The fourth book this year is Swordbird, by Nancy Yi Fan. I read this because my son thought it was wonderful and has been bugging me for probably a year to read it.

The story was written by a 12-year old, and this lack of experience shows in the writing, but I have to admit that it was a little better than I expected. While the story is simple and the characters are a little shallow, it’s told well and keeps moving along well.

I think I could recommend this for 8 or 9 year old readers.

The next thing on the list is River Teeth.

Book 3 for 2001 – The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. I read this on my Kindle.

Here’s another book that I finished because 1) it’s on The List, and 2) I’m stubborn that way and don’t like to leave a book unfinished. A book has to be pretty awful for me to not finish it. And if it’s really and truly awful, sometimes I’ll finish it just to show that I can’t be beaten. 🙂

Anyways, I suspect that when he wrote this, there weren’ many books in this genre, so it gained a degree of notoriety just because of that. It’s an interesting concept, but, mired as it is in proper 19th Century English high society, it takes an awful long time to get there.

18th Century English literature is frequently *all* about high society, and so doesn’t apologize for it. It’s tedious, but honest. 19th Century English high society likes to pretend that it’s part of the modern world, but also likes to pretend that it’s better than the modern world. So it’s just tedious.

I really need to find more books worth reading, some time this year. This wasn’t it. And I’m afraid that the next one – Swordbird – which I’m reading because my son keeps bugging me to read it – isn’t going to be a big winner either. At least it will be a fast read.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to River Teeth, which I think will come immediately after that.

Book 2, 2011 – The Boy Who Dared, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

Written from the perspective of a young man during Hitler’s regime, this paints a picture of the Nazi years that I hadn’t thought of before. It’s very easy to look at Nazi Germany and condemn it, but this book lets us see the faces of the people who endured those years and didn’t support the regime, and what they endured.

S read this in school and encouraged me to read it. It’s a quick read, written for the 10-12 audience. It took me two weeks mostly because it’s been a busy two weeks. It give a very good overview of what was involved in Hitler rising to power, without the demonization of the German people that is in so many stories about this era. If anything, it errs a little far on the “I was only doing my job” attitude that was so much a part of Nuremberg, absolving many people who just did what they thought they needed to do to make it from day to day. It also implies that most people had no idea what was going on.

… which makes me wonder …

How much do we really know about what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do we, and should we, believe what we are told about what’s going on there? To what extent should we be suspicious of the extreme reaction to the rather vanilla revelations that came out of Wikileaks?

Definitely worth reading. I think we lose perspective, and have a 20-year (tops) view of history, and tend to forget more than we remember.

Inspired by my sister, I’m going to try to write something about each book I read this year.

Book 1: The Catcher In The Rye. This is, by many lists, a classic that everyone is supposed to read. I can’t imagine why. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t even bad. It wasn’t anything but a rambling stream-of-consciousness blah blah blah about several mostly-uneventful days in the life of a very unpleasant young man.

I recommend that you read it, not because I thought it worth reading, but because I endured it, and so I think you should, too.

J.D. Salinger died very recently, having spent more than 40 years pretty much in hiding. According to that article, at least, the book remained popular because it was offensive. And, as I’m sure you know, kids want to read books that are full of foul language and sexual references, mostly because it’s forbidden. I honestly can’t figure any other reason that anybody’s still reading this book all these years later.

Or maybe it’s famous for being famous. That’s certainly why I read it. And now, no doubt, some of you will read it because I’ve mentioned it. I’ve become part of the perpetuation of this drivel. Just great.

Next on the list is The Boy Who Dared, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

I just finished reading Mockingjay, the third book of the Hunger Games trilogy. These are, without much competition, the best books I’ve read this year.

They’ve been on my reading list for a long time, but I started them after S started reading them in school, and enjoyed them so much that she bought the trilogy and read ahead of where they were in class. S hasn’t been much of an avid reader in recent years, so any book that gets her this fired up about reading was worth checking out.

It’s hard to say much about them without giving away important plot elements. The storytelling is gripping. It’s all told first-person, stream of consciousness, and there’s never a moment’s rest.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Collins’ books, although S hasn’t expressed much interest in any of her other works.

These books round out a year of reading that, although not as copious as my sister’s 66, by about half, was still quite a lot for me, in comparison to recent years, when everything else seemed more important than spending a moment reading. I also noticed that I left off several of the Discworld books that I’ve been reading with my Beloved, so it’s probably 3 or 4 short.

Next on the reading list is “The Catcher In The Rye”, which I’m not particularly looking forward to, but will find a way to finish anyways. A few years ago, I came across a list of 438 books that all educated people should read. And while this list, like every other one of its kind, is pretty arbitrary, I’m going to try to make my way through it over the next ten years or so