2008 ROUNDUP
I know I've been promising Top 10 lists but it's not going to happen. I gave them some thought and have made out some lists in my notebook but I realized it's silly for me to do it. Why just have another post full of lists? And yes, I realize the irony of saying that in a post that's going to be a list/stats. I just need to make sure that I post actual content next year, actual thoughts about what I'm listening to and reading and so forth. Maybe that will make my lists seemed earned next year. Or not.
Anyway, I'm going to rundown my year in pop culture consumption now...
I read 48 books in 2008, meeting the goal I set at the beginning of the year. I also abandoned 7 books this year, reading of 500 pages of those books combined. It was a restless year in a lot of ways, I guess. Last year I read 44 books, so I managed to increase my total again (not so sure that will happen in 2009). I read 26 books in the first half of the year and 22 in the second. I read 10 books by Kage Baker, 3 that George R.R. Martin wrote or at least had a hand in, and 2 each by Michael Chabon, Gregory Frost, and Jeffrey Ford. There were quite a few story collections and a fair amount of non-fiction for me. I average 4 books read each month and it was a good year of reading.
I read 264 short stories in 2008. I'm sure I abandoned some stories this year but I didn't keep track of that stat this year. My high was 50 stories read in November and my low was July, when I didn't read any stories. I read 144 stories in the first half of the year and 120 in the second half. The stories came from 9 issues of Asimov's, 10 issues of F&SF, and 11 story collections. My average stories read per month was 22. Last year I read 216 stories and averaged 18 a month.
I read 83 comics in 2008, 35 of which were trades (and 10 of those were rereads). I read 62 of those in the first half of the year (24 trades) and only 21 in the second half (11 trades). It was a year when I read the entirety of Y: The Last Man and Zot! (well, close to it). I read 14 comics twice - in February and again in June (but in June it was all trades as opposed to only 1 trade and 13 singles in Feb.). I read 2 comics each in September, November, and December (and in each case, it was 2 trades). My average comics read per month was 6.92 (2.92 for trades). Last year I read 119 comics (27 trades) and average 9.92 per month (2.25 for trades).
I'd like to pause and just note the downward trend in all of my reading in the second half of the year. Not a surprise when you consider I was working 2 jobs and taking 6 credit hours from the end of August on.
I bought, downloaded, or received 89 CDs in 2008. 68 of those were downloaded and 4 of the grand total were EPs; I also downloaded 13 songs. March was the biggest month with 10 new CDs and September was the smallest with only 4 new CDs (though one was a double disc set). I got 50 CDs in the first half of the year and only 39 in the second half. My average CDs per month was 7.42. Last year I got 110 CDs and my average was 9.17.
I saw 9 movies in the theater in 2008. June was the biggest month with 3 and May was the second with 2; the rest of the time I either saw 1 or none. My average movies seen was .75. Last year I saw 14 movies in the theater and had an average of 1.17.
I guess my overall trend for 2008 was one of decreased pop culture consumption. I only increased 2 of my 5 categories over last year (books and short stories) and even those tailed off in the second half of the year. Again, it's not a surprise. I don't go into 2009 expecting things to change and I don't really have any goals for my consumption other than to enjoy what I do consume and to write about it with some depth.
Happy New Year!
Showing posts with label Gregory Frost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gregory Frost. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
COMPANY MAN #2
When I last talked books, I was planning on reading Gregory Frost's Lord Tophet, the sequel to the fantastic Shadowbridge. I decided I couldn't hold off on reading more of Kage Baker's Company series (here are my thoughts on the first 4 books) and so I've read the next 4 books in the last 19 days.
Black Projects, White Knights is the first story collection of the series and contains many of the stories I first read in Asimov's and that got me interested in Baker in the first place. We have stories about Mendoza and Joseph and Lewis among others but even more interestingly, we have a series of stories about Alec Checkerfield, who is born in the years leading up to 2355 (when the Silence descends for the operatives of the Company). The stories are interesting in their own right but once we start to realize who Alec is and his relationship with others, both mortal and immortal, who we've seen through the series...you know he is going to play a prominent role in the rest of the overall story.
The next book, The Life of the World to Come, opens with Mendoza stuck Back Way Back until a time shuttle crashlands and reveals Alec Checkerfield, who happens to look like her former lovers Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. They spend the night together and learn from each other before he leaves, promising to return. Unfortunately, he won't return before she is taken by Company operatives to Options Research, a far greater punishment than Back Way Back. Meanwhile, we meet three men who work for the Company and watch them as they design a new kind of Enforcer. Eventually, Alec (along with Nicholas and Edward) meet up with those men and the story takes it up another notch.
