Category: E-Books

Scared by the Numbers

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Since adding all of the books from Book Lust To Go to my challenge list (all 1,600+ of them) I have been wondering how much time this has added to the challenge. I was curious. How many years will it take me to finish reading 5,500+ books? Exactly how old will I be when it is all said and done?
First I needed to know how many books I have left to read. The grand total is 5026. This includes books of varying lengths – anything from graphic novels, children’s picture books to 1,000 page biographies. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

Then I needed to find out my average reading “speed.” What did I accomplish in a year’s time? On average, I read 109 books a year – give or take a poem, short story or article or two. This average of 109 books included books for fun, books for LibraryThing, and the books on the challenge list. However, here is what I found out from doing the math: if I only read challenge books from here on out it would take me 45 years to finish every book indexed in Book Lust, More Book Lust and now, Book Lust To Go. Scary. I honestly don’t think I will live that long. Frightening. Seriously.
What to do? I refuse to give up reading the books from LibraryThing’s Early Review program. And, and. And! I will not ignore the gift books I receive from family or friends. So. What happens now? I either have to face facts that I will never finish reading 5026 books in my lifetime OR be a little more selective about what takes up my time. I like option #2 better.

Here are my ideas for amendments:

  • Instead of reading 50 pages before giving up on a boring book I only read one chapter or 25 pages – whichever comes first. I’m a pretty good judge of what books will bore me to death and which ones I will “book” through (pun totally intended).
  • Of the books I have read before instead of rereading them I will install the “Odd page rule.” The odd page rule is to only read the odd pages and skip the evens. (the rule right now is if I don’t remember the plot, key characters or how it ended I have to reread the entire thing. Not happening).
  • Third and final change: the movie rights rule. If a book has been made into a movie AND the book author has had a hand in writing the screenplay AND the movie has won an Academy Award I give myself permission to watch the movie instead. I am not a movie person so I doubt this last rule will really come into play that often.

I will be in my 90s when I finally finish the challenge. People have asked me why it matters. They like to point out that Nancy Pearl didn’t read every book she recommends. She had help. People made suggestions. I get it. I don’t care what Pearl has or hasn’t read. Her reading list is not my concern. The pages MY eyes fall upon are what matter and I want to read them all. If I’m lucky.

Altered Carbon

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Morgan, Richard. Altered Carbon. New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2003.

I think this is the first book I have read that is considered cyberpunk.

In a world where you can pay off a cab driver with the swipe of your thumb, have psychosurgery to get over trauma, and go to places like Mi’s Wharfwhore Warehouse lives former UN Envoy, Takeshi Lev Kovacs. It is a world that centers on a multi-planetary society hundreds of years into the future. Earth is just one location where the plot takes place. In this futuristic environment human souls and personalities can be digitally stored and reloaded into new bodies after bodily death. The only group to not benefit from this cyber-eternity are Catholics. Since they believe in souls going to either Heaven or Hell after death they wouldn’t have anything to pass onto a new body.
To say that the plot is complicated is an understatement. Laurens Bancroft has seemingly committed suicide. All evidence points to this except Bancroft himself doesn’t believe it. He has a new body and limited memory and thinks he has been murdered. He has hired Takeshi Kovacs to solve his mystery.
This passage sums up the entire story: “You’re a lucky man, Kovacs…One hundred and eighty light years from home, wearing another man’s body on a six-week rental agreement. Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn’t touch with a riot prod” (p 45).

Something true, even in this world: “The human body is capable of quite remarkable regeneration if stored correctly” (p 243).

My favorite line in the whole book: “I thought I might die, but I hadn’t expected to be bored to death” (p 1,145).
Most profound sentence: “For a moment something ached in my, something so deep-rooted that I knew to tear it out would be to undo the essence of what held me together” (p 1,410).

This time, reading an e-book was a little more frustrating. There were a few spelling and punctuation mistakes and absolutely no copyright information whatsoever.

