I never start out the year with a solid reading plan. I usually have a few books in mind I'd like to finish before the end of the year, but that's about as close as I get to any sort of plan. This is usually because my mood determines what book I'll pick next more than anything else.
As mentioned in the previous post, I'm currently reading the Changewind series (1987- 1988, and 1996) from Jack L. Chalker due to all the weirdness that came about its rediscovery. And I do plan to throw in Saberhagen's Swords trilogy (1983-1984) this summer. There is also a reread of The Elfstones of Shannara (1982) I wanted to read before the series began airing, but considering that it starts this evening, the goal has changed to rereading it before the television series comes to a close. I also like to reread at least one book of Tolkien's each year - The Simarillion is on tap this year. Wanna guess when I first read that book?
Sensing some common ground here?
Me too, which also got me thinking about other books I loved during that time, especially The Winds of Altair (1983) and Orion (1984) by Ben Bova (which, by the way, garnered some teasing while I was in school because of the unusual cover art), and Hubbard's Battlefield Earth (1982).
Yeah, that's a lot of 80s science fiction and fantasy for one year, some rereads, some not. But I also have a few classic literature books I'd like to include, and I've promised myself to read more non-fiction. I like to keep up on modern literary novels as well, so I have to throw two or three of them on the pile. Plus I want to keep to my goal of reading 52 short stories in one year because not only do I enjoy the short form, I want to continue to promote the form both in this blog and in other areas.
None of that includes a promised reread of "The First of Heaven" so I can refresh my memory of the Wheel of Time series before tackling the Brandon Sanderson books sometime in the next year or two. I originally read this series as each book was published over the course of the past fifteen years, but got behind around book ten, and I don't trust my memory with everything that's happened from the early and middle books, which means a reread is practically required.
Phew! I've got my year cut out for me.
But all that 80s stuff is also infused with the launch of Comet Television in my local market. In case you've never heard of it, it's a new science fiction channel that is currently showing a lot of cheesy science fiction films, including a ton of 80s films. If I'm not careful, I really will accidently slip back in time, and my younger self ain't going to be too encouraged when he sees how I've aged (or how he will age, whichever).
All that means is that it's time for me to logon and put a few more pages underneath my belt this evening - I've got a lot of 80s reading ahead of me. Wish me luck!
Until Next Time...
Radically Yours,
Michael
P.S. Having no idea where my brain patterns have been focused lately, The Boss coincidently enough pulled up some old episodes of ALF that we've been rewatching on Hulu. "Now...where's that cat Lucky hiding?"
When I was in high school, one of my teachers was an avid reader, but there was a catch - he only ever read James Michener novels or reread The Lord of the Rings. Why?
I have no idea.
I found it fascinating though that someone who loved to read restricted himself to only those books. He even commented that he sometimes got tired carrying around a Michener heavy-weight novel, but he did it anyway. That was many many years ago, and maybe he eventually read all of Michener's novel and found another historical author to follow. But the thought and the image of that huge Michener novel sitting on the top of that file cabinet where he brought it in and set it every day that semester has never left my mind.
His love of Michener made me rethink my opinion of the author. At that point in my young reading life, I had read Space and enjoyed it well enough, but nothing else by the author compelled me enough to read anything else by him. Then his novel Texas came out and was a colossal sized book. At that time I was obsessed with reading exceptionally long books (one day I'll write about how I discovered Hubbard's Battlefield Earth), so Texas seemed like the perfect book to add to my "to be read" pile. My parents must have put two and two together (they had seen me reading Michener and knew I had developed a recent obsession 1000-plus page books) and bought Texas for me in hardcover for Christmas. The only problem was they also bought me the Stephen King short story collection Skeleton Crew and an omnibus of the Richard Bachman books. Considering that at the time I was practically obsessed with Stephen King, Michener was going to have to wait.
Michener is still waiting because I just never got back to that Texas-sized novel. But I never let it go, either. It's remained on my bookshelf all these years, hardly opened, and ready for me to read at any time. I occasionally lug it off the shelf, flip through those 1000-plus, view that exceptionally small print (especially in such a long novel) and ask myself if I'm ready to commit so much time to a novel about the state of Texas. I'm never quite ready. Every year I make the resolution that this will be the year I finally read it, but I also make the resolution to read the unabridged version of Les Miserables, Anna Karenina, The Satanic Verses, and reread Vanity Fair, The Mill on the Floss, Barchester Towers, and Battlefield Earth. None of which ever happens. I have too many other books to read.
It's September now. I have a stack of books I need to read before the end of the year, and I just don't see Texas moving from the "to be read" pile to the "read" pile by December 31.
Oh well... there's always next year.
Until Next Time...
Colossally Yours,
Michael
Yeah, that's a lot of 80s science fiction and fantasy for one year, some rereads, some not. But I also have a few classic literature books I'd like to include, and I've promised myself to read more non-fiction. I like to keep up on modern literary novels as well, so I have to throw two or three of them on the pile. Plus I want to keep to my goal of reading 52 short stories in one year because not only do I enjoy the short form, I want to continue to promote the form both in this blog and in other areas.
