A Year in Review of Books with Drew Shine

A year in review of books with Drew:
Meet my friend Drew. I worked with him for three years atBorders before it closed. He is not a blogger but he is still a book lover likeme. He is awesome because he helps me edit my reviews before I post them, so Idon’t sound like a rambling idiot J. You should also think he is awesomebecause he got to hold a monkey, I mean how cool is that!?
Every year Drew writes a response about his reading for theyear and posts it on facebook. I was helping him edit it and I thought, “Wellwhy not ask to use this as a guest post for my blog?” It talks about books and ithas a pretty diverse selection of books. When I say diverse I mean it, he even stateshe has to defend his masculinityhehe.

I hope you enjoy this post and maybe even find out aboutsome new books to read, I know I did.

Books to read in 2011 conclusionAs 2011 draws its lastbreaths; we look over our accomplishments and our failures. I don’t do thetypical resolutions. I just make a list of books I want to read for the year. I had my list and Ididn’t really care whether I stuck to it or not. I had 12 books on the list andI read seven, with one started and then abandoned. So 7.5 out of 12, gives me a62.5%… solid. The books in noparticular order, you know what screw that; the books in chronological order byrelease date:1841 Poe- Murders in the Rue Morgue- read. Iwanted to read something by Poe this is one I had heard of so that’s why Ichose it. It was ridiculous but entertaining. 1894  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- The Parasite-read. I wanted to read Doyle’s Vampire stories ofwhich this is the first one. It was so awful I won’t read the others. Fuck thatnoise. 1943 Betty Smith- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Didn’t read.

