Saturday, April 30, 2016

Wrapping Up and Boldly Going

Read of England 2016 was by any reckoning a roaring success. Not only did I finish the Lord of the Rings trilogy. but I sampled a good variety of renown English authors from mid-March 'til yesterday.



English Classics
Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

English History
Waterloo, Bernard Cornwell

Other Works Set in England:
My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson
When the Eagle Hunts, Simon Scarrow
The Memoirs of  Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
In the Days of the Comet, H.G. Wells

Other Works, by English Authors
Frodo's Journey, Joseph Pearce
Bilbo's Journey, Joseph Pearce
Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian
The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin


If I had to pick 'best of', it'd be  Jane Eyre.  The best use of Characters Wandering Around in Moors goes to Great Expectations, though, despite the competition from Jane and In the Days of the Comet.  I'd intended to read Sense and Sensibility as well, but somewhere around the time Lucy revealed that she was actually engaged to Edward, my interest in these people's love lives had more or less evaporated.  I'm not quite off the horse, though.

Getting us back into the normal swing of things, I have a few interesting science, science fiction, and history books on the way, drawing from that science TBR list and including complete surprises. I’m also starting a long-term project: the Warp Speed Discard Challenge!




See, in one corner of my bedroom is a half-sized bookcase full to the brim of Star Trek paperbacks. I have as many books  in that space as the laws of physics will allow, and as I cannae change said laws,  it’s time to deep-six the excess.  The preposterous thing about this problem is that most of these books were purchased six years ago, when I graduated uni and suddenly had spending money. Being without the usual vices, I chose to buy several boxes of books via eBay, netting several hundred for the paltry sum of $20.  In the six years since, I’ve read perhaps three from that acquisition,  reading instead newer releases, but  have been reluctant to part with any of the pile without having read them. So, I’m making myself read them, after which I can donate them guilt-free. It will take a fair bit of time, especially as I don’t intend for it to distract me from my usual enthusiasms.  The boxes included TOS, TNG, and DS9 paperbacks of the numbered variety, so they’re episodic and incapable of violating canon.  If nothing else, Star Trek’s boundless optimism will serve as a nice distraction from the grisly spectacle of  D.C. politics.

6 comments:

  1. Well done with your English reading!

    Oh, and I so relate to your Star Trek problem. I picked up several hundred books before I moved from London from a guy @ work divesting himself of paperbacks to generate a bit of much needed shelf space. I paid him in instant coffee - a good deal I thought.... except that I could probably count the coffee books I've actually read on the fingers of one hand. [lol]

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  2. What kind of books were they? Big mix?

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  3. Almost entirely SF with a bit of Fantasy thrown in. Mostly quite old - probably from the 1970's backwards in time.

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  4. Your assessment of S/T as optimistic compared to contemporary politics intrigues me. Perhaps I need to sample to S/T. That will be a brave new world of reading for me. Any recommended staring points?

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  5. @R.T. Have you seen any Trek, or have a favorite show?

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  6. Stephen, I fondly remember watching the early years of Star Trek on TV, but I do not think I watched any of the offspring and spinoffs.

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