longest was 54days. The next three longest were 40, 35 and 35 days respectively. So there really were isolated but intense periods of lots reading and literally weeks of not.

Enough Numbers What Have You Learnt?

Patience. How about I tell you about how well I did with regard to the “rules” of the challenge? You know the points?

Fair Enough – So How Did You Score?

Here’s those rules:

“1. Read at least 25 books before the end of 2009”

I read 18 books.

“2. No more than 3 (of the 25) can be books you’ve read before. If you read more than 25 can you re-read others.”

I didn’t re-read any books.

“3. You should read at least 3 books by authors you’ve not read before.”

Of the 18, 12 were by authors I’d never read before – Richard Matheson (I am Legend), David Almond (Skellig), W.E.Bowman (Rum Doodle), Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Great Gatsby), Brian Aldiss (Hothouse),Cally Taylor (Heaven Can Wait), J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), John Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), (Beowulf), David Peace (1974), Paul Torday (Girl on the Landing)

“4. This should include at least 2 new authors (i.e. not just 3 books by 1 new author)”

See above

“5. At least one book must have been published (for the first time) in 2009”

Heaven Can Wait, Juliet Naked and Girl on the Landing were all new in 2009.

“6. For each of the targets 1-5 deduct a point if you miss it.”

Even though I only read 18 books that’s only one target missed so

-1

“7. If you read a book from a genre you’ve never read before add a point”

I read Horror, Travel Parody, Literary Fiction, Chick Lit., Crime/Thriller, Espionage. That’s six

+6 = 5

“8. If you read a book that you wouldn’t have read but for a recommendation add a point.”

My sister recommended Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I bought and read Skellig because it was on a display advertised as “recommended by Nick Hornby”. Rum Doodle was a secret santa present I wouldn’t have bought for myself.

+3 = 8

“9. If you read a book that can only be bought second-hand add a point.”

Hothouse is out of print.

+1 = 9

“10. If you read a book first published more than 50 years ago and still in print add a point. For books first published more than 200years ago add 2 points. For books published more than 500 years add 3 points and for books written over 1000years ago add 4 point.”

Beowulf dates from somewhere between the 8th and early 11th century. 1026 is the latest date associated with the manuscripts. I’m going to go with the probabilities and call it a 1000+ book.

+4 = 13

I had no 500+ or 200+ books. (Though I would have had if I hadn’t set aside Persuasion) but I had 4 50+ ones – Great Gatsby, I am Legend, Rum Doodle and Catcher in the Rye.

+1 (x4) = 17

So I scored 17points. Which is a fairly meaningless number without something to compare it to.

Speaking of Scores…

Almost forgot, the average score a book received was 7.0 – which means I basically enjoyed most of the books. That’s a little higher than I expected. I guess I remember the few low scoring ones.

So Any Conclusions?

I’ve learnt that given where I am right now, it makes more sense to read stuff I know I’ll enjoy rather than try to force myself to expand my horizons too much. Having said that I also learn that I enjoy genres I didn’t think I would like crime and horror. I also learnt that I tend to read a lot in little bursts – a few hours a day for a few days. I’d like to spread that out a little but honestly I think some of that coms from the way reading works – if you get into a good book you want to read it more.

All in all I feel pleased. By setting myself targets I read more that I would otherwise I and enjoyed most of what I read. I also read things I might not have considered.

I was going to wrap this up by setting out goals for 2010 (no, they’re not the same) but this post is long enough already.

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books, Book 18 – Dead Long Enough, James Hawes

I first read James Hawes when I first started to break out of the limited SciFi/Fantasy list of authors that I used to read. I picked up a double edition of A White Merc With Fins and Rancid Aluminium at a WHSmiths at train station (looking for something to read for the journey) and found I enjoyed both books a lot.

That was over ten years ago and Dead Long Enough had me wondering whether those were better books or whether my tastes have changed dramatically. Perhaps I was so ready for something different back then that Hawes seemed fresh and interesting. Perhaps in the 8 or 9 years between buying and reading this book I’d gotten too old for its themes.

Perhaps, but then again perhaps not, I think more happened in those other books.

Harry is a trendy “young” TV archaeologist who has an annual ritual of celebrating his “fake birthdays”* with his friends. This year, as they are all nearing or just past 40, they take a trip back to Harry’s native Dublin and discover something about his past, including why (and who) he left.