We step away from Alec in The Children of the Company and instead learn more about Labienus, one of the Company's Executive Facilitators and not a nice immortal at all. We see his ploys to position himself in power once the Silence arrives and how he tries to undermine his rival, Aegeus. These are seen in a series of case files and several more short stories are incorporated here, including "Son Observe the Time," which relates what happened to Budu during the San Fransicso earthquake of 1906. We also see the full story of Lewis's initial encounter with an alternate branch of humanity (which played a role in the events of The Graveyard Game). Schemes and schemes...
The Machine's Child brings us back to Alec's story, along with that of Nicholas and Edward (who know coinhabit Alec's body). They manage to rescue Mendoza from Options Research and with the help of Captain Henry Morgan, a powerful AI dedicated to Alec's survival, they nurse her back to health albeit with some gaps in her memory. They struggle against the Company of the three souls struggle against each other throughout the book, with a shocking ending. Meanwhile, we also catch up with Joseph and his ongoing restoration of Budu and the stories dovetail. In addition, we see what other operatives are facing as time creeps ever closer to the Silence.
As the series grows more complex and new elements are added to the mix, I've found myself wanting to rush through the rest of the books to see how it all turns out. I only have 2 left to go - the second story collection, Gods and Pawns, and the series finale, The Sons of Heaven. I'm going to do what I can to get them read in the near future.
When I last talked books, I was planning on reading Gregory Frost's Lord Tophet, the sequel to the fantastic Shadowbridge. I decided I couldn't hold off on reading more of Kage Baker's Company series (here are my thoughts on the first 4 books) and so I've read the next 4 books in the last 19 days.
Black Projects, White Knights is the first story collection of the series and contains many of the stories I first read in Asimov's and that got me interested in Baker in the first place. We have stories about Mendoza and Joseph and Lewis among others but even more interestingly, we have a series of stories about Alec Checkerfield, who is born in the years leading up to 2355 (when the Silence descends for the operatives of the Company). The stories are interesting in their own right but once we start to realize who Alec is and his relationship with others, both mortal and immortal, who we've seen through the series...you know he is going to play a prominent role in the rest of the overall story.
The next book, The Life of the World to Come, opens with Mendoza stuck Back Way Back until a time shuttle crashlands and reveals Alec Checkerfield, who happens to look like her former lovers Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. They spend the night together and learn from each other before he leaves, promising to return. Unfortunately, he won't return before she is taken by Company operatives to Options Research, a far greater punishment than Back Way Back. Meanwhile, we meet three men who work for the Company and watch them as they design a new kind of Enforcer. Eventually, Alec (along with Nicholas and Edward) meet up with those men and the story takes it up another notch.
We step away from Alec in The Children of the Company and instead learn more about Labienus, one of the Company's Executive Facilitators and not a nice immortal at all. We see his ploys to position himself in power once the Silence arrives and how he tries to undermine his rival, Aegeus. These are seen in a series of case files and several more short stories are incorporated here, including "Son Observe the Time," which relates what happened to Budu during the San Fransicso earthquake of 1906. We also see the full story of Lewis's initial encounter with an alternate branch of humanity (which played a role in the events of The Graveyard Game). Schemes and schemes...
The Machine's Child brings us back to Alec's story, along with that of Nicholas and Edward (who know coinhabit Alec's body). They manage to rescue Mendoza from Options Research and with the help of Captain Henry Morgan, a powerful AI dedicated to Alec's survival, they nurse her back to health albeit with some gaps in her memory. They struggle against the Company of the three souls struggle against each other throughout the book, with a shocking ending. Meanwhile, we also catch up with Joseph and his ongoing restoration of Budu and the stories dovetail. In addition, we see what other operatives are facing as time creeps ever closer to the Silence.
As the series grows more complex and new elements are added to the mix, I've found myself wanting to rush through the rest of the books to see how it all turns out. I only have 2 left to go - the second story collection, Gods and Pawns, and the series finale, The Sons of Heaven. I'm going to do what I can to get them read in the near future.
Monday, August 04, 2008
COMPANY MAN
Over the last few weeks, I've been working my way through Kage Baker's Company series. I first became aware of Baker in the pages of Asimov's, where she published a large number of Company stories starting with the Mar. 1997 issue. I really liked the stories and always meant to pick up the first novel in the series, In the Garden of Iden, but I never did. Then a few months ago, Chris Roberson posted about the series and I decided I would start on it before the end of the year.
