enormous iNCoNgrUiTieS|A Beacon of Intermittence

Some might have noticed I added a new Bookshelf feature on the sidebar. On average I listen to one and read at least two books a week and I often find that I have a difficult time associating the books I’ve read to their titles a few weeks after I’ve read them — especially if they were just mediocre reads — so I asked the librarian if their system could give me list of all the books I’ve borrowed and she said only if they were returned late. So no help there.

This associative disorder is extremely obvious with series of books, like Star Wars, or with author anthologies. I think in the past I’ve actually bought the same book twice. Anyway I need a way to recall the books I’ve read. The side bar gives me a starting place until I can figure out what to do with the catalog. Maybe if I can come up with a good catalog I can start throwing away some of the boxes of dusty books in the attic.

Not that I buy books anymore; I haven’t bought a book in quite some time. The public library, dismal though it is, is a resource beyond imagination to those who like to read a lot of books. If I had to purchase every book I read it would cost a small fortune. For a fact, without the library I wouldn’t be able to read as much as I do. Couldn’t afford it.

I use the library’s online tools to see what books they have in stock so I know in general what I am going to get before I arrive, usually on the way home after work. I’ve stopped short of putting the books on hold causing the librarians to take them off the shelf and have them ready for me because I still enjoy browsing through the stacks, except for the ever-present rowdy underprivileged kids waiting in line to use the Internet. They are really starting to annoy me with their rude disruptions. Is there nothing sacred anymore. You don’t horseplay at the library, dammit. It’s hard to believe so many people don’t have the Internet at home. Some people have their priorities all messed up.

Even though I just asserted that I am a prolific reader, I acknowledge that War of Honor has been in the current book slot since I added the Bookshelf. Trust me, this an an anomaly. War of Honor is almost a thousand pages and such a tome can take up to three weeks to complete depending on the complexity of the material and whether I can get some substantial reading done during the week — meaning a couple of hours a night — which is not always possible. But in this case I’m chucking it in. I’m only two-hundred pages in and they are wearing cats as accessories. Then there is the chapter after chapter of dry political discourse. I can’t take it any more. I kept waiting for all the wonderful blurbs on the dust jacket to come true but after two-hundred pages with too much cat love I’m moving on. War of Honor is hereby added to the Hall of Shame which includes only books that are so bad I don’t finish them. The only other recent book doomed to this category is Crown of Slaves, which I just couldn’t get into. (Funny, I just Googled Crown of Slaves and I had forgotten it too was written by David Weber. Guess I am not much of a David Weber fan.)

I found some old library receipts from earlier this year on the nightstand and behind a magnet on the refrigerator. So from my recollection and from those receipts here is an incomplete list of some of the stuff I’ve read this year:

The Baroque Cycle, almost three thousand pages of fun, took me from early December the the end of January to complete the series. The holidays actually slowed my pace. Quicksilver was a blast from start to finish and while I enjoyed the entire Baroque Cycle experience, overall it probably could have been about five hundred pages less as it tended to drag a bit in the second half of The Confusion and into The System of the World. I know Stephenson would say every little bit was necessary or it wouldn’t be in there but I’m just saying. Each book definitely left me wanting to immediately start the next and I eagerly anticipate the upcoming release of Stephenson’s Anathem. I might even buy the book.

I don’t have a receipt from February so that must be the month I read several Robert Heinlein books, including Friday, For Us the Living, Methuselah’s Children, and Spider Robinson’s rendition of Variable Star. These are all all well worth reading if you like SciFi at all. Even if you don’t particularly like SciFi, they are still worth reading as Heinlein is a pioneer of hard SciFi and you need to be able to say you’ve read Heinlein when you’re hanging with book snobs.

I usually get at least one Star Wars book in every two week library cycle (shh, don’t tell the book snobs.) This is where the associative disorder really causes a problem: I can’t recall what Star Wars books I read during February and early March. Without a list, when browsing I have to read the jackets to see if I’ve already read the book. Sometimes even that isn’t definitive. But here are the Star Wars titles from the three receipts I found which includes the time period from mid-March to the end of April:

• Balance Point, The New Jedi Order, Book 6
• Tempest, Legacy of the Force, Book 3
• Sacrifice, Legacy of the Force, Book 5
• Inferno, Legacy of the Force, Book 6
  
• Survivors Quest
• Specter of the Past
• Allegiance

The receipts make no distinction as to media type so a couple of those on the list might have been audio CD’s. Star Wars on Audio CD is great for the two hour commute. A guy at work has been kind enough to rip copies of the unabridged Star Wars Prequel Trilogy: The phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith, as well as Episode IV ANew Hope. In addition to those I acquired a few from the library. After some searching I have identified Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader as being among those.

I also see T2: The Future War on the list. It was a decent read for pop sci fi and I might pick up another of the Terminator series somewhere down the line.

Well, that’s about it. The most recent stuff is on the sidebar. Everything else I’ve ever read over the past thirty years that is not in this catalog or contained in one of the dusty boxes in the attic or sitting on a bookshelf in the house is most likely lost to recall for ever. Except for the really good books; you never forget the really good books.

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