Sulkyblue's Blog

It's been a really pretty miserable failure of a year for me as far as reading went. In 2012, in a drive to increase my reading I set myself a 50 page a day target, which drove my book tally up from round about 20 a year to 49. I decided against continuing that for 2013 and have correspondingly seen my reading drop not just back to the 20odd, but to an all time low of just 10 books.
I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly I spent most of the year unemployed. I didn't really have a regular structure to my day, rarely travelling far by public transport, and reading just didn't seem to slot in. I filled my time watching films and television instead, which had the knock on effect for me of needing to spend time writing reviews. When I did finally get a job it's a blissfully short commute which is mostly walking, again making it tricky to read.

The second reason is that a lot of the books I did pick up turned out to be disappointing and often turned into a slog to read rather than a pleasure. I've got a weird mental glitch that means I feel obligated to finish a book no matter how little I'm enjoying it which means I'll spend 4 months carrying around a disappointing book, forcing myself to read 10 pages here and there, rather than giving up and finding something better. When my lifestyle means that I have to really want to read a book to get round to doing it, it's not a good combination.

The numbers:
It feels almost silly to do any sort of statistics on such a small pool, but here we go:

• 10 in total: 8 Fiction, 2 non-fiction (20%) down a bit on last year's 24%


• 4 New authors, of the 6 authors I'd previous read books by, 3 were part of a series.


• 1 woman - pretty poor, but I'm the sample size is so small I'm not gonna kick myself about it.


• 2 books from 2013 (both purchased in hardback), 2 from 2012 (paperback), 4 from 2011. 1 from 1995 and then only one that I'd describe as 'old', from 1908.


• 5 British Authors, 4 American, 1 Indian. All books were written in English.


• 1 SF, 3 fantasy, 1 crime novel, 1 kid's book, 3 sort of non-specific

Fiction

• Scott Lynch: Republic of Thieves - A great series, but the long delay between book 2 and 3 has had a serious impact on momentum that this book isn't quite good enough to overcome.


• Mark Haddon: The Red House - Unlikeable characters and terrible layout choices (speech and thoughts both indicated by italics) made this book unsatisfying and difficult to read. Massively disappointing.


• Ernest Cline: Ready Player One - Superb. Full of wonderful and loving references and an absolute joy to read.


• Michael Chabon: Wonder Boys - Somehow Chabon managed to make a story where nothing happened with unpleasant characters un-put-downable.


• Ben Aaronovitch: Broken Homes - With every book Aaronovitch moves up my list of favourite authors, he never puts a foot wrong. The Rivers of London is clever, original, interesting, exciting and hilarious.


• Aravind Avaga: Last Man in Tower - Dull, predictable and full of unsympathetic characters. This may be the book that killed my reading this year.


• Imogen Robertson: Anatomy of a Murder - Second book in a series and apparently I'd forgotten about it completely by the time I wrote a review. So probably a solidly middling book.


• Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows - Not well suited to an adult audience, the construction of the world makes no sense (some animals are animals, some are anthropomorphic), the morality is dubious and the writing style more suited to reading aloud.

I'd roughly label them as three good (Ready Player One, Republic of Thieves, Broken Homes), two middling (Anatomy of a Murder, Wonder Boys) and three bad (Wind in the Willows, Man in Tower, The Red House). That's not a particularly good balance and backs up my feelings that it was partly a lack of enthusiasm for the books in question that left me with such a miserable tally for the year.

Clearer than ever to me is that I rely more on characters to enjoy a book than I do on subject matter. They don't necessarily have to be likeable, but they do have to be interesting, realistic and complete. A book like Man in Tower was beautifully written, with prose that leapt off the page, but I found all the characters short sighted, proud, stubborn and ultimately dooming themselves. If there'd been even one character who pointed out the stupidity of the others' actions I might have forgiven it. But I took no satisfaction spending time with selfish people heading towards their own self-created doom.

My favourite book of the year I think was Ready Player One. It was original, entertaining, interesting and passionate about its subject matter without making me feel stupid if I didn't get all the references. Not only did I love the book, but it reminded me of why and how I love video games as well. Aaronovitch's Broken Homes was a close second, the series is absolutely wonderful and a complete joy to read. The only way I chose between the two was because Ready Player One is a standalone book and that feels somewhat more worthy of praise.

Non Fiction

• Simon Jenkins: A Short History of England - Phenomenally dry and boring. I was hoping for something to fill in my knowledge of history, but I found it impossible to keep track when and where I was and was bored rigid.


• Alan Sepinwall - The Revolution was Televised - A wonderfully written and researched book by someone with a passion for television which he manages to share beautifully. I was fascinated reading about the shows I knew nothing about and learnt new things about the ones I already loved.

Just the two non-fiction, but at 20% of my reading, that's about average. It's hardly even worth the pixels to type that the Sepinwall was my favourite, it completely exemplified what I look for in non-fiction, a passionate and knowledgeable writer who clearly explains everything for the expert and novice alike.


Originally posted at my website where you can also find summaries of previous years' reading.