A Year of Checkbox Reading

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2016

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This year I'm planning on doing something a little different with my book reading. Most of the books I record every year are books I started not long before finishing them. Here's the times from 2015:

six months
week plus
about under a mouth
three or four or more weeks
17 days
one evening
about nine days
maybe fifteen hours
most of a week
twoïsh weeks
week
under a week
four days
month and half
minutes
about two weeks
TIME
literally years
mere minutes
two or three weeks
two nights
two days
one lying-in-bed
half a week
under a month
maybe three weeks
two or three days
three days
about a month
i dunno maybe a month
two days
one evening and past midnight
one evening and past midnight
fourish days
about five days
two or three days
four months or so
two nights
a month or two
since spring training
a few months
maybe two weeks
two and from school
under a week
under a week
a couple days
two days
two nights
two days
one night
one day
two days
two days
two or three days
about a week
about nine months
a few days
five days
TIME
during our drive south
a small number of weeks
one day
two days
maybe five years
a week
morning
TIME
just over three months
not long
ishly, two weeks
weekish
a few days
two weeks max
four days
three days
six days
over two weeks
less than a month
evening
two nights
over a month
two-plus months
one morning and afternoon
maybe two weeks
over two weeks
one day
TIME
an evening
over a month methinks
maybe two weeks
over two months
took me one week
under a week
four days
four weeks
five days
five days
about a week
a few days
a couple weeks or so
five months or more although the bulk of the book in about two weeks
about eleven days
early afternoon
briefly
eight of ten days
off and on on an evening
a few weeks
morning
a few measured, treasured weeks
perhaps two weeks
two days
one eventide
two days
two days
ten days
TIME
maybe as long as six months
maybe three weeks
an hour
dunno but let's say an hour again

Yeah, baby. That's the finest of found poetry right there.

What I notice first is that I surprisingly frequently forgot to record how long I'd spent reading something. The second surprise was a typo. Shameful.

Anyway, the point is that most of those times are quite short and only two broke a year. This is misleading. I'm probably in the middle of a couple dozen books I've been working on for over a year. Me not finishing things is a problem. I started Rejected Books and Unfinished Books to officially give up on books, but many many more books am I still technically "reading."

So this year, 2016, I am going to focus on books I've already started. I've done this before, but this year the plan is to not start anything new all year long (with some exceptions to be noted later). This will almost certainly means 2016 won't be a century year because, you know, Don Quixote will take longer to read than half a dozen comics collections picked off the new shelf at the library. But that's okay. I loved the first fifty pages of Don Quixote when I read it at my cousin's house when Lady Steed and I spent a month with him in 2000. Now that I finally have my own copy, I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Don Quixote is unusual though in that it doesn't already have a bookmark in it and that I'll feel like I should restart at the beginning. Most of the books lying around I'm in the middle of aren't like that. For instance the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . at least ten short-story collections I am currently "actively" reading. I also have a few novels I've hesitated to declare either Unfinished or Rejected. Now I will have to either finish them or not. This will be a year of cleaning house.

Eleven! At least eleven short-story collections. And half as many poetry collections.

Right now I'm thinking I may make 2017 a year in which I am only allowed to read books I own but haven't opened. And maybe 2018 I can try actually rereading for a change! But we'll see. Those years are still a ways off.

Now for the exceptions to this rule:

Books I've already spiritually begun: Primarily by this I mean books in series. For instance, I will read the next two volumes of the Complete Peanuts this year and I may knock out a couple more volumes of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books as well. Anything I checked out of the library before New Years also fits in here.

Recently published books that are in my wheelhouse to review: Mormon comics, Mormon fiction. Books publishers mail me. That sort of thing.

Books I can't get out of being lent: If someone presses a book on me and I feel obliged to take it, I will read it. (Also includes books I should have returned long, long ago but never started. Mostly we're talking Wodehouse here.)

Now let's examine the first four finished books of this year, shall we?

001: MEETS CRITERIA

002: checked out of library before new year

003: checked out of library after new year but before making this resolution

004: in my review wheelhouse

(I'll get better.)



004) Mormon Shorts, Vol I by Scott Hales, finished January 23

I'll be giving this a more significant review on A Motley Vision.

two days



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003) Shirt in Heaven by Jean Valentine, finished January 18

This book felt valedictory. Valentine spends a lot of her wordcount dropping names of friends and colleagues and peers and heroes. The collection is held together in a handful of connected series, but I just read through it once. Her phrasings are a pleasure to read, but it feels a bit too me-and-my-buds for me to get too excited about rerereading to get all the details down.

maybe a couple weeks



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002) Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, finished January 14

Parts of this book are achingly beautiful. To pick an example I'll wager does not get talked about much, take Park's relationship with his father. Park's a teenager and thinks his dad is, like, the worst, and so it takes us a while to uncover how strong and healthy it is. The moment they speak before Park leaves near the end of the book is achingly wonderful. So sure this is a book about two teenagers falling in love, but it would not work as well as it does were the supporting cast not as truly drawn as they are. Another example from near the end of the book would be the revelation that the seemingly bullies aren't that way in their own minds---and they have a chance to serve as the good guys without realizing they are behaving any differently.

In short, I think this is a book about teenagers misunderstanding the world.

Which is a fun discovery because near the beginning Eleanor dismisses Romeo and Juliet as not being about. She thinks it's Shakespeare making fun of young love. And she's not wrong, but that doesn't mean she's exactly right either. Is Shakespeare making fun of the obsessiveness and everythingness of young love? Yes. But he does so in a world with real people fully drawn whose tragedies are real. So is Rowell.

Now, she's not really "making fun" of young love, but she does recognize that it is both fleeting---and something that can change you forever.

And so it is.

And so when ever her villain progresses from a bully and a jerk to an abuser to someone with a potential for kindness to someone truly evil to someone merely pathetic---you can see she knows the man. She has compassion for him. He may be a failed human, but he is a human.

And so I'm not going to worry too much about my complaints about the book. Some (such as some seeming anachronisms) aren't that important, really, to the novel as a work of art. Others get overwhelmed by the what the book does right.

My only real complaint is a personal one and I recognize it has more to do with choices I made as a teenager than anything to do with Eleanor & Park.

maybe a week maybe more maybe less but about a week



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001) Spy School by Stuart Gibbs, finished January 9

My son loves this book and lent it to me a long time ago---I think two summers ago? when he got it from the library's reading program?---but I didn't get that far before Lady Steed cleaned our room and it and another book I was reading disappeared until about a week ago. But now I've finished it!

It . . . was fine. It's a kids book. Which I don't mean exactly pejoratively, but kind of I do. It's a good introduction to spy fiction and it's twist is that it takes place at a 7-12 school for spies. It has, you know, a pretty girl and a bully and stuff.

It also has, within ten pages, this: THE PROTAGONIST HAS BEEN IN THE DARK FOR HOURS WHEN HE IS SUDDENLY ATTACKED! IN A FEW MOMENTS WHEN HIS EYES ADJUST....

So there's stuff like that.

That said, it was a fun enough book. I sure I would have loved it when I was my son's age. I'm glad he loved it. (And I'm glad he has picked up and is reading Lord of the Rings. His world is about to get much, much bigger.)

approximately seventeen months

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