Reading Score, and Other Things

Last post, over a year ago, was about how to score your reading. It's kind of tongue in cheek, kind of not. Of course scoring your reading is silly, but it's also a fun way to encourage yourself to read so I did it. I finished 2017 with 505 points, rounded, not that this means anything. My goal was to read fifty books or more, but this didn't happen because around September, I think, I dedicated all normal reading time toward editing a local author's manuscript. I don't know how much that scores, but probably more than reading. Instead, I finished with thirty-four completed entries. Here's the breakdown.

Ten entries were because they were local authors. Five were for "rounding out" my literary experience, five were in preparation for a writer's conference, and five were just for fun. Other reasons for reading a book were friend recommendations, finishing a series, and research.

Favored genre is, by far, Fantasy. If we include Urban Fantasy it gets even worse. Second place is Literary, followed by Paranormal (exclusively Adria Waters, I believe), then a scattershot of books I classified in different genres for the sake of racking up points. These include memoir, humor, mystery, and dusterpunk.

I read mostly in paperback, some ebook, and one lonely hardback. It's the best compromise between portability and retention, I suppose.

I like to own my books as well. Totals are 75% owned, 12% from the library, and 12% loaned. All authors were from the U.S. that year. I'm ditching the POC thing, as I've decided that's a racist thing to do. If we're looking at diversity of background, race can be an indicator but isn't a sure bet. Assuming a person is different than me because of race, and another is the same as me for the same reason, is lending too much credit toward skin color.

Highest scoring entry: Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen.

If I learned anything from scoring this year, it's that page count maters more than multipliers. Usually. This ranked sixth in raw page count, but it was a library paperback in a genre I hadn't read that year, so it scored more than the bigger books. I read it because she was speaking at a conference I attended later that year, and I wanted to see what she was about. She's more famous for her Rizzoli and Isles series, but I didn't want to do the series so this one worked nicely. She gets into viscera, which I enjoyed, and her medical background lends authenticity to the detail she spends on it. I was a little bothered that the leading characters are perfectly in step with modern sensibilities of morality and science, but whatever. Entertaining read, and not the most problematic I read.

Lowest: Homeschool Sex Machine by Matthew Pierce.

At a mere 84 pages, this was destined to be one of the lower scored entries, and reading it in ebook sealed it. I regret nothing, though, because reading this was genuinely one of the funniest experiences of my year.

Personal Favorite entries: Aw geeze, do I have to pick one? Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless is amazing. I read it because I met her at the conference, and my friend who was in her critique group highly recommended it. She was a first time author, but Blood was already breaking out on Amazon and I found out why. It's a mystery-thriller, a genre that gets automatically dismissed by the highbrows as "commercial" and "escapist." It is commercial, but not escapist. The character development is sublime, and the language is high, high literary. It's highly recommended. I also enjoyed local author Jill Orr's The Good Byline. Also a fist time novelist, although not writer, this one is significantly lighter than Blood but highly entertaining. If there's a middle grade boy in your life, Darby Karchut's Finn Finnegan is a sure hit. Even if he doesn't read, if he does just a little he'll find this older lady understands him in a way the big five publishers and tv shows do not. My favorite, though, might have to be Matthew Pierce's JV Superstar. More hilarious than the more attractively titled Homeschool Sex Machine, longer, and speaking to me as a veteran of homeschool evangelical purity culture, it struck a personal chord the others couldn't hope to achieve.

Personally most Disliked entries: Kevin Hearn's Hounded ranks third most disliked, followed by a tossup between Heinlein's famed Stranger in a Strange Land and newcomer Luke T. Barnett's Half-Orc Redemption, ultimately for the same reason.

To be fair, Hounded was mostly a personal preference. It's an urban fantasy, and it is highly entertaining. Talking dogs are always a fun addition, the jokes fly fast, the action is heart pounding, the universe is complex and interesting. What I didn't like was that the characters were unbelievable as anything more than vehicles for young male wish fulfillment fantasies. The protagonist is grossly overpowered, and the ladies find him irresistible. So irresistible, they cannot help but throw themselves at him, even when they are goddesses and he is mortal. He kisses one and beds two, one of them shortly after he killed her husband. While it is established that this pantheon is a little more liberal with their bodies than our Catholic rooted sensibilities allow, I find it suggests the goddesses have low standards, and I feel it demeans women as well.

Though it is a beloved sci-fi classic, I have problems with Stranger. Not only does it not age well with its treatment of women and homosexuals, it's not a coherent story. It dabbles in sci-fi, thriller, political intrigue, a road trip, but it never really figures out what it is until the end, and finally makes its point. On the way, it takes several pit stops to indulge in thinly veiled author self insert rants, some of which I actually agree with and appreciate, but it doesn't integrate seamlessly with the novel. If it were a new author submitting the manuscript and not the mighty Heinlein, the editors would have hacked those out with prejudice. Since it is Heinlein, we're supposed to marvel and swoon over how intelligent and well spoken it is? Please. It's bad writing, I don't care who it is. On the other side of the fence, Half-Orc Redemption had different problems. Some of it was just rookie mistakes. A character was made to narrate the opening events, but the author forgot to give him a realistic reason to be watching. An impersonal, omniscient narrator would have been less atmospheric, but served better in this instance. Some of the material was interesting and imaginative, but a lot of it felt like a strong ripoff of Middle-Earth. However, the damning element for both these narratives, was the preachiness. Half-Orc represents a specific kind of evangelical Christianity, Stranger advocates a humanistic approach to religion, but both are insufferable in their high-handed, superior lecturing. I am not opposed to real religious commentary in my fiction, but it'd better be justified, integral, and make sense. As it was with each, the other problems of the narratives made for a poor reflection on the message.

Other Notable Entries: I read the Mistborn series by Sanderson, and it is excellent. In non-fiction, I read Years of Infamy by Michi Weglyn, a book about the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during WWII. I also read Myron Levoy's Alan and Naomi, an excellent read and the film is almost as good. Better, in terms of the Jewish family banter. And of course, I can't get away without endorsing my favorite local authors Amanda Booloodian, for urban fantasy, Adria Waters, for YA paranormal, David P. Jacobs, for literary, and J.C. Ahren, for YA fantasy/soft sci-fi. That's the book I was editing, it's not out yet, and if I do say so it is fantastic.

Until next year!