1953 Ray Bradbury- Fahrenheit 451- Didn’t read.

1965 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -God Bless You Mr. Rosewater- Read. Iwanted to read a Vonnegut book and this definitely did not disappoint.
1983 Stephen King- Pet Sematary- Didn’t read.1995 S. P. Somtow- Vanitas- Half Read. I can’t say thisreally surprised me I put down the second book for a year and then picked it upand finished it. This is the third in the trilogy. 2010 Connie Willis- All Clear- Didn’t read. I started it in2010 when it came out but I couldn’t finish it, I thought “oh I’ll finish itthis year”… Nah.3-1-2011 PatriciaBriggs- River Marked- Read. I wasn’tsure two books ago if I’d continue this series but this continues the upswing. 6-28-2011 GailCarriger- Heartless- Read. Thisseries rocks my socks. It has great humor and style. 9-6-2011 Michele Bardsley-Must Love Lycans- Read. Allow me todefend my masculinity momentarily. I didn’t know this was a romance series whenI started it, I read the first book which became obvious that it was a romancebook but it was so enjoyable I didn’t care. I didn’t care for books 1-5, 6 and7 were still enjoyable but it was waning and this one should finish the seriesand I’m done, whether the author wants to continue it or not. 10-18-2011 ChuckPalahniuk- Damned- read. I wanted toread something by Palahniuk and when I read the flap I said “sure this’ll work.”Good read. Those were my plannedbooks. 62.5 isn’t a great percentage but whatever. I also read a boatload ofother books. Not to mention my discovery this year of Librivox.org, which isdamn near my new favorite website. This is a site that has amateur readersreading public domain stories and books for the public domain. Most of thesereaders are really good too. It was impossible for me to keep track of how manyshort stories I read on there, for example the week before Christmas I burnedsix various CDs of Christmas stories the CD with the shortest Christmas poemsand stories had 31 stories on one disk. I’m not typing all that out. F that
So in lieu of that I’llmake hardy recommendations to some stories and books that can be found onlibrivox.org. Hey it’s free to download or you can listen right on the site. Iburn to discs so I guess it costs me twenty bucks per 100 CDs which is next tonothing. Jack London- The Iron Heel- Great Reader and awesomeStory. The Author was apparently a major Commie and this is his political work.What with corporate personhood and the 99% movement this was a great one forthe year. 2BR02B-Kurt Vonnegut- One of Vonnegut’s earliest stories, since everything on the siteis public domain we’re talking from the 1930’s here. But it’s pure Vonnegut. I read…er listened to alot of Ambrose Bierce, The Strangercomes to mind, it has a beautiful quote that I put up several months ago (Iforgot it, so don’t ask me) and it’s a nice little story. I read/listened to aSolomon Kane story Red Shadows byRobert E. Howard. I like this series a lot more than his Conan stuff. He wrotea lot of Lovecraft Mythos and Solomon Kane splits the difference between ElderGods, Conan, Billy the Kid, and Sherlock Holmes. Yearof the Big Thaw by Marion Zimmer Bradley- On librivox Ithought “you know what I should do; listen to popular authors’ early works tosee if I should read their nonpublic domain stuff.” I knew of Bradley before soI tried this story. I liked it so much I downloaded and listened to…TheColors of Space by Marion Zimmer Bradley- I reallystarted liking this author and she started off as a good Sci-Fi person. This isa novel and some of the chapters (tracks) are read by some Russian persontrying to learn English. You can understand it but it’s not great the rest isawesome though. So is the story. I also listened to theEmancipation Proclamation, Some Randall Garrett, H.G. Wells, P. G. Wodehouseand many more. Great site I can’t recommend it enough for book people.Now I did also listento real professional audio books:Underthe Dome by King: So daunting 36 fricken’ CDs but its King,it holds up to the standard you’d expect. DanseMacabre, also By King was a reread and re-listen and a bigthumbs up.Holidayson Ice by Sedaris also a re-listen; thumbs up.As well as some variousHPs on audio as well…So yeah about the HPs.I am almost done with my humongous project. Again this was to read the Harry Potter series 1-7 then 7-1, thenevens then odds and various combinations so that I read them all in everypossible combination.  Then I go throughthem checking the notes and writing all the pertinent info down then… something,then …profit.
I had a lot of “ooh this is interesting make note here”, so my books are filledwith marginalia (epic word) so I want to get all the marginalia down in a worddocument and it may or may not come to anything productive. Anywho… Onwards!So the books I read;paper-book-read this year:Castlein Transylvania by Jules Verne: 6 out of 10, it waspretty meh. I read Robert E.Howard’s Collected Horror Stories and Poems. This got me into Solomon Kanebefore I did the librivox thing. He had a really good take on Vampires in onestory and a really, really good Werewolf take just made for a CG Hollywoodextravaganza. 8.5 out of 10.Bookof Tomorrow by Cecillia Ahern: Meh. 5/10, I likeher sci-fi takes most times, this one didn’t hit me though. 1636Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint:  Awesome, 8.5 to 9ish out of 10. I startedrereading the entire series this year a few months later. Dan Wells-  I Don’t Wantto Kill You- The latest in the ‘I Am Not A Serial Killer’ series it was a 7 out of 10 I’ll continue the seriesbut it better shape up it was a let down from the others.Devil’sDictionary by Ambrose Bierce- I read this as a book;it’s really not meant to be, it’s a dictionary format. 6.5/10.VampireA Go-Go by Gischler- pretty meh 6/10, it tried to becomedic and serious but failed at both.
I read the two J. K.Rowling Charity books they were enjoyable 8.5/10.Resentingthe Hero by Moira Moore- I wanted to try this series. It wasgood but I can’t see me continuing it. 6/10.Moneyballby Michael Lewis- I saw the movie preview it looked good I said “what the hellI’ll read it”, I don’t even like sports in general (and Baseball in particular)and I still really enjoyed this: 8.5.MyLife as a White Trash Zombie by Rowland- With thattitle and the cover I couldn’t pass it up. It didn’t even disappoint, and itwasn’t false advertising it was definitely white trash and zombie-ish there wasa plot device I called major bull shit on, but once that was done it stillscored an 7.5/10.GoblinQuest by Jim Hines- an Author I wanted to try for a whileit was enjoyable but not sure if I’ll continue the series. 6.8 out of 10.Werewolfby A. E. Housman- Supposedly the werewolf version like Polidori’s Vampyre was to vampire stories. TotalMeh (much like Polidori in fact) 3 out of 10.LastWerewolf by Glen Duncan. Great Modernization, Visceral,unforgiving, and good. There are not many Werewolf horror stories that are anygood. Somtow’s Moon Dance is probably the best; this might be the 21^stcentury update the genre needed. Lots of death, good amount of gore, no punchespulled. 9 out of 10.GrantvilleGazette by Eric Flint- 1632 series fan writing I thought “yuck,why would I want to read that?” It was good 7.5.GrantvilleGazette II- more and still good 7.5.OneNation Under Sex by Larry Flynt I think this might bethe read of the year for me, I was not expecting that sitting down to read it.Let me say that there is no way I take everything he says as gospel. I heartilyrecommend this book but I heartily recommend you take it with a grain of salt.He contends a lot of stuff. And his notes are there in true scholarly manner. DoI buy all of it? Nope. Do I buy some of it? Yup. Was Lincoln Gay? I’m not sureI can answer that question read it for yourself. 9.2 out of 10.MobRules By Cameron Haley- All Crime Lords in L. A. are sorcerers.Domino is the enforcer of the most powerful one and she’s about to go to war.Great concept well executed and the most cinematic book I’ve read in years. Ifthe rights aren’t bought to make this a movie someone’s not doing their job.Solid 8.SkeletonCrewby Cameron Haley- This was a sequel to the above, 7.5, still cinematic as hell.And various rereads1632, 1633, 1634 (Baltic War), Found: One Apocalypse, Slaughterhouse 5. Well, with that I thinkit was a pretty productive year, all in all. I’m not doing a list of shouldreads or goal reads for 2012 I’m gonna let it fly.  I’ll read upcoming series that I like… or Iwon’t as the case may be. I’ll keep my arbitrary list of “I should read at somepoint” books. But I’m not going to try to get it done in a year’s time.