Books Read: 2013
Fiction
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I wanted to read this before the movie came out. I confess that I had never actually read it before, although it was read to me as a bedtime story when I was little and I had a BBC radio play version on cassette that I used to listen to on long drives back when the tape deck still worked in my old car.* I also saw a stage version once at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis.** Now I have finally read it for myself. This was early in the year and I had almost forgotten I read it at all when I was making this list. I also apparently forgot much of what I’d read in it other than the basic plot outline because when I saw the movie, I was having a hard time remembering what was directly from the book and what was changed. (I also need dwarf flash cards or something, but that's another matter.)
Of course, it’s good. The only reactions of mine that I really remember are 1) the dwarves and Bilbo leave a cache of food in the woods along the lake on their way to the mountain and I’m all, dude, you need to hang that stuff from a tree because BEARS, and 2) I bet Smaug’s carcass really started to stink once spring came. That's all I have for you on The Hobbit. Yes.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
I was in the mood for a straightforward, “classic” sort of scifi and figured Clarke was a good way to go, so I picked this up while browsing at the library. I liked it a lot. As with Neutron Star, I appreciated how much of the story was all BECAUSE OF PHYSICS and whatnot. Gosh golly gee-whiz stories with warp drive and whatever are a lot of fun, but I enjoy it when we can explore how things in space actually function and stuff like what happens if you are at one end of a rotating cylinder and you drop something and so on.
I tried reading the sequel, Rama II, but gave up very early because I just didn’t have the patience and I had checked out The Kalahari Typing School for Men at the same time and was more interested in finishing that one before I had to return both to the library.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Tears of the Girraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, and The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
I was mainlining these for a while and plan to jump back into the series after I finish being distracted by A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. I had a monitoring project a few towns over and during a couple hours in which I wasn’t needed, I took a break in the town’s quaint, little downtown and went into a thrift store to look for a book to read to pass the time. I picked up the first in the series and then couldn’t put it down. These books have really short chapters that are often self-contained stories or at least episodic sections of the longer, more involved plot line that spans each book. This makes it really easy to pick one up for brief moments here and there and get through a chapter. It also makes them kind of addictive, as you are never sated after just one chapter and want to at least start the next one immediately.
Non-Fiction
The Ice Finders by Edmund Blair Bolles
I originally started this in the first half of 2011, but got distracted by re-reading the Sherlock Holmes canon and didn’t finish until after New Years of 2012. As I stated previously, the book alternates between the tale of how geologists - including Louis Agassiz - came to understand that ice ages happened, and the adventures of the Kane expedition to the northwest coast of Greenland. The latter was the most fascinating story and I eventually just wanted to read those chapters, but forced myself to keep up with Agassiz et al. Elisha Kane was trying for the North Pole, as he believed in the existence of an ice-free polar sea and figured they could pull boats over the sea ice to this open water and then row the rest of the way to the pole. They wound up stuck somewhere on the coast of Greenland (or a nearby island, I don’t remember) through winter, followed by one of the shortest, coldest summers on record during which they never stopped being ice-bound, and then through the next winter. They eventually escaped the following summer by taking two small boats and either pulling them over the ice or rowing them back south.
I can't remember reading any other non-fiction booksmore recently. Not a big year for books that aren't about solving mysteries in Botswana, I guess.
Currently Reading
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird Bishop
I’ve been meaning to read this ever since I finished Six Months in the Sandwich Islands (aka The Hawaiian Archipelago) but never got around to hunting it down a the library. I now have a Nook e-reader and was able to get an epub version of it off of Project Gutenberg. I nabbed a couple of Bird’s other titles there as well.
*I wish the box had included some information on when it was made and by whom because I couldn’t recommend it. All the orcs sounded like Daleks (the BBC has one and only one voice effect, I guess?) and the musical interludes can only be described as “courtesy of the Royal Gondorian Kazoo Ensemble.”
