One of my resolutions this year was to go on a diet – I have so many books waiting to be read that it is ridiculous.
I have decided for the year 2009 only to read books that I already own – there’s at least 5 shelves of new books (new to me, many of them are used books) – and even with the rate that I go through books (24 since the first of the year), I think these will probably last me a year. So with the exception of a small order from Amazon.com (hey, I had a gift certificate, what was I supposed to do?), I have intrepidly set out to whittle down the number of unread books on my shelves.
Of course, being as chemobrained as I am right now, I’m concentrating on the fun (& easier) books that are there. Which is mostly scifi, fantasy, detective, and horror. The problem is that lots of the books are history or science. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* history and science, I just can’t focus enough right now to really absorb or enjoy them much. I’ll probably take a crack at a couple biographies in the next 6 weeks or so – I did recently read Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs – but then he’s easy to read, funny and serious at the same time.
So my already picked-over stash of books is slowly becoming the books that have been rejected previously – not because I don’t want to read them, but because they didn’t meet the criteria of mood or brain capacity that I was currently at. Fortunately, before I made my resolution, I did buy the Inkheart series (re-read the first one already), the first three books in the Artemis Fowl series (also read the first one this year), and the Bartimaeus Trilogy (of which I’ve finished the first two). The real trick is to not devour those immediately and leave myself with just the books that actually require a brain.
And it also leaves me in despair on some counts – for instance, I (literally) just finished reading Natural Ordermage by L.E. Modessitt, Jr., which has been on my shelf for quite a while, only to discover that it has a sequel, which is *not* on my shelf! Argh! My only hope for that is that Brian will take pity on me, and buy it for my birthday.
So then what do I do for the last 1/3rd of the month of March? I re-read books from my collection! I was being good, reading (from the new books) Exile’s Valor by Mercedes Lackey (Oooh, it really kind of burned me that she threw herself in there – but I can certainly understand the temptation. . .), and it made me need to re-read the Arrows of the Queen series because it happened right before that series. And then I was still in nostalgia mode (and not feeling as if any of the fantasy on the “new” shelves was going to satisfy), so I re-read Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion (book II has a couple episodes in it that read like playing D&D on graph paper with the dice a-rollin’ – still love it, though). I’m starting to feel that jones to re-read The Lord of the Rings again, but I’m trying to resist. It hasn’t been that long since I read them last, and I want to be able to really savor it the next time.
I have a couple history books that I’ve started, so I may try them, see if I can pick up the thread without having to re-read everything I’ve already read – one is The Pirates Laffite by William C. Davis. I do remember that I was really enjoying it, and don’t really remember why I set it down. Another is The First American by H.W. Brands. I remember enjoying it while I was reading, but after the first three chapters, I had trouble picking it up and sticking with it. I think I was coming off chemobrain from the last bout, and still not able to focus very well. At least if I pick it up again and review the first three chapters, I’ll probably remember the early years of Ben Franklin’s life until I’m 90 years old. . .
***********
2 days later -
So instead of going for the history, I picked up A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin (Argh! I don’t have the next book in the series on my shelves – Brian! Help!). I’d read the prologue a year or more ago, I believe I was in chemo at the time, and everything about it just was too depressing. I think it was around that time that I started re-reading the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.
This time, however, I sailed right into it, although I’m struggling with having forgotten some of the events from the previous books since it’s been so long since I read them. Most of the time Martin is pretty good about throwing in enough details without overdoing it – just enough to remind me of the incident in question without having characters sit and reminisce inappropriately.
I’m about 40% of the way through (it’s 1128 pages (plus a 46-page listing of characters!)). One of the culled blurbs in the front in “praise” of this book and the series as a whole is from Publisher’s Weekly, and they describe it as “One of the more rewarding examples of gigantism in contemporary fantasy . . . richly imagined.” Obviously, here, they’re referring to the size of the book/series, and although I can’t find a definition in any of my books on literary criticism (outdated? don’t focus on so-called non-literature?), I suspect that gigantism also refers to the depth of detail that causes the books to be so long. In some ways, I think you could call *that* minisculism, for the microscopic way the author describes *everything*. Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind are good examples of the gigantism/minisculism phenomena – note to George R.R. Martin – I hope at 68 you’re in good health, or that you have good notes and a plan to finish the series!
A lot of people don’t have the patience to read all the detail, and as I’ve found in a couple of the Wheel of Time series, I occasionally struggle with it myself. With Goodkind, it wasn’t so much the detail that got me, as that the same things happened in every book, just different places with different villians. I finally gave up on his books, although I really enjoyed the first 2. But so far, even though I can kind of see hints of that repetitiveness starting to appear, I’m still enjoying the story, and the detail doesn’t bog me down. But I still have 668 pages to go, so by the end of the book, who knows?
At any rate, this’ll keep me busy for another few days, and then maybe I’ll be up for some of the history – probably not since I just had chemo yesterday, and already my brain is getting fuzzier; but everyone has to have a dream. . .
