End of Year - Goal Reached.

So, it's December 31st as I write this. My blog's up to date, and I don't intend to do more than browse through my copy of Absolute Sandman 2 before midnight, which will conveniently rid me of the pesky issue of being halfway through a book when the clock strikes midnight. Final count is 102 books read, which is more or less two books a week. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

I've had a fair amount of fun doing this blog this year. At some stage I intend to go over all 102 of the books I got through, and collate some data about them to see what I can find, more or less. Book genres, and standard length of books I read, and suchlike. Patterns, if there are any, general statistics if there aren't. At a glance it looks like I had a very sci-fi/fantasy rich year, with a good smattering of books intended for younger audiences, but also a very decent helping of new authors that I hadn't tried before to mix and match with tried and true favourites. I'm pleased to see that I've tried a lot of new people this year, and even more pleased to see that so many of them have been such good reads.

I don't know yet if I'll continue this blog in 2013. I doubt that I'd manage to read another hundred books, given recent changes in lifestyle and net decreases in 'free time' due to work, friends, animals, and other worthy causes. And I do have my own personal record of all my best books, which I'll be updating some time early in the new year. This has been fun, though, and I've enjoyed setting out my thoughts about each book (even though some of them have been very overdue and somewhat rushed, it's still been a time to reflect on each story).

All the best and Happy New Year from me and mine, to you and yours. May your imagination run wild and take you into the heart of an adventure without further ado. Thanks for reading, folks.

102. Airman, by Eoin Colfer.

Airman is about Conor Broekheart, a young nobleman born in an aeronautical balloon and raised as a scientist as the world races to invent a proven method of flight. He is privileged with a progressive king and willing mentor, loving family, and ideal prospects to woo and win the princess of the islands, until treacherous underlings deprive him of mentors, family, and freedom in a few vicious strokes. Shattered, he clings to his dreams of flight to survive his time in the diamond mine prison of Little Saltee Island.

Airman is a good read by a favoured author. I've read several of the Artemis Fowl books, and a few of Eoin Colfer's other books, and I'm fairly sure I moderately enjoyed all of them. Eoin Colfer has a very straightforward manner of explaining things, and his plots are all unusual enough that they captivate the interest - helped along by his amusing portrayals of even the grimmest characters. Definitely worth a read, as a young adult or an old one.

101. Heart Shaped Box, by Joe Hill.

Had to read this one after Horns, since I enjoyed Horns so much. This is about Jude, a heavy-metal musician with a penchant for the strange and the creepy. After stumbling across an auction for a ghost for sale, and purchasing said ghost, he is shipped a suit in a heart shaped box, which is all that is advertised with a side order of hatred and cruelty. The ghost turns out to be that of his previous girlfriend's (Florida) dead stepfather, who is determined to kill them both to get revenge for how Jude changed Florida's life, and caused her death.

I didn't like this one as much as I liked Horns. It's still written very well, and the storyline is still kinked and snarled enough that you can't see from the beginning how it will end (but it's not so snarled that it's impossible to keep straight, either), but it's lacking a certain...grab...to it. I liked it, and it's a decent book, but Horns is undeniably my favourite of the two.

100. Horns, by Joe Hill.

Ig Perrish stands accused of the rape and murder of his girlfriend following a very public split. On the one-year anniversary of her death, he wakes up from a blackout drunk with horns protruding from his skull. Horns that, when seen, encourage everyone to spill their innermost secrets and ask permission to commit secret sins. As he tries to come to terms with this new identity, he finds out some startling things about Merrin's demise.

This book was very, very good. I enjoyed it immensely. If this is anything to go by, his books are definitely going to become a staple of my reading diet. His story's fairly unusual, and his characters are seen from an interesting point of view. Lee in particular is very well executed, both in form and in function. Definitely a book I recommend to anyone who likes darker fantasy (or fantasy, or good books) and I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more by this author.

99. Boy, by Roald Dahl.

Boy is an autobiographical novel of Roald Dahl's childhood, that goes through his school time, and to the start of his career with Shell in Africa. It tells a variety of amusing stories and paints an image of what schooling must have been like for him. Interspersed with the chapters are fragments of letters, photographs, and drawings.

I've read this story before, but not for a while. It's quite strange to think how different things were such a short time ago. It makes me wonder how much things will change between my school years and those of children born when I am old, if so much has changed between his and mine.

98. Absolute Sandman, volume 1/5, by Neil Gaiman.

This volume is the first of five, and collects issues 1-20 of the comic in a hardback cover, which is awesomely presented. My American friend (yes, you) suggested this to me a while back, but it took me a while to get my paws on a copy, since I wanted to read it in physical form and not off my computer screen, and thus needed to wait in a rather long waitlist to get one from my library. However, it finally arrived, and I got about halfway through before going online and purchasing copies for myself. I love stories like this - strange fantasy that's not necessarily strictly nice, odd little snippets that make you think of things from a different perspective. Sandman is very much like that, so it's a very good fit for me.

Volume one covers Dream's capture and escape from the mortal realm, introduces us to some of his sibling Endless, and some of the denizens of the Dream realm, and others. I particularly liked the story about cats dreaming of a new reality.