As you might have guessed I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. I found it a struggle to finish. Unlike my memory of his two previous books there seemed to be an awful lot of tell and not show, and an awful lot of both was very repetitive. There were long passages waxing lyrical in different ways essential on one thing – it sucks to get old. It took at least 2/3rds of the book for the action to really start. The first part is basically the introduction and backstory of the characters, their meeting up in a London pub and journey to a Dublin pub and then party. Meanwhile we get lots of ruminations both as narration and dialogue on what it means to hit middle age. I found it tedious.

When things finally did start to happen I didn’t feel like they made a huge amount of sense. As you know I’m not normally picky with plot holes – but when I am it’s because I stopped caring about the characters and story and started unravelling things. Here I never really started to care.

4/10 – long enough and dead boring.

(*He lies about his age for his job and so celebrates the birthday of the age he claims to be.)

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 17 – The Girl on the Landing, Paul Torday

So it’s February 2010 and “25 Books” was my 2009 challenge. I’m not going to tell you (yet) how many books I read and how many points I accrued, but I will say that I’ve nearly finished book 2 of 2010. So obviously I’m a bit behind on the corresponding blog posts. My goal for 2010 is to try not to get more than one book behind (once I’ve caught up that is.)

So anyway…

The Girl on the Landing is the story of Michael and his wife Elizabeth. Whilst staying with a friend in Ireland he sees an intriguing picture of a girl on the landing of his friend’s house. On mentioning it the next day he discovers that the picture in question has no girl in it. This odd occurrence marks the beginning of changes in him, his marriage and his life in general.

I bought this book one day when I was browsing in Waterstones and liked the blurb on the back. I was in my “forget-the-list-lets-just-read-something-enjoyable” phase. It turned out to be a good choice but I wasn’t sure of that initially. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to relate to the main characters. Michael is very rich and his life seems to be like something out of a period novel about posh folk. He’s very rich and owns a large estate in Scotland. He lives in London and his pass-the-time job is working for an exclusive club of which he’s a member. I swear the first 50 pages or so I kept looking for clues of when it was set because I was sure it was going to turn out to be the 1930s.

That was a minor concern though and faded once I got into the story. The transformation in Michael as a person and the growing effect it had on his marriage I found interesting. I was rooting for them as a couple who, having been married for some time found themselves perhaps for the first time falling really in love.

However as the pace of the story picks up there’s a kind of is-it-real supernatural element mixed with almost a crime thriller. Both of these in different ways had me intrigued as to what was going to happen next and what it meant. I found it quite exciting and intriguing and the early part of the book had made me care about the characters so that was all the more affecting.

I can see how some might see it as a strange mix of genres but that honestly never bothered me.

8/10 – an odd mix of romance, thriller and ghost story – but one that worked for me.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 16 – The Innocent, Ian McEwan

The Innocent is my third book by Ian McEwan. You have to go back to Harry Potter a couple of years ago, or further to my Discworld-devouring 20s to find me having read more than a couple of books by the same author. I mention that only to say that to my surprise and despite my own expectations (it’s not genre!) I seem to be becoming a McEwan fan.

The Innocent is the story of Leonard – a naive 25-year-old English phone technician sent to Berlin in 1956 to work on a secret project. Predictably perhaps the books is all about him losing his innocence in various ways. He learns about espionage, he learns to drink, he learns about sex and then love, from a spirited, confident, slightly older Berlin native called Maria.

Given that I was looking for “something lighter” after 1974 those of you who know the story of The Innocent will perhaps smile. I don’t want to spoil but the pivotal event that occurs about halfway through is as dark and upsetting as anything in 1974. Having said that overall the book is much more optimistic.

It’s interesting that I read this enjoying the first half of the book, which establishes the characters, the setting, the relationships and so on. I was enjoying McEwan’s fine insight into relationships and they way they express themselves, especially through sex. I am slightly amused to find on finishing the book that many see this as slightly drawn-out set-up for the central incident and feel that the book is really about the fallout from that. I can see that, and I did enjoy that. I still enjoyed the early part of the book best though.

I guess I was at a disadavantage because before getting to the central event I flicked to the end to check the page number of the last page (to see how far through I was) and spoiled myself by catching sight of two words. Just two words! So what was I expect for some a “twist” was for me a gradual sad build-up to the inevitable. Fortunately the two words were not the final ones and unlike Atonement McEwan was able to rescue it for me on the final page.

9/10 – Innocence lost, hope regained.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 15 – 1974, David Peace

As you know I bought 1974 when I was in search of something I actually wanted to read. My theory was that having liked The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo – which is basically a crime novel – I’d probably enjoy this. The TV adaptation of it was celebrated and so it seemed a reasonably bet that the source material was going to be good too.

