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Print Story Books I've Read This Year 2004
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By TheophileEscargot (Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:09:09 AM EST) (all tags)
Shorter list than in 2003 and 2002, since I'm working and not commuting by tube or train where I can read.

19 comics
23 SF / Fantasy
29 Non-SF fiction
21 Non-fiction


Comics
  1. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
  2. The Name of the Game by Will Eisner
  3. 'Til Death Do Us Part.
  4. Birds of Prey 2: Old Friends, New Enemies.
  5. Bruce Wayne - Murderer?.
  6. Superman / Doomsday
  7. Batgirl: Silent Running
  8. Batman/Deathblow
  9. Birds of Prey book 1.
  10. Bob the Angry Flower books
  11. Lucifer: the Divine Comedy.
  12. Preacher: Alamo: v. 9
  13. Preacher: All Hell's A'Coming
  14. Superman: End of the Century
  15. The Death of Superman.
  16. The Ring, the Arrow and the Bat,
  17. Tom Strong book 2
  18. Unicorn Jelly (vol 1)
  19. Unicorn Jelly (vol 2)
SF / Fantasy
  1. Untied Kingdom by James Lovegrove
  2. Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny
  3. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
  4. To Die in Italbar by Roger Zelazny
  5. Polystom by Adam Roberts
  6. Revelation space series by Alastair Reynolds
  7. Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds,
  8. Dracula Unbound by Brian Aldiss
  9. The Scar by China Mieville
  10. Subspace Explorers by E.E. "Doc" Smith
  11. Dying of the Light by George R.R. Martin
  12. Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
  13. The Last Coin by James Blaylock,
  14. Untied Kingdom by James Lovegrove
  15. The Human Front by Ken MacLeod
  16. Ancient Light by Mary Gentle
  17. Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
  18. Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
  19. Marrow by Robert Reed
  20. Saucer Wisdom by Rudy Rucker
  21. Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
  22. New Discworld Companion by Stephen Briggs
  23. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Non-SF fiction
  1. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
  2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  3. HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian
  4. The Horus Killings by Paul Doherty
  5. Sherlock Homes stories: by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  6. The God of Small Things. by Arundhati Roy
  7. Hey, Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland
  8. Winged Escort by Douglas Reeman,
  9. A Morbid Taste for Bones: by Ellis Peters
  10. Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
  11. Iliad by Homer
  12. Millennium People by J. G. Ballard
  13. Captains Outrageous by Joe Lansdale
  14. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro.
  15. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. by Mark Haddon
  16. The Straw Men by Michael Marshall
  17. The Last Sorcerer by Michael White
  18. Master and Commander. by Patrick O'Brian
  19. The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian
  20. The Fortune of War. by Patrick O'Brian
  21. The Unknown Shore by Patrick O'Brian
  22. The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian
  23. The Mask of Ra by Paul Doherty
  24. Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian
  25. The Man Who Risked His Partner by Stephen R. Donaldson
  26. Left Behind. by Tim F. LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
  27. A Song for Nero. by Tom Holt
  28. The Walled Orchard by Tom Holt
  29. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.
Nonfiction
  1. The Great Ideas of Philosophy by Daniel Robinson
  2. St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton'
  3. Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness by Laura J. Gurak
  4. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Classics by Peter Jones
  5. Never Leave Well Enough Alone by Raymond Loewy.
  6. Chartism by Asa Briggs
  7. The Middle East. by Bernard Lewis
  8. Introducing Ethics by Dave Robinson, Chris Garratt
  9. Pirates by David Mitchell
  10. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
  11. Watching the Detectives by Graham Nown.
  12. The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-myths of War 1861-1945 by John Terraine.
  13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict by Kirsten Schulze
  14. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
  15. Teach Yourself Ethics by Mel Thompson
  16. The Earliest English Poems by Michael Alexander
  17. No Logo by Naomi Klein
  18. More What If: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley
  19. The Joy of Work by Scott Adams
  20. A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord
  21. What If?: Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.
Unfinished
  1. White Mars by Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose,
  2. When Tigers Fight: Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-45 by Dick Wilson
  3. Dude, Where's My Country by Michael Moore
  4. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
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Number of books read?
- Too many 20%
- About right 20%
- Too few 60%

Votes: 5
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- 2003
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Books I've Read This Year 2004 | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 hidden)
I'm just counting audio books as normal books [nt] by TheophileEscargot (3.00 / 0) #1 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:19:26 AM EST

--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
Holy Amazon Ads, Batman! by Gedvondur (4.00 / 3) #2 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:19:42 AM EST
Seriously, though I wish I had the time you do to read.  I have been slogging through Churchill's history of World War Two, and I am only on the second volume.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140086129/qid=1096913918/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_10_2/026-2347534-7430053

Gahh.  Need more time to read cool books!

Gedvondur

I don't read that much by TheophileEscargot (6.00 / 1) #3 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:24:58 AM EST
Suspect I just read when other people would watch TV.

I recommend grabbing audio books and listening to them on the way to work/college/school. And if you don't commute, you must have plenty of free time anyway ;-)
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

[ Parent ]
I blame the car by ucblockhead (5.00 / 1) #10 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 07:59:26 AM EST
If you commute by train, you have a ton of time to read. Most of my reading is on the train to and from work, and I plow through 60-70 books a year.

