It’s been a busy week here in NOLa, but I made quite a bit of progress through “Milkman” and while I think it’s excellently written, it doesn’t entirely click with me. I have the last 20% or so to go, and I have a few thoughts together, so it will likely be the next “long entry”.
I also started “Dead Silence”, which is a fun horror novel. I dislike the framing device, but the book overall is a good little ride. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, but I’ll admit to having been a sucker for sci-fi horror since I read the novelization of “Alien” on hand carved stone tablets outside of the cave I dwelled in as a schoolboy.
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I would guess, traditionally that you’re meant to reflect on the ‘year in reading’ or something like that on a blog. I keep a running list on twitter (@toddbert, though who knows for how long), and you can follow me on Storygraph, if you are really interested in what I read but don’t write about :
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/toddbert
The best thing I read this year was “The Waves” without question. Other favorites included Knausgaard’s “The Morning Star” (which I read before I started this blog), “Blood Meridian” and I found re-reading “Naked Lunch” as a grizzled adult to be really interesting, and was glad I did it.
I didn’t read nearly enough of the Vonnegut I had planned to.
The worst thing I read was “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”– sorry Edgar. Though honestly, “Titan” was down there as well.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Fosse’s “Septology” in the coming month/early next year– I found the first book to be a real revelation.
I read a lot this year– if I look at the reading trackers that I have used, it’s possible that I read more this year than I have in a good long while, probably since college– by the time the year’s up, it’s likely I will have read around 45 books– a couple of them at least over 800 pages. This was also a year I mostly stopped gaming, which freed up a lot of time. One thing isn’t superior to another; by the by. I’m just personally getting more rewards from reading than I am from gaming at this point.
Writing the blog has been an encouraging exercise as well, and has given me a reason to seek out and try different things. I hope to continue the journey, and if I have any regular readers, I hope you’ll continue along.
The Lithole 