My only reservations were: a) would I be happy with merely a page-turner of a crime story? b) was my stomach strong enough for what I had heard was fairly dark stuff?

The answer turned out to be yes on both counts.

1974 – set in the eponymous year, is the story of a journalist, Eddie Dunford, a crime reporter, on the Yorkshire Post. He’s recently returned from an unsucessful spell in Fleet Street and just buried his father. What seems to be a pretty ordinary missing girl case becomes far stranger when the body turns up. She’s naked, has been sexually abused in a bizarre way and has the wings of a swan stitched into her back. Then there’s the sniff of local government corruption around the sale of (what should have been) council houses, the harassment of a settlement of gypsies and the seemingly unrelated story of a man who killed himself and then his sister – the so-called ‘Ratcatcher’ – the story of which made Eddie’s name.

1974 starts slowly but soon picks up pace and then it simply does not let up. I read the first 100 pages over a couple of days but I read the remaining 200+ in a single night. Many books are said to be un-put-downable, I definitely found this one so. Peace has a slightly stylised way of writing, which once used to I liked. Although given the strange nature of some of the crimes and incidents in this book I wasn’t always sure what was going on when he mixed in the dreams and thought-life of Dunford with the ‘real’ action. It was effective though.

It was also quite a challenge. Not just for my stomach – though it was gruesome – but also because it was fairly bleak regarding human nature. If you get to the end of this book thinking there were any purely ‘good guys’ then I’d be surprised. And despite that, and despite even the slightly far-fetched explanation (which I only partly guessed – damn!) I did really enjoy this book. But I also felt the need for something lighter next. I have got the follow up, 1977 (which by all accounts is even darker) but I’m waiting a while to start it.

9/10 – dark, disturbing but very gripping

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, Book 14 – Beowulf

So, speaking of monsters…

Here’s where my pretensions start to break down a little. As much as I like to read (and despite whatever, I do) I am not really a student of literature. So what have I to say about this ancient classic of narrative poetry? Isn’t it ridiculous to review it alongside Nick Hornby and score it out of 10?

Probably but I am going to anyway. Mostly because I did read it and I don’t have the tools to tackle it any other way – nor am I likely to acquire them any time soon.

Beowulf, in case you don’t know, is the story of a hero who fights and defeats first a monster, then the monster’s mother and then a dragon. Somewhere between the last two Beowulf becomes king and rules for 50 years.

I have to say I appreciated the translation. The language was plain and had the feel of an earlier, earthier culture without seeming false. Also it retained a sense of poetry. However I did find that it got in the way of the story a little for me. There were times when I read a phrase, or a stanza, enjoyed it and then realised I needed to go back to see what was actually happening. That made reading Beowulf less of a treat and more of a chore than it might have been. Maybe I’ll re-read it one day and the familiarity with the basic story will help.

The other thing that was odd was the story-telling structure. Probably things have changed in a thousand years but I still found it odd that we get a fuller description of parts of the second fight when it’s being recounted later, in passing, than we do at the time.

This is another one that I’m glad I read rather than enjoyed the reading per se.

7/10 – poetic, epic but slightly confusing.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, Book 13 – Let the Right One In

Despite my love for all things Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am not normally drawn to straight horror. And whilst Let the Right One In is a twist on the usual vampire story it is still horror. But I had heard it was good, actually I’d heard the movie was good, and more atmospheric than gorey, so I gave it a try.

Turns out it was good.

Question: How do you make a monster sympathetic?

Possible answer #1: have an even worse monster as the real ‘villain’

Possible answer #2: make your monster vulnerable, say a child

The central character in Let the Right One In is Oskar, a loner and child of a single mom who is being bullied at school. He makes friends with a strange child he meets in the neighbourhood called Eli. Eli is more than she seems, and not only because Eli is a vampire.

Let the Right One In is atmospheric-scary, but it also has its gory-scary moments. It is a gripping page-turner of a what-happens-next thriller. But at its heart it’s a sweet touching reflection on love and friendship. The fact that one of the two ‘lovers’ is a person who needs to kill to survive and that we still care about Eli and Oskar is something of a triumph. Although I think it’s achieved partly by making another character more horrible – both morally and in terms of the threat they pose – and also by showing how much of the death and mayhem that inevitably follows Eli around isn’t really her fault.

