I'm a bit late on this, but then I think every year I'm a bit late on this. And then I wonder what I'm going to write about, because I always wonder what I'm going to write about on my mid-point review. And then I just start writing. So here we go, I guess.
As I look at my list of books read, what sticks out at me is this...I've read a lot of good books, but not a whole lot of great ones. Right now, if I had to pick a top book, it would be a battle between "Sabbath's Theater", "The Sense of an Ending" and "As I Lay Dying". And, in all honesty, though I really like those three books, I'm not sure any would make the top ten in 2010 or 2011. On the other hand, when I tried to make a preliminary top ten list, I narrowed it down to 20 books, and had trouble kicking out candidates. A lot of good books, not a lot of great ones. Maybe that changes over the next few months, I've got to finish my barely-touched assignments, which are usually good for a couple of top picks. Some other interesting (to me) topics about the books I read this year.....
Game of Thrones is just like The Wire...sort of- Mostly in the similarities of how Joe, Alan, and I consume the books/seasons. When I'm reading a series of books, or watching seasons of a TV show, I am not someone who needs to watch season after season, or read book after book. Even when I'm really into a show, I like to have some time in between "episodes" to digest what's going on. Unlike Joe and Alan, who both have a habit of, when they get into a story, trying to finish that story as quickly as possible. I think most people are like Joe and Alan, and I might be the weird one, but I'm not saying one way or the other is right, just that this is how I am, and how they are. When I started watching "The Wire", I loved Season One. Loved it, and told Joe repeatedly how awesome it was. By the time I finished season One, he was about to start it. Fast forward a few months, I was getting ready to watch season Two, and Joe was finishing season Four and telling me what to expect. I think of this when I think that, in the span of six weeks, Joe has read the first two Game of Thrones, catching me, and is now reading the third book. Or the fact that Alan read the first four books back to back earlier this year. And I'll have the third book read by the end of the year, but only because James assigned it to me. I don't know why this interests me, but it does. I'm different sometimes, and I can't explain it to you.
That being said, A Clash of Kings is not better than A Game of Thrones- I know Joe really liked the second book, and thought it better than the first, but that seems silly to me. First, the conflict between Tyrion and Cersei was great, and carried the book, but the fact that the rest of the book needed carrying was a bad sign in the first place. In all fairness, I should say that my favorite character in book one was Danaerys, and book two felt like George Martin had no idea what to do with her, and only included her in the book so as not too upset readers. This was not the only storyline that felt underused. Events at the wall did end up interesting, but took a long time to get there; the same could be said for Arya's plot. The only other storyline that really kept me interested throughout was Theon's, which was well written, and out shined most of the rest of the book (Tyrion-excluded, of course). But I think it's got to mean something that in the first Game of Thrones, not once did I ever look who the next chapter was about, and say "Oh no, another Bran chapter?" or "Not another Catelyn section!", but I started to say that in the second book. A Clash of Kings was not a bad book, just, in my opinion, unable to hold up the standards that A Game of Thrones passed on.
Twilight was NOT the worst book I've read this year- I really, really did not like Siren of the Waters. And before anybody gets too worried, yes, Twilight was the second-worst book I read. At least until somebody forces me to read "50 Shades of Grey".
I don't know what to read next....- Which is not to say that my next few weeks are not planned out, I've got a couple of book club books to read, and I plan on finishing all my assigned books, and books I've been loaned, quickly. It's just that, usually I always have a couple of books that I'm chomping at the bit to read, but right now I look at my Nook, or the books sitting in my closet, and I don't feel really tempted by any of them. This tends to happen sometimes, and what happens more often than not is I find a couple of books, that I might already have, and really get into them.
Most Surprising Book- The Time Traveler's Wife- I bought this at a "friends of the library" sale, cheap, mostly because other people loved this book, and told me to read it numerous times. I assumed it was another love story, and did not expect it to carry the depth it did. But I really enjoyed how the focus of the book was not just the love story, but also the problems that pop up when a randomly time-traveling male and the female he's been visiting since she was a child fall in love and try to have a life together. Yeah, it's a love story, but not a blindly written one.
Most Disappointing Book- Gentlemen of The Road- This is the first time I ever felt (slightly) let down by Michael Chabon. Fuck it, I'm still buying his new book on September 11th.
Author I had never read before who I want to read more from- Philip Roth. Seriously, if you can make a book of "pure, unadulterated smut", as my fellow blogger calls it, and not only make it interesting, but intellectually challenging, as Roth did with "Sabbath's Theater", I'm more than willing to give you another chance. Alan did well choosing that one.
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