Category: reading

Falling Behind: My Reading Backlog

I was recently looking at my Amazon wishlist, it has quite a few books on it, and wondering when, if ever, I’d get around to purchasing and reading them. See, I made a deal with myself, and I’ve mostly kept it, that I won’t buy anymore new books until I finish all the ones I already have on my shelves. But, it doesn’t seem to matter how many of the books I take off the shelf and read there are always unread ones sitting on the shelves waiting for their turn. If reading wasn’t so enjoyable the task might be Sisyphean…

So, I decided to sit down and see just how many books I have to read before I can get to those new ones… It took awhile but here it is:

171 books

Roughly, I didn’t count a lot of the genre fiction collections I have lying around (Dune, Stross, Stevenson, Weeks, etc…) If you want to get a glimpse at what I’m interested in go ahead and click through to the spreadsheet, I didn’t list authors but some simple googling should lead you to these books.

Anyone have any suggestions on whittling this down to something manageable?

 

Books Read in 2013

I did quite a bit of reading in the last year. I’m hoping to do just as much if not more this year!

January (6)
John Dies at the End by David Wong
Our Gleaming Bones Unrobed by Grant Loveys
Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen
Bad Machinery: The Case of Team Spirit by John Allison
Boom! by Thomas Richard Harry
This Book has Spiders in it by David Wong

February (6)
The Enlightenment Vision by Stuart Jordan
Tarzan the Centennial Celebration by Scott Tracy Griffin
The Adventurer’s Handbook by Mick Conefrey
Budget Travel through Space and Time by Albert Goldbarth
Not Buying It by Judith Levine
In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation by Melinda L. Pash

March (3)
It’s Even Worse than it Looks by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
The Girl in the Flammable Skit by Aimee Bender

April (2)
Overheated by Andrew Guzman
Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

May (4)
The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

June (2)
City of Quartz by Mike Davis
Faust Eric by Terry Pratchett

July (1)
Escape Velocity by Mark Dery

August (1)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

September (1)
Alas, Poor Yorick by Ryan North

October (12)
All Your Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
The Son I Never Had by Kevin Wolf
Make me a Sandwich by Jemma Salume
Moses and Bean: School Bus Sex Ed by Matt and Jeanie Bryan
All Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Men Who Lost America by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
Skin Deep: Orientations by Kory Bing
Please Don’t Give Up (1 of 4) by Thien Pham
The Adventures of the 19XX: Rise of the Black Faun by Paul Martinez
Murder and Magic by Randall Garrett

November (3)
Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett
Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

December (1)
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Total: 42

If I have any reading goals for 2014 it is to complete book review books in the month I get them, to read more “classic” texts, and to finally read through J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, Francesco Colonna’s  Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and maybe, maybe Spengler’s Decline of the West.

APE 2013: The Convention Hall

The Convention Hall
The Convention Hall

The Alternative Press Expo is the flipside of Comicon. Where Comicon is the convention to go to when you want to see what Marvel and DC are doing, where new movies are debuted, where cartoons and videogames are announced, and where celebrity actors with fans. APE doesn’t have any of that. APE is a place where self-publishers and alternative and independent creators can show their work off without having to compete major publishers and movie studios. I like the fact that when I walk on the floor and browse the booths I don’t recognize any of the comics or their creators! APE is a great place to see new things and meet new people.

I also want to thank my friend and comics aficionado, Nich Maragos, for being my guide every year at APE! Guy bought a ton of comics this year too. I’m not joking his bag was overflowing and he was having trouble carrying it around. I’m really looking forward to seeing his reviews over at his blog, Comic for Comics’ Sake.

Now look at all these pictures! (Not as many pictures as I should have taken…)

I thought these were hilarious
I thought these were hilarious

Continue reading “APE 2013: The Convention Hall”

Going Clear Review, 2013 Summer Giveaway

Just like every other religion… Just newer…

Congratulations to our second winner, Guildenstern, he’ll have his choice of the remaining books in this year’s giveaway! The giveaway continues this week! Lav your comments below and you’ll entered to win a book of your choice from the list. Below is another short review for one of the books in the giveaway, Going Clear. This review originally appeared in the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Review.

Lawrence Wright, a New Yorker staff writer best known for his study of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, The Looming Tower, has just published his latest book, Going Clear. If you thought his previous work was daring and provocative Going Clear is going to shock you. Going Clear is a detailed, exhaustive history of America’s youngest homegrown religion, Scientology, and its founder,science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Wright’s dive into the enigmatic Hubbard and the religion he created, with it’s seemingly bizarre cosmology and ecclesiastical jargon, leads him to an even more troubling subject: Religion. What is a religion, how do we decide, what does it mean to believers? As Wright attempts to answer these questions for himself and his readers he introduces his readers to the complicated and turbulent history of the Church of Scientology from the internal struggle for power after Hubbard’s death to its recruitment of Hollywood royalty, and it’s decades long fight with various branches of the United States government. Wright does not shy from the controversial aspects of Scientology, but nor does he irrationally attack the church, its leaders, or followers. He presents the information he has in a powerful narrative that is damning all on its own.

Addendum: What I found most sinister about the church of Scientology, as presented in the book, are the numerous disappearances of members to remote locations where they are kept in worse than prison like conditions… All at these members own volition?!

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