A New Way to Say Hooray! (For April)

Firstly, I'm not sure why I titled this entry as 'A New Way to Say Hooray!' other than because its the title of a song by Shpongle that I listen to off and on...

Now I thought I was being all hoity toity by upgrading my 65 book challenge to a 75 book challenge, when I came across this dude! He's already read 100 books by the end of April... and in 7 different languages! Bah!

Anyhoo, I have come to the realisation that I am never going to actually get around to posting up reviews of all the books that I've read here. So, I thought I'd just post up lists of stuff that I've read - like a round up for each month.

So here's what I read in April:

1. Storm Front - Jim Butcher
2. The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury (re-read)
3. Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge
4. Letters From Atlantis - Robert Silverberg
5. Hybrids - Robert J. Sawyer
6. The Briar King - Greg Keyes
7. The Charnel Prince - Greg Keyes
8. Floating Worlds - Cecelia Holland
9. Temeraire - Naomi Novik

Hybrids was a very bland and rather disappointing finale to the Neanderthal Parallax series. The Briar King and The Charnel Prince were a fine pair of books to kick off the epic fantasy series: The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Storm Front is the first in the now super famous (and made into TV show) Dresden Files series of books that blends noir and urban fantasy elements. It was okay: nothing special but I wouldn't rule out reading more by the author. Letters from Atlantis was a fine novella by Silverberg. I'm beginning to realise that he was a pretty good writer after all, after having given up on him when I read 3 of his books with exactly the same plot back in the 90s. The Illustrated Man is a classic short story collection and should be read and re-read by every man, woman and child on God's green Earth (or anywhere else).

Every Man For Himself is an elegant book set during the voyage of the Titanic - I've now read two outstanding books by Beryl Bainbridge and if her other books are as good she may well establish herself as one of my favourite authors. Floating Worlds was a lovely surprise - a thumping big space opera with an outstanding main character and filled to the brim with a feminist and anarchist sensibility, a la Le Guin. Its been a long, long time since I've read anything like it. Lastly there was Temeraire - fantasy bubble-gum that combines Master & Commander-like antics with dragons set in Napoleonic times. Fun, warm, and I must say I'm looking forward to see what it will turn out like when Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) brings it to the big screen.

So I have finally reviewed (sort off) the stuff I read last month. Hooray!

IZ

The Book Challenge

Those who are wont to notice such things may well have noticed that the Zokuto metre has now been set to reflect a target of 75 books. Setting myself a challenge of reading 65 books in the year was looking to be far too easy so I have upgraded to... THE 75 BOOK CHALLENGE!!!

Its still a bit of a cop out though as I'm still waaaay ahead of the required book-read-rate! If I was not such a wuss I would go for the 100 book challenge....

Hmm. Let me get done with my exams and we'll see.

IZ

On Not Keeping Up With the Joneses

Well when I started this blog I was hoping that I would jot down a few notes about each book I read... as it turns out things haven't really worked out that way. I would like to think that the tremendous rate at which I devour books leaves me little time for the difficult task of blogging about them, but the little itty bitty part of me that occasionally pricks my conscience into speaking the truth would have us believe that I have been seriously remiss in my duties and not a little lazy about this.

mea culpa.

On the up side a quick glance at the Zokuto meter in the margin of my blog tells me that I've now read 27 books this year already (making that 41% of my pledged reading total) while a mere 107 days (just under 30% of the year) have passed, so I am well on the way of achieving my targets.

Hmm... maybe my targets are not ambitious enough. Maybe I should shoot for... oh, say 75 books (36% done) or even... heaven forfend... 100 books!!! No, that would be a little too ambitious. I'll have a ponder over the 75 mark. In the meanwhile I'll try and get more written about the books I'm reading.

The Zokutou Word Meter!

This is a pretty cool little thingamajig. Its a counter that you can place into your posts/projects etc. It was originally designed to display the proportion of words you have written for a project but is currently being popularly used by LibraryThingers to count off books they have read in a year vs. how much they are aiming to read. This has been combined with the "50 book challenge": the challenge to read 50 books in a calender year (or 75, or 100 etc.)

In 2004 I read 25 books (cover to cover). In 2005 I read 58. In 2006 I read 87 (86 of which were fiction!) which is kind of an excessive amount. So what should I aim for this year? I reckon about 50-odd fiction books and say around 10-odd non-fiction books, so let's say 65 books this year as a tough but reachable target.

Of course the reason this is difficult is that I'm doing a lot of reading for courses/research etc. which is not cover to cover and which takes up a good deal of reading time and mental energy. In that light 65 seems kind of ambitious, but oh well. Lets see what happens.

So far I have read 18 books in 2007. My Zokuto meter is as follows:

18 / 65 (27.7%)

Hmm. I wonder what other use we can put this meter to? Well if 66 days of the year have passed. Maybe we can make another meter that will allow us to show how much of my time to do the reading in has passed? The Zokuto meter would look like this:

66 / 365 (18.1%)

Aha! This would suggest that I am ahead in terms of my reading goals! Cool!

I am such a nerd!

IZ

Edit: Obviously there seems to be an issue that Zokuto is having with Blogger. The meter isn't displaying properly on my post even though it looks fine in the composing window. Hmm... how odd. In order to console myself, I have added the meters to the margin on the left, below my books stuff.