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.