97. Matilda, by Roald Dahl.

Matilda seems like a book I would have absolutely loved to bits in childhood, but amusingly enough, never got around to reading until now. Although I've seen the movie, and liked that. She's a precociously intelligent child born into a family of numbskulled crooks, who teaches herself to read ridiculously early, devours books at an incredible rate, and develops telekinetic powers due to her undertaxed mind's frustration with never being able to use its full potential. These come in very handy for hijinks and mischief, although she only uses these with good reason.

I quite enjoyed finally reading this story. It's been a while since I've thought about it much, but it's one of those books that I always promised myself I'd get round to eventually. And eventually turned out to be now, since I finally had a copy near to hand, and some spare time at lunchtimes to sit down and read it.

96. The Twits, by Roald Dahl.

The Twits is about a pair of horrible people that are married, and play nasty practical jokes on one another. But it's okay, because they get their comeuppance when their circus monkeys that they are training to perform upside-down warn off all the birds they were planning to catch for their dinner, and then play the best trick of all on the Twits themselves.

Another funny little story good for some quick amusement that isn't terribly long or in depth, but would be good to offer to younger readers. I read this one mostly for the nostalgia value again, but it was still rather amusing as an adult, if more than a little nonsensical.

95. George's Marvellous Medicine, by Roald Dahl.

George's Marvellous Medicine is another childhood favourite of mine. George is left alone with his horrible grandmother, and resorts to making her a new and improved medicine, since her old medicine is clearly not helping her temper at all. He collects a variety of articles from around the house in a giant saucepan, and boils it up, before giving her some and watching in dismay as she grows taller...and taller... and taller.

Another funny and entertaining read. Roald Dahl is very good at finding light-hearted ways to deal with odd topics (especially the ending) and I especially like the fact that most of these books have pictures to go alongside the writing, even if they're little sketchy-pictures as opposed to full colour. It makes these books a nice sort of transition from picturebook reading to more grown-up reading. Definitely recommend to younger readers.

94. The Magic Finger, by Roald Dahl.

I'm not entirely sure that this should count as a 'proper' book, seeing as it was ridiculously short, but I suppose it balances out some of the monster books I've read through the rest of the year. It's about a girl with magical powers in her index finger, who is able to cast spells when she's angry - say, over the neighbours hunting ducks, for example.

This is a silly little book for kids, but it's quite amusing to read it and remember reading it as a child (I'm sure it wasn't this short back then!) Roald Dahl does his usual comic magic, and the result is easy to read and entertaining. Definitely something to introduce younger readers to.

93. The B.F.G, by Roald Dahl.

I was lucky enough to spot a box set of Roald Dahl books going relatively cheaply in a fundraiser box at my work. 15 books for $50 sounded like an excellent excuse to indulge my nostalgia, so...I did. As you'll see over the next few entries.

The BFG is about a little girl, Sophie, who is awake late in her orphanage one night, and spots a giant blowing dreams through bedroom windows. When he realises he's been spotted, he takes her away to giant country, where they find out that he's the Big Friendly Giant, as opposed to one of the other giants that like to eat people. Sophie is determined to put a stop to this after hearing about how the others go galloping off each night to gobble up people by the dozens, and enlists the help of the Queen to do so.

This was one of my favourite books in primary school. I remember sitting in the library reading it multiple times, and Roald Dahl is probably one of the authors that really got me hooked on reading from a young age. The story's bizarre enough to be funny, yet it's still set out clearly and is easy to understand. He has a great gift for involving the reader's imagination.

92. Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks. (A Culture Novel)

Use of Weapons is approximately the fourth book about the Culture that Iain M Banks has written, and it follows much in the same vein as the rest. The Culture, while seeming to be this fantastic paradise of good moral standing, seems to love to meddle with other worlds and other universes, and every so often they have to pull operatives in to help divert or clear up events that may turn into quite nasty little wars. They don't necessarily pick the best tools, however.

I was a bit ambivalent about this one, although I've really liked most of the other Culture stories I've read. The narrative was quite confusing (the story jumps around in time quite a lot, with either flashbacks or previous events explained at quiet points in the current story) and it was sometimes difficult to tell immediately when in the protagonist's life you were reading about. Aside from that, the action was quite fast-paced, but there was not a lot of background given on a lot of the places mentioned. Perhaps this was done intentionally to show how often conflicts cause the same basic problems regardless of location. Mostly the only thing that irritated me was the confusion between past and present.

91. Daughter of the Forest 3: Child of the Prophecy, by Juliet Marillier.

Child of the Prophecy is the third book in a planned trilogy that (I believe) has since expanded to contain several more books. It deals with Ciaran's daughter Fainne, and her manipulation by her wicked sorceress grandmother into bringing about chaos and despair at Sevenwaters as part of a larger plot to bring down the faerie folk for good. 

