Dirty 30 Update

Hello all!

I’ve read up to 30 books thus far in my quest to read 100 in a year.  I have a bunch of new reviews posted and I updated my scoreboard so you can see what I’ve read!

Check it out!

Happy reading!

The 25 Slump

Hello!  I’m excited to say that I have successfully read 25 books so far, so I’m a quarter way through the challenge!

However, I am not excited because now I’m in a slump.  I think I’ve worn myself out from all the hardcore reading because now this whole thing feels like a chore.  I can honestly say, I did not forsee this problem when creating the challenge.  I naively thought, “I’ll be fine, I LOVE TO READ!!!”

Silly me.

I’m not quitting the challenge or bringing down the number of target books.  I’m just letting you know if I don’t finish a book in a few days, I’m probably still in this slump. Is it possible to read too much?  Isn’t that what our parents and teachers wanted us to do when we were kids?  Read all the time instead of watching TV, or having lives?  But is there a point where a person can do too much reading, like a person can watch too much TV?  For the sake of this blog, I sincerely hope not.

Of course any advice would be AWESOME, but I’ll try and persevere through!

Happy reading!

Update #Whatever

Greetings bookworms!

I’m excited to say that I’ve posted a few new reviews on the site, and re-worked the scoreboard page so it’s not so obnoxious in list form.  I just finished book 24 today, which puts me two books ahead of the curve!  Needless to say, I’m pretty damn happy!  I just finished American Born Chinese the other day and Embroideries by Marijane Satrapi this morning.

Hope you enjoy the new reviews!  P.S. Some may not come in order, but I promise I’ll put the corresponding book number on it.

Happy reading!

-Kelli

The Importance of Taking Breaks

So as I continue on my perilous journey to read 100 books in one year, I’m beginning to notice how exhausting this is going to be.  What you have to understand is that I’m reading round the clock now, at least an hour a day, in order to get these books done, and I never realized how long it took to finish books.

I was always the kid in class who read ahead and finished the books first because I never found reading to be much of a challenge.  I’d just sit still for two or three hours and finish an entire book and then move on to my next task (usually watching TV).  But now that I’m reading all these books, I’m really starting to realize how tiring it is to read a book straight through, so I’m offering some advice for readers out there who may dare to take on a project like this.

The most important advice I can give is to TAKE BREAKS.  Take a lot of them and take them often.  Right now I’m reading a chapter or two and then taking a break to rest my eyes and do something else, and it’s making this whole process much more manageable.  Maybe it’ll take a little longer than usual to finish a book, but plan out the time it takes and incorporate breaks into it.  You’ll thank me when you’re not slamming your head against books you can’t concentrate on.

I’m finally feeling the effects at book 21 of how tiring this process is.  So now I have to re-group and make a new plan.  Another piece of advice I have is to not get discouraged if you can’t focus on a book you’re reading.  It takes a lot to finish different kinds of books, especially if they’re not your preferred genre.  And all books aren’t for everyone.  If you find that you’re just not clicking with a book you’re reading, I suggest you call it a good try and scrap it.  I’ve done that with a few books so far for this project and I don’t regret it.  I’d rather put down books instead of fight myself to try and finish them.  Trust me, it won’t work.

That’s it for me!  Happy reading!

Update

I’m awful, I know.  I’ve been swamped this entire break.  I’ll try to post a review by the end of this week.

By this point I’ve read 18 books

This now includes

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

The Contract with God Trilogy (which I sadly count as 1) by Will Eisner

Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn

Watchmen by Alan Moore

AND

It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences by June Casagrande

Exhausting, right?  I’m exhausted just re-writing everything.

Happy reading!

An Intro to Graphic Novels

So if you haven’t noticed, I read a fair amount of graphic novels.  My original idea for this post was to argue why I think graphic novels are still valid forms of literature, but as I searched on the inter-webs for counter arguments, I was surprised to see how many people agreed with me.  Either I was completely wrong with my assumption that people don’t think graphic novels are books, or those people do not post their feelings on the internet in a big way.  By big way I mean, posting about it often, or dedicating web pages or blogs to it.

I guess most of the complaints I’ve heard must have been offline, which makes more sense since comic books are becoming a more technologically based media.  So in case there are still any nay-sayers out there reading this, I’d like to make a few points about why I think graphic novels are worth reading.

Now I’m sure the argument, if there is one, for not reading graphic novels is that they’re just comic books with hardly any text.  Basically summed up, this picture:

In this light, graphic novels and comics are considered lower culture, and a waste of time.  But there’s a lot to look at when it comes to graphic novels.  Take for example this strip from the graphic novel Maus:

This panel has a lot of stuff going on in it.  First I’d like to point out the subject matter of Maus.  Maus is a biography of a Jewish man’s struggle during the Holocaust told by his son.  I’ve heard a lot of people complain that comics are just guys in spandex flying around and making Kablam! movements.  But comics aren’t just about superheroes any more; we’re actually starting to see some pretty serious material in the form of comics.

Second, look at how the cartoon is draw and colored in.  While it maintains its cartoon form, the way it’s drawn gives it a more adult feel.  There’s more detail and it’s darker than a child’s comic would be.  The way a comic is drawn and shaded can make a big impact on how it’s read by the audience.  So this comic would be read as a dark, serious comic rather than something silly.

Lastly, I’d like to look at the sense of time conveyed in the panels.  Time and space are very important in comics.  Panels don’t always follow a minute by minute account of what’s going on in a story.  Some panels are meant to show what’s currently happening, then the next panel can show a moment several minutes past that.  The amazing thing is that the author doesn’t always have to explain that it’s a few minutes later; the reader can infer what’s going on without explanation.  In this example, I’d like to point out the last panel on the page that’s clearly the biggest.  See how there’s no frame around it?  That says to the reader that it’s a standstill moment within the novel, so it’s something that is significant and should create an impact on the reader.  In this case, it’s the introduction of the Nazism that will soon destroy their lives.

If you’re interested in the subject of graphic novels and studying them, I highly recommend that you read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.  It’s a well written novel that talks about some of the ideas I mentioned in this post and a bunch of others I didn’t even touch.

If you’d like a sample of the book, here’s Scott McCloud on TED talks discussing the subject of comics.  Enjoy!

Happy reading!

Total books read: 13

 

Update #1

As of February 4, 2012,  I’ve read a total of 10 books.  I think that alone should earn me a nice pat on the back.   Because honestly, how many people do you know read 10 books in one month?  (Note: I started this project a little after the 1st of January, so it’s about a month into the project)  Feel free to one up me and leave a comment boasting about your reading skills or a friend’s!

Right now we’re in a period where we’re slowly, but surely, transitioning from reading things in print, to reading online or on electronic devices.  Nicholas Carr (who has a blog called rough type) wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly, called “Is Google Making Us Stupid” (I promise, that title has nothing to do with the article; it was a poor choice.   But he writes about how, with the advent of new technology, people are having more and more difficulties being able to focus on something for more than a minute or two.   He writes about about the reading we do on the internet is so different than the reading we do offline, that it’s made us more impatient and unfocused.

For example, writing has become what Guy Patrick Cunningