One imperfect letter, one missing page

Originally posted March 11, 2006 in fiveforsilver:

Yesterday, I joined two new communities, one about counting the number of books you read in a year, and the other about counting the number of pages in the books you read. I actually joined a number of other new communities yesterday, too, but those are the active ones and I posted already in them. I spent this morning before work trying to remember what I had read since the beginning of the year.

Some of these are possibly books I read last year and not since the beginning of this year, but that's ok. I'm sure I've forgotten a few books that I did read this year.

I have been stuck in a rut recently. Frustrations in college (among other things) and sheer laziness come together, and I spend most of my reading time rereading books I've already read and liked. Not that I didn't do that anyway, but I've been worse about it recently that I used to be. Moving on to new things always holds the possiblity that I might not like it (you all know I'm not the adventerous type anyway) and I dislike wasting my time on things - I - dislike, so I have the stupid habit of just not trying them in the first place.

So anyway, along with counting pages and books, I'm also going to try to keep track of how many of them are new books. New to me, anyway.

The default of the communities are 50 books and 15,000 pages in one year, but I'm already at 19 books and over 7,500 pages, so I decided to up those numbers a bit. Here are my first 19 books, including my thoughs on most of them.

Anyway, not in order of reading, just the order I thought of them.

1. First Test, Tamora Pierce (206)
   
2. Page, Tamora Pierce (288)
   
3. Squire, Tamora Pierce (380)
   
4. Lady Knight, Tamora Pierce (409)
   
   These four books are a completed set in a fantasy series about a girl becoming a knight. Pierce's Tortall books (this series, the Immortals series, and the Lioness quartet) are some of my favorites for light reading, not because I have any illusions about the quality of the work (many if not all of the heroines are Mary Sues, for example) but because if you can look past those flaws, they are enjoyable books about strong female characters in fantasy settings, which is something I have always loved. The character in these books, Keladry, has become my favorite of Pierce's characters, possibly because she doesn't have any innate magical abilities and has to figure out everything without that kind of help, unlike all the other protaganists.
   
   
5. *Young Warriors, ed. Tamora Pierce and Josepha Sherman (312)
   
   An anthology of short stories about, surprisingly enough, young warriors. I read it a couple of months ago, when I first bought it, so I don't remember that much about it, but that the stories are interesting, drawing from a wide variety of cultures and mythologies and using them in sometimes unexpected ways.
   
   
6. *The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce (539)
   
   The most recent book in a different series by Pierce, the Circle books. I enjoyed it well enough, but I don't think the Circle books are generally even as well conceived as the Tortall series.
   
   
7. Trickster's Choice, Tamora Pierce (403)
   
8. Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce (444)
   
   The most recent books in the Tortall series. Another strong female character - with magic. Aly is possibly more a Mary Sue than any of the other heroines, but even so, I find these books enjoyable and often hilarious. The spying and intrigue remind me at times of what used to be one of my favorite tv shows, Alias.
   
   
9. Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn (404)
   
10. Dark Force Rising, Timothy Zahn (439)
    
11. The Last Command, Timothy Zahn (467)
    
    These three Zahn books are Star Wars books. Essentially authorized fanfic, but Zahn is a well-known author in his own right and these are really very good books. They take place following the original three movies and deal with both the personal lives of the characters we know - Han and Leia are married and expecting twins, Luke is worrying about how he's going to eventually teach the twins to be Jedi while trying to juggle government work and trying to find time to teach Leia to be a Jedi, C3P0 is wandering around getting in the way... - and the struggle of the New Republic to both solidify its existance and beat back the still-defiant Empire at the same time. Zahn does a wonderful job of making the characters sound and feel like older versions of the movie characters.
    
    
12. The Outlaws of Sherwood, Robin McKinley (278)
    
    Robin McKinley's (as she puts it) "historically unembarrasing" Robin Hood tale. While Robin is of course the main character, this book focuses also on other characters in his band of outlaws. This story delves more into how the dynamics of the band itself work, with real people - instead of caricatures - as the members.
    
    
13. Sunshine, Robin McKinley (389)
    
    One of my favorite books, Sunshine is a departure from McKinley's previous work. She loaded on the description and the background and the rambling, but I love it. It is not a fairy tale, like many of her other books - it is an alternate universe current-time vampire novel.
    
    
14. *Legends II: Dragon, Sword, and King, ed. Robert Silverberg (401)
    
    These five stories/novellas are all parts of larger things. Since I have read none of the other series that they each belong to, I can say that they do stand alone, but I presume there are many parts that would make more sense to someone who knows the background and history of each story's universe. They were fine. I didn't find any of the stories spectacular, but I enjoyed all of them enough to finish read them, too.
    
    
15. Lythande, Marion Zimmer Bradley (237)
    
16. The Gratitude of Kings, Marion Zimmer Bradley (112)
    
    The first is a book of short stories, the second is a short story in a single book, all about the same person - the Blue Star mage Lythande. Lythande is a female who is forced to go disguised as a male as punishment and to keep her powers. It doesn't specifically say, but I assume that women are not allowed to study to be a Blue Star mage, which is why Lythande disguised herself as a man to gain admittence.
    
    
17. *Chocolat, Joanne Harris (306)
    
    In truth, I liked the movie better, though that is possibly because I saw the movie long before I read the book. It was fascinating, however, to recognize the changes that were made - one character from the book that was split into two characters in the movie and so on. The book is darker, more unhappy and depressing, and the ending is not as clear. Of course this isn't bad, and it's not surprising that a movie would change these things, but even knowing that, I still liked the movie better.
    
    
18. Mutants, ed Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh (256)
    
    An anthology of science fiction stort stories about different kinds of mutants - natural mutations from a boy who has wings to a horse built like a cheetah, unnatural mutations like a gengeneered child or people altered to live on Mars. One theme in many of the stories is that changes in the physical body might cause unexpected changes in the mind as well.
    
    
19. *Bloodchild and other stories, Octavia Butler (213)
    
    A collection of short stories and essays by Butler, some of which I'd read before, most of which I hadn't. I picked it up at the bookstore yesterday because I needed something to read and wanted something of hers - I have read so much fantasy and sci-fi that I can't keep track of authors names, so I didn't know if I had or hadn't read anything by her.
    
    *New (to me) books
    
    

    7,766 / 50,000 pages (15.5%)

    
    
    

    19 / 200 books (9.5%)

    
    
    

    5 / 50 new books (10.0%)