The trouble with audiobooks is that most things don't come out on them, or if they do, they're abridged versions.
---
[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]
The only real down side to riding to work by monkeymind (3.00 / 0) #18 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 10:28:37 PM EST
The the 1.5 hours of reading time I loose each day.

[ Parent ]
Reading time by Herring (5.00 / 1) #13 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 11:55:24 AM EST
Unless you have kids.

I still buy a lot of books, but I remember the period I spent living on my own with no TV. I could read 2,000 pages in a weekend.

These days, I probably don't read much more than 50 books a year.

You can't inspire people with facts
- Small Gods

[ Parent ]
Best. Scrollwheel. Finger. Workout. EVAR. by MohammedNiyalSayeed (5.66 / 3) #4 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:25:04 AM EST

[extensive list]
-
You can build the most elegant fountain in the world, but eventually a winged rat will be using it as a drinking bowl.

<3 by DeepOmega (5.50 / 2) #5 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:28:55 AM EST
Both Mieville and Chesterton. Hardcore awesome.

ATTENTION by komet (5.00 / 1) #6 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 07:05:20 AM EST
You Sir are a god amongst men.

--
<ni> komet: You are functionally illiterate as regards trashy erotica.
China Mieville by emissary (3.00 / 0) #7 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 07:43:28 AM EST
I highly recommend The Iron Council. It's much more grabbing than The Scar, and his writing continues to improve.

"Were I not married and practicing my religion, I would be a rabid sex maniac." - nathan
Interesting by TheophileEscargot (3.00 / 0) #8 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 07:53:13 AM EST
The Guardian reviewer didn't think it was as good as The Scar... I'll keep an eye out for it.
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
[ Parent ]
I respectfully disagree by ucblockhead (5.00 / 1) #9 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 07:54:13 AM EST
The Iron Council didn't do as much for me. I mean...I liked it, but in the end I just felt like it didn't resolve much. An interesting journey that didn't really go anywhere. Maybe, given the core idea, that was the point.

I liked The Scar much more. It just felt more satisfying in the end.
---
[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

[ Parent ]
There was bad and good there. by Slothrop (5.50 / 2) #14 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 05:55:18 PM EST
I think that the biggest problem with IC was that giant catch up section on Low's life and the history of everything.  It throws off the pacing something awful, although it's likely the best section of the book.  I didn't get enough out of the first portion to care when things finally caught up, I guess.  There's some really moving and effective writing in the book, and I think that it could have been his best so far, but the overly interrupted pacing and sense of anticlimax (indefinitely postponed climax?) left it as something of an also ran in terms of the other two books in the series.

[ Parent ]
My main problem with the Scar by emissary (3.00 / 0) #19 Tue Oct 05, 2004 at 12:10:05 PM EST
Was that Bellis didn't interest me much. Cutter and Jonah were similarly boring, but I liked the sections with Ori. I also thought that Iron Council had more weirdness than The Scar, which was my other complaint about it - Mieville seemed to try to emphasive the humdrum nature of life in the Armada. A strange city made normal isn't nearly as interesting as a normal city made strange, like New Crobuzon.

"Were I not married and practicing my religion, I would be a rabid sex maniac." - nathan
[ Parent ]
wow thats a long list by alprazolam (5.00 / 1) #11 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 10:51:40 AM EST
i wonder if my list looks even half as long.

anyway, is "eats, shoots and leaves" really worth reading? i mean yea the title is funny, and its in or whatever blah blah blah but i don't really need the grammar instruction...is it actually interesting enough to read for fun?

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by TheophileEscargot (3.00 / 0) #15 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:39:32 PM EST
It's short and amusingly written: I found it an easy read. It's about punctuation specifically rather than grammar in general, so it has a certain amount of depth, including some history.
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
[ Parent ]
Wow by sien (5.00 / 1) #12 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 11:06:51 AM EST
How much do you remember of each book?

Do you review them somewhere, other than snippets here?

Also, don't you mean 'graphic novels'?

Nobody knows anything - William Goldman.
Answers by TheophileEscargot (5.00 / 1) #16 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:44:54 PM EST
Depends on the book. I'd forgotten most of "Left Behind" a couple of weeks later. I also have a terrible memory for characters' names.

No. I go into more detail on some books though.

No, that's apparently out of fashion again and "comics" is back. Originally "graphic novel" was supposed to mean something originally published as a single volume, so without the need for cliffhangers, false climaxes and fixed episode-lengths; but it ended up getting applied to any compilation.
--
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

[ Parent ]
It always surprises me.... by Tonatiuh (3.00 / 0) #17 Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 09:03:24 PM EST
.... how little non English literature Brits (and USians I guess) read.

Not meant as a criticism or anything negative, just pointing a cultural trend I have noticed.

doesn't surpise me as a Usian. by garlic (6.00 / 1) #20 Wed Oct 06, 2004 at 09:55:14 AM EST
I'd actually be surprised to hear someone say they read something foreign that wasn't already a 'classic'.


[ Parent ]
Books I've Read This Year 2004 | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 hidden)

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