This book was much in the same vein as the other two, and reasonably enjoyable. Fainne is a bit annoying most of the time, and there are a few quite convenient events that prevent things from getting too out of hand. She's incredibly lucky in how things turn out, and it's fairly surprising that people both didn't suspect her earlier, and that her grandmother didn't use a more stringent method of controlling her. Additionally, I thought a few 'hidden' things were rather easy to spot, which ruined a little of the shock value of the ending. Overall, a decent book.

90. Daughter of the Forest 2: Son of the Shadows, by Juliet Marillier.

Second book of the series. About Sorcha's daughters and son, and the mischief the Fair Folk wreak upon their lives, after their mother's triumph over their designated occurrences. Liadan is a homebody, and wants to heal and care for her people and her village. Her self-sacrificing ways get her into trouble, and she ends up in the position to tip the balance one way or another.

I liked this one quite a lot. Not based on the fairytale anymore (well, now just loosely on parts of several, so I understand it), but it holds the same sense of mystery and excitement that the original did. Liadan is mostly intelligent and nice, although she has a few I-want-to-smack-you moments, too.

89. Kingdom Come, by Alex Ross and Mark Waid.

My nerdy American friend recommended that I read this, as I haven't read many comics but enjoyed Watchmen. It's about what happens when superheroes retire, but their successors are too weak or bigoted or just plain stupid to keep the balance.

I have to admit that I think I would have enjoyed this more, had I had a better idea of what the interpersonal relationships were between the characters. I feel like I got the story just in its broadest strokes, missing a lot of subtle meaning and layers of veiled references in favour of he-said-she-said story. It was still a pretty interesting read, but it did disappoint me a little. I thought it would be better than it was. But I also know that I wasn't able to appreciate it to the full value that it represents. So there's fault on both sides, really. Nevertheless. Interesting to see a comic where the 'good guys' aren't necessarily good.

88. Daughter of the Forest, by Juliet Marillier.

Based heavily on the fairytale about the maid that saves her brothers, cruelly transformed into the guise of swans, by sewing shirts of nettle thread, woven by hand and in silence, in order to thwart a witch's spell.

Fleshed out and expanded upon, this story closely follows the markers set down in the fairytale, but segues off into new information extrapolated from smaller elements. The baseline is all present - swans, a spell, six brothers, a beautiful youngest sister, a handsome stranger - but the extra information is all very much worthwhile also. The story evolves nicely, and the characters relate to each other well, which can be a struggle. Interesting read, and definitely enjoyed it.

87. Earthsong, by Victor Kelleher.

Two young adults are sent in a colony fleet from terraformed moons, back to a potentially inhospitable Earth, where contact has been lost with the previous human inhabitants, who did not leave with the rest. They're supposed to be the First Parents, but instead they nearly crash-land into a hostile world, left with a muddled computer and half a continent away from the rest of their supplies.

I remembered reading this book in high school, and enjoying it quite a lot, although it never my favourite book of Victor Kelleher's (That honour goes to Parkland, which I would have read instead, had my library been able to supply a copy). Reading it now, all I'm struck by is how the plot is really interesting in some ways, and really annoying in others. Their crashed computer/child-simulator is both frustrating and rather unique, and their interpersonal relationship is particularly Barbie-and-Ken-like, as if they don't get a choice in the matter. Which, I suppose, they don't. I'm left with the feeling that it could have been handled better, although the ideas behind it were excellent.

86. Song of the Lioness 4: Lioness Rampant, by Tamora Pierce.

Fourth book of the Lioness quartet, chronicling Alanna's triumphant yet hurried return to the capital. Cut off from contact during her travels, she has yet to realise what a state the city is in, and isn't specifically prepared for the showdown.

I like this book as well. It's a good end to the series, but it leaves Alanna free to be a secondary character in lots of the other series that Tamora Pierce has written - like the Protector of the Small series, and others. She occupies an interesting place, and it's good that she's such an interesting character to go there. I think she was quite a good role model to grow up with, and I hope that there are similar characters available to children reading books today.

85. Song of the Lioness 3: The Woman Who Rides Like A Man, by Tamora Pierce.

Third book in the Lioness series. Alanna's newly knighted, and newly exposed as a female before the court, right after outing the king's brother for treason, and right before killing him. She decides it would be wise to gain some perspective from a distance, and rides off on adventure, finding new companions and treasures around every corner.

I always had 1,2, and 4 of this series growing up, so this part of the story is always the bit that I'm least familiar with. I enjoyed the new characters, though, and it rounds Alanna out nicely to find out what she does after 'school', as well as during. She continues the strong-heroine theme, and she doesn't let anyone boss her around. I always liked that about Alanna, and this part of the story really emphasises those characteristics.

Hiatus.

So. I kind of maybe skipped like six weeks worth of updates. Mostly because I'm lazy, partly because I've been legitimately busy. I find myself with more social responsibilities than I usually expect, and it seems that whenever I'm at the computer, I'm always wanting to do something else rather than talk to myself about books, much as I love them. Combined with a general business causing me to read less than usual also (and no transport-reading time acting as a backup, I find that I have less to talk about, as well as less of an inclination to do so. However. I made a deal with myself, and I plan to hold me to it. The next ten or so entries are probably going to be brief, but damn it, they'll be there.