**Which, as I recall, left out Bard entirely and had Bilbo stab Smaug in the soft, squishy spot himself, presumably because they didn’t want to deal with figuring out how to have a flying, fire-breathing dragon get shot down on stage. I also remember that the dwarves and wood elves were cool, but the elves at Rivendell wore body suits that made them look like something out of Tron.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I wanted to read this before the movie came out. I confess that I had never actually read it before, although it was read to me as a bedtime story when I was little and I had a BBC radio play version on cassette that I used to listen to on long drives back when the tape deck still worked in my old car.* I also saw a stage version once at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis.** Now I have finally read it for myself. This was early in the year and I had almost forgotten I read it at all when I was making this list. I also apparently forgot much of what I’d read in it other than the basic plot outline because when I saw the movie, I was having a hard time remembering what was directly from the book and what was changed. (I also need dwarf flash cards or something, but that's another matter.)
Of course, it’s good. The only reactions of mine that I really remember are 1) the dwarves and Bilbo leave a cache of food in the woods along the lake on their way to the mountain and I’m all, dude, you need to hang that stuff from a tree because BEARS, and 2) I bet Smaug’s carcass really started to stink once spring came. That's all I have for you on The Hobbit. Yes.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
I was in the mood for a straightforward, “classic” sort of scifi and figured Clarke was a good way to go, so I picked this up while browsing at the library. I liked it a lot. As with Neutron Star, I appreciated how much of the story was all BECAUSE OF PHYSICS and whatnot. Gosh golly gee-whiz stories with warp drive and whatever are a lot of fun, but I enjoy it when we can explore how things in space actually function and stuff like what happens if you are at one end of a rotating cylinder and you drop something and so on.
I tried reading the sequel, Rama II, but gave up very early because I just didn’t have the patience and I had checked out The Kalahari Typing School for Men at the same time and was more interested in finishing that one before I had to return both to the library.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Tears of the Girraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, and The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
I was mainlining these for a while and plan to jump back into the series after I finish being distracted by A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. I had a monitoring project a few towns over and during a couple hours in which I wasn’t needed, I took a break in the town’s quaint, little downtown and went into a thrift store to look for a book to read to pass the time. I picked up the first in the series and then couldn’t put it down. These books have really short chapters that are often self-contained stories or at least episodic sections of the longer, more involved plot line that spans each book. This makes it really easy to pick one up for brief moments here and there and get through a chapter. It also makes them kind of addictive, as you are never sated after just one chapter and want to at least start the next one immediately.
Non-Fiction
The Ice Finders by Edmund Blair Bolles
I originally started this in the first half of 2011, but got distracted by re-reading the Sherlock Holmes canon and didn’t finish until after New Years of 2012. As I stated previously, the book alternates between the tale of how geologists - including Louis Agassiz - came to understand that ice ages happened, and the adventures of the Kane expedition to the northwest coast of Greenland. The latter was the most fascinating story and I eventually just wanted to read those chapters, but forced myself to keep up with Agassiz et al. Elisha Kane was trying for the North Pole, as he believed in the existence of an ice-free polar sea and figured they could pull boats over the sea ice to this open water and then row the rest of the way to the pole. They wound up stuck somewhere on the coast of Greenland (or a nearby island, I don’t remember) through winter, followed by one of the shortest, coldest summers on record during which they never stopped being ice-bound, and then through the next winter. They eventually escaped the following summer by taking two small boats and either pulling them over the ice or rowing them back south.
I can't remember reading any other non-fiction booksmore recently. Not a big year for books that aren't about solving mysteries in Botswana, I guess.
Currently Reading
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird Bishop
I’ve been meaning to read this ever since I finished Six Months in the Sandwich Islands (aka The Hawaiian Archipelago) but never got around to hunting it down a the library. I now have a Nook e-reader and was able to get an epub version of it off of Project Gutenberg. I nabbed a couple of Bird’s other titles there as well.
*I wish the box had included some information on when it was made and by whom because I couldn’t recommend it. All the orcs sounded like Daleks (the BBC has one and only one voice effect, I guess?) and the musical interludes can only be described as “courtesy of the Royal Gondorian Kazoo Ensemble.”
**Which, as I recall, left out Bard entirely and had Bilbo stab Smaug in the soft, squishy spot himself, presumably because they didn’t want to deal with figuring out how to have a flying, fire-breathing dragon get shot down on stage. I also remember that the dwarves and wood elves were cool, but the elves at Rivendell wore body suits that made them look like something out of Tron.