After reading the book I watched the film and enjoyed it. I think the book is my favourite overall but they both have their strengths. The film is shorter – showing how much could effectively be editted from the book. The book has some intriguing bits of back-story that would be hard to dramatize on screen.

It says something either about me or the strength of this book that one of the most moving scenes was also one of the most gruesome. Must be the book, definitely…

8/10 – gory and touching.

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25 books reading

A Pause for Thought about Reading, OR Why I’m not Reading Middlemarch (yet!)

I bought 3 new books today. This post will be about why and what they were.

Reasons to Read

I’m halfway through my 25 books project – in terms of books, obviously not time – being in the middle of book 13, so it seemed like a good time to reflect on progress. I’ve been wondering why exactly I’m doing this. Reading should be about pleasure shouldn’t it? I seem to have found a way to make it a chore. Also it seems to have become more important that I achieve my 25 books target (which I’m not doing anyway) than to enjoy what I’m reading. All that “I just wanna be someone who reads (again)” stuff probably has more to do with middle-age crisis and yearning for youth than actually what books I choose and whether I enjoy them.

So I’ve sort of come to a conclusion: I should read books I like. Well d’uh, who knew eh? But how do you know what’ll you’ll like before you read it?

So what are things that make me want to keep reading:

  • I want to find out what happens
  • I want to spend more time with interesting, entertaining characters
  • I want to be taken away to a different world
  • I want to update my spreadsheet and see the page-count go up

One that’s missing from there is that “I enjoy language itself”. Now it may be true that I am capable of appreciating the beauty of a well constructed sentence, though I do sometime doubt it, it’s not really on my reasons for reading. It’s not why I turn to a book in the first place.

What Should I Read?

Or, as I said, how do I know what I will like? I’ve said I should read things I like and on realising this I decided to change my remaining 25 books list. I quickly found that once I weeded out the books that I wanted to read simply to be “better read” then I actually didn’t have quite enough books I want to read. So I felt a trip to the bookshop was in order, but what to buy?

Well one approach is to stick with authors or a genre you know and have loved in the past. Which is why I read so many Terry Pratchett and Larry Niven novels in my 20s. But my tastes have changed. I don’t now approach those books with the same sense that I am guaranteed a good time that I once did.

Another approach is to go for books which other people tell you are good – whether it’s friends and family or celebrity book clubs or serious literary prizes. This can work but my experience so far is that you have to be quite canny to choose a subset of such books that pique your interests for other reasons anyway. Both the books I’ve officially set aside, The Crow Road and The Book Thief, as well as severall that have dropped off my list fall into this category.

Another approach is to go for ‘classics’ – if they’re still being read after X years they must have something to them. True and both the classics I have read so far have much to commend them but I haven’t been blown away by either. An unrepresentative sample perhaps.

And the Winners are…

So you’ll be dying to know by now what the 3 new books are:

Fire by Kristin Cashore – its fantasy which is a genre I like, it has an intriguing premise and a review I read got me interested.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan – I realised that I’d enjoyed both books I’d read by him so why not try another?

1974 by David Peace – good/popular enough to be adapted into an acclaimed ITV drama series. It’s a crime thriller, which is not my usual genre of choice, but I suspect it will be a page-turner.

 

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25 books reading

25 Books, Book 12, Catcher in the Rye

Holden Caulfield.

Holden Caulfield!

What can you say about Holden Caulfield? He’s kind of annoying and yet strangely endearing. He has this breathless energy and an utter inability to stick to the point that means that he’ll tell you his life story, about a couple books he’s read and incidents about people he knows – with a few tall tales thrown in – all in response to “Hello” and before you’ve had a chance to blink. He has this kind of vulnerability and superficial optimism that carries him through though I guess.

I suppose I’d’ve appreciated him more when I was nearer his age. I read somewhere recently that there are some books, films etc that if you don’t catch when you’re young enough then it’s sort of too late. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I was wrong-footed by the vague impressions I’d picked up or just the fact that this was supposed to be a great book. I can see how in a world that didn’t have a lot of time for, care or know much about teenagers, and ditto but even less so for/about mental illness – then a sympathetic first-person account of someone like Holden would seem shocking and new. As it is, well it’s sad and touching but not shocking.

It’s odd but I was a little bored by him during the time we spent together, but now, as the memory softens, I find myself thinking kindly of him. Glad to have met him, not sure if I want to spend a lot more time with him. Like I said, annoying but strangely endearing.

7/10 – nice bloke, rambles on a bit.