Author Fact: Morgan is crazy young, born in 1965.

Book Trivia: Altered Carbon won the Philip K. Dick award for best novel in 2003.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called  “Plots for Plotzing” (p 183).

October ’11 was…

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What do you get when you add a vacation to two road trips and a freak snow storm in which I lose electricity for two days? Answer – a boat load of books read in one month; so many books that I haven’t been able to review them all.

In the first week of October I went home. As past posts can tell you I like nothing more than reading on an island, especially one on the tail end of a hurricane. There is something so book-worthy about a rain soaked afternoon or two by the raging ocean…
On Monhegan I was able to read:

  • Anil’s Ghost by Michael Onjaatje (e-book),
  • Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (stolen from my childhood bookcase),
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (stolen from my sister’s childhood bookcase)
  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (another e-book) and part of
  • The Stand by Stephen King

On a road trip to New York (to see Natalie Merchant ~ more on that on the Other Side) I was able to finish

  • The Stand by Stephen King and
  • Spy Trap by Edward Packard and
  • Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

I started reading Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann when I forgot Immortality by Milan Kundera at work. I finished both those books and Last to Die by James Grippando during the freak snow storm/power outage (and to think people wanted me to come out with them because they had cable!!). As long as I candles and blankets I was in heaven.
But, probably the hardest book to get through was Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (another e-book). I started Altered Carbon the first week of October and slogged through it until October 27th. Talk about a complicated story! I am struggling with the review because the plot was so intense.

So, there it is. Nearly a dozen books for the month of October. True, four of those books were for kids (Phantom Tollbooth, Johnny Tremain, Spy Trap and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) but Altered Carbon, Last To Die and Buddenbrooks were “adult” enough to offset the kiddie stuff.

What’s in store for November? Well, considering I have no trips to Monhegan (or anywhere for that matter), Thanksgiving is this month, and we have a power back, I have no idea. 🙂

Anil’s Ghost

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Ondaatje, Michael. Anil’s Ghost. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. EPUB file.

Disclaimer: This was my first electronic book. I am trying very hard to trust that everything that was in the published hardcopy was present in the e-book version. I have to believe I didn’t miss out on something by reading this on an iPad.

Anil’s Ghost is the clever weaving of fact and fiction. In the mid-1980s Sri Lanka was in a state of civil unrest. It went beyond a north versus south conflict and involved illegal government activity. Anil’s Ghost is the fictional account set in the middle of a political and historical truth.
Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist returning to Sri Lanka after a fifteen year absence.  As part of a human rights organization her obligation to investigate and ultimately uncover the truth about ethnic and religious killings occurring during the country’s civil war. Her entire attention remains focussed on one particular skeleton she nicknames “Sailor.” His remains have been found in an ancient burial ground and yet anthropologically he is considered a contemporary.  Upon arriving in Sri Lanka she becomes paired with man she doesn’t know if she can trust. Sarath is quiet and keeps many secrets. What is amazing about Anil’s Ghost is the lush language and the intricate character development. Each chapter is dedicated to the unfolding of someone’s life, past and present. This technique brings a fullness to the storyline. In the end you feel as if every character has purpose to the plot.

Most interesting – Anil. Hands down. I don’t really understand her obsession with changing her name. She actually “buys” one of her brother’s names because he has more than one. The way she buys this name is not explicitly spelled out, but it seems ominous.

Favorite lines: “She was working with a man who was efficient in his privacy, who would never unknot himself for anyone” (p 60), “She would not step back from her fury” (p 116), and “One can die from private woes as easily as from public ones” (p 237).

Line that gave me pause: “They had both hoped for a seven-bangled night” (p 118).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Canadian Fiction” (p 51) and more interestingly from More Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “It Was a Dark and Stormy Novel” (p 129), and again in the chapter called “Sri Lanka: Exotic and Troubled (p 213).