I started 2009 with a simple ambition: read a book a week for the entire year. Now, I’ve failed miserably at this, but realised in doing so that a book a week isn’t really a very good measure (and that’s the story I’m sticking with). Happily, I also kept a record of the number of pages in each book, which makes it easier to see the quantity of reading (of books) done. The 24 books below come to just over 10,000 pages, which is 50 books with 200 pages – a count which I don’t think is too bad at all.
Books
- Moon Dust – Andrew Smith
- Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
- Hyperion – Dan Simmons
- The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons
- Endymion – Dan Simmons
- The Rise of Endymion – Dan Simmons
- Pattern Recognition – William Gibson
- The Black Angel – John Connolly
- Bad Things – Michael Marshall
- Up Till Now – William Shatner
- Live Bait – PJ Traci
- All Politics is Local – Tip O’Neill
- Black River – GM Ford
- Gone – Lisa Gardner
- Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
- A Blind Eye – GM Ford
- Lucky Man – Michael J Fox
- Into the Woods – Tana French
- Adventures in the Screen Trade – William Goldman
- Generation A – Douglas Coupland
- Everything Bad is Good for You – Steven Johnson
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
- Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein
- Quicksilver – Neal Stephenson
Still, it’d be good to hit 52 in 2010,which I’m on the way to achieving (three down so far, although it is of course a marathon and not a sprint…).
The missing data here is the amount I’m reading online though. Along with (it seems) everyone else, I’m reading more noit less, despite my ‘traditional’ sources being used less. I can’t think of a good way of tracking my online reading that wouldn’t be monumentally tedious though. And I daren’t keep track of the number of hours I sit in front of a monitor – it’s not the kind of answer anyone wants to hear.
Films
I’ve seen a lot of films this year and most of them I’ve forgotten, but here are the highlights:
- Moon (changed my opinion of Sam Rockwell)
- 2012 (turn your brain off and go with it)
- Wall-E (a masterpiece of sound design with an engaging story and more heart than 99% of the other films I’ve seen this year)
- Star Trek (possible the greatest of all re-imaginings)
- Avatar (visually stunning enough to outweigh the trite story – and it’s the return of Jim Cameron)
And yes, they’re all science fiction. I’m comfortable with it.