What is the Company? It's a 24th century corporation called Dr. Zeus that has discovered time travel and the secret to immortality, both with a catch. The catch with time travel is that you can only go into the past and then back to your present time - no future. The catch with immortality is that in order to get it you also have to become a cyborg. So, Dr. Zeus goes into the past and creates a bunch of cyborgs that can work on preserving works of art and such for the future, which is how the company can get rich. Oh, you can't change the past but there's also a lot of unrecorded history and you can work in those grey areas. And only children can be made into cyborgs; the Company uses orphans.
In the Garden of Iden introduces us to Mendoza, a new recruit to Dr. Zeus in the 16th century. She is rescued from the Spanish Inquisition by Joseph, who works as a Facilitator for the Company. Upon her graduation from training, she ends up in England for her first assignment - she's a Botanist charged with saving rare plants from a garden. Mendoza is not a fan of mortals but she ends up in love with one and it does not end well at all. The struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism in the country looms large over the entire novel. It's a very good introduction to the world of the Company but things kick up a notch with the next book in the series.
Sky Coyote brings back Joseph and Mendoza as well as introduces new characters, notably Lewis. Joseph heads a team that is sent to California to preserve the culture of the Chumash. In order to do this, Joseph disguises himself as their trickster god, Coyote. It's a funny novel but also full of politics and economics and myth; we also start to learn more about the Company. Joseph's "father" was Budu, who worked as an Enforcer for the Company; the Enforcers have all been retired since they were hyrbids who came from Neanderthals or other earlier forms of humanity. We also get intimations that all is not as it seems with Dr. Zeus. What happens in 2355, when the Silence falls?
Mendoza in Hollywood finds Mendoza posted to Los Angeles in 1862, where Hollywood will end up. She's at a stagecoach in with five other operatives and her job is to investigate a temperate zone. One of her fellow operatives, Einar, is a huge movie buff and they occasionally screen film classics. In fact, one chapter has the group watching and reacting to D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. All of the cyborgs have interesting jobs or problems, one of them (Porforio) even has to deal with a member of his mortal family. More significantly, Mendoza and Einar manage to travel into the future and are sent back by Company operatives but before they are completely gone, Lewis tries to warn Mendoza about something. Soon after, Mendoza is reunited with her love from three centuries before, reincarnated in the form of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. Things do not end well.
I just finished The Graveyard Game yesterday and it is now my favorite of the books. We learn so much about the Company and have so many more questions raised. Joseph and Lewis are trying to piece together what happened to Mendoza, who has completely disappeared. Joseph also starts investigating what happened to Budu and we are introduced to players like Suleyman and Nennius and so much more. This book ends with some very interesting twists as well.
Unfortunately, my local library does not carry the entire series...only the novels. I ordered the first story collection, Black Projects, White Knights, and now have it here at home. I'll have to order the other one too in order to finish the whole series. I really want to dive into the collection but I had also requested Lord Tophet, the concluding book to Gregory Frost's Shadowbridge, which I read and loved earlier this year. It came in and is now sitting on my shelf, so I'll probably read it and then get back to the Company.
Over the last few weeks, I've been working my way through Kage Baker's Company series. I first became aware of Baker in the pages of Asimov's, where she published a large number of Company stories starting with the Mar. 1997 issue. I really liked the stories and always meant to pick up the first novel in the series, In the Garden of Iden, but I never did. Then a few months ago, Chris Roberson posted about the series and I decided I would start on it before the end of the year.
What is the Company? It's a 24th century corporation called Dr. Zeus that has discovered time travel and the secret to immortality, both with a catch. The catch with time travel is that you can only go into the past and then back to your present time - no future. The catch with immortality is that in order to get it you also have to become a cyborg. So, Dr. Zeus goes into the past and creates a bunch of cyborgs that can work on preserving works of art and such for the future, which is how the company can get rich. Oh, you can't change the past but there's also a lot of unrecorded history and you can work in those grey areas. And only children can be made into cyborgs; the Company uses orphans.
In the Garden of Iden introduces us to Mendoza, a new recruit to Dr. Zeus in the 16th century. She is rescued from the Spanish Inquisition by Joseph, who works as a Facilitator for the Company. Upon her graduation from training, she ends up in England for her first assignment - she's a Botanist charged with saving rare plants from a garden. Mendoza is not a fan of mortals but she ends up in love with one and it does not end well at all. The struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism in the country looms large over the entire novel. It's a very good introduction to the world of the Company but things kick up a notch with the next book in the series.
