fine whine

Recently I alluded to a large stacks of books awaiting me. The library's annual summer reading club ended recently, and I'd long since read my required ten books for my slim chance at winning something or other.

I must admit, I miss the summer reading clubs the libraries did when I was a kid, where every book counted toward more gift certificates and free fast food. We'd participate in two different libraries' programs, and to be honest, I can't recall if I'd try to get credit for the same books from both or if I did, in fact, read separate books from each place. Neither possibility would surprise me too much - I read a lot of books as a kid.

Which is not to say that I don't read much now. For years I'd probably averaged reading a book every other week, or so, and even now I've kept that pace, more or less*. Being able to reserve thirty books at a time from the library has helped this considerably - it's been quite some time since I've physically browsed the shelves looking for books to read, time better spent reading.

This month I decided to finally reserve Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone, since for all intents and purposes J.K. Rowling has finished that series. I really dislike reading trilogies or longer series while they are being written because when I've finished reading something I enjoy, and know there's more to read but I just can't quite get my hands on it, well, that bugs me.

Had I know David Wellington's (excellent) Monster island was merely the beginning of a trilogy, I may well have waited until this year to read them - I finally secured my (library) copy of Monster planet and can't wait to read it. The first two (the middle book is Monster nation) were fun reads, and up there with Max Brooks's World War Z for recent good zombie books.

On a tip from Scott I started Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels, and though I'm not really that enamored with classical British literature I found The Eyre affair engaging and a promising debut, and I've got another three or four books to read before I run out of those. To my knowledge Jasper's not planning any sort of structure or arc for his books, so I can get away with reading them as they appear, if ever I run out.

But back to Harry. I'd naively figured I was just about the last person who had neither read the books nor seen the movies, but it turns out that over three hundred people were ahead of me in the library queue, and that's just for the first book. If I'm smart about it, I'll reserve the first two or three, since typing those words above about two weeks ago (some drafts take longer than others) I've finished the second Thursday Next novel (Lost in a good book), read the second "Holmes on the range" western/mystery book by Steve Hockensmith (On the wrong track), and polished off a graphic novel or two. I also finished off Wellington's zombie last zombie novel (Monster planet mentioned above) but wasn't so impressed with it.

It's funny - in the same span of time that it takes me to read fiver or six novels I can barely write that many paragraphs about them. I don't usually write much about the books I read, only making sure to mark down that I've read them. I've long tracked the books I read on AllConsuming, and recently (from Carina's invite) also listed them on Goodreads. Goodreads makes me rate the books, but there's a big difference from giving a 1-to-5-star rating to a book, to actually writing something about it, but it's a start, I suppose.

* Even if I don't count the comic books, er, graphic novels that I also get from the library. Those are fast reads - I can knock out two or three in a night, except that the ones I read are ongoing serials, and I end up waiting months for an hour of reading. So it goes.