Sky Coyote brings back Joseph and Mendoza as well as introduces new characters, notably Lewis. Joseph heads a team that is sent to California to preserve the culture of the Chumash. In order to do this, Joseph disguises himself as their trickster god, Coyote. It's a funny novel but also full of politics and economics and myth; we also start to learn more about the Company. Joseph's "father" was Budu, who worked as an Enforcer for the Company; the Enforcers have all been retired since they were hyrbids who came from Neanderthals or other earlier forms of humanity. We also get intimations that all is not as it seems with Dr. Zeus. What happens in 2355, when the Silence falls?
Mendoza in Hollywood finds Mendoza posted to Los Angeles in 1862, where Hollywood will end up. She's at a stagecoach in with five other operatives and her job is to investigate a temperate zone. One of her fellow operatives, Einar, is a huge movie buff and they occasionally screen film classics. In fact, one chapter has the group watching and reacting to D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. All of the cyborgs have interesting jobs or problems, one of them (Porforio) even has to deal with a member of his mortal family. More significantly, Mendoza and Einar manage to travel into the future and are sent back by Company operatives but before they are completely gone, Lewis tries to warn Mendoza about something. Soon after, Mendoza is reunited with her love from three centuries before, reincarnated in the form of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. Things do not end well.
I just finished The Graveyard Game yesterday and it is now my favorite of the books. We learn so much about the Company and have so many more questions raised. Joseph and Lewis are trying to piece together what happened to Mendoza, who has completely disappeared. Joseph also starts investigating what happened to Budu and we are introduced to players like Suleyman and Nennius and so much more. This book ends with some very interesting twists as well.
Unfortunately, my local library does not carry the entire series...only the novels. I ordered the first story collection, Black Projects, White Knights, and now have it here at home. I'll have to order the other one too in order to finish the whole series. I really want to dive into the collection but I had also requested Lord Tophet, the concluding book to Gregory Frost's Shadowbridge, which I read and loved earlier this year. It came in and is now sitting on my shelf, so I'll probably read it and then get back to the Company.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
GOOD STUFF
Last night I finished reading my 9th book of the year - Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost. It's a rich fantasy novel set on a world full of endless spans of bridges, as well as islands and other land masses. The world is full of magic and darkness and gods and danger and stories, lots of stories. Stories are the business of Leodora, daughter of Bardsham, who was acclaimed as the greatest storyteller ever. She is touring the spans as Jax, collecting stories and entertaining the masses. There is mystery about her and about Diverus, a former mute who is given the gift of music from the gods. The novel is great and my only problem with it is that it continues in a second book yet to be published. Soon, please!
There was a great bit in a solid episode of The Simpsons on Sunday. Willie tells Bart he's going to write something in his journal, then proceeds to pull out a knife and starts carving his arm with "Dear Diary." Random and hilarious.
I picked up Vagabonds, the new Gary Louris solo album, the other week and I've been playing it quite a bit. It's got a bit of a 70s singer-songwriter vibe to it and is full of beautiful melodies and really good songs. He's been out on the publicity trail and you can here some sessions with him here and here.
Due to the writer's strike, we won't be getting new episodes of Flight of the Conchords for a while longer. In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with a documentary they made about their trip to SXSW in 2006. Brilliant.
Last night I finished reading my 9th book of the year - Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost. It's a rich fantasy novel set on a world full of endless spans of bridges, as well as islands and other land masses. The world is full of magic and darkness and gods and danger and stories, lots of stories. Stories are the business of Leodora, daughter of Bardsham, who was acclaimed as the greatest storyteller ever. She is touring the spans as Jax, collecting stories and entertaining the masses. There is mystery about her and about Diverus, a former mute who is given the gift of music from the gods. The novel is great and my only problem with it is that it continues in a second book yet to be published. Soon, please!
There was a great bit in a solid episode of The Simpsons on Sunday. Willie tells Bart he's going to write something in his journal, then proceeds to pull out a knife and starts carving his arm with "Dear Diary." Random and hilarious.
I picked up Vagabonds, the new Gary Louris solo album, the other week and I've been playing it quite a bit. It's got a bit of a 70s singer-songwriter vibe to it and is full of beautiful melodies and really good songs. He's been out on the publicity trail and you can here some sessions with him here and here.
Due to the writer's strike, we won't be getting new episodes of Flight of the Conchords for a while longer. In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with a documentary they made about their trip to SXSW in 2006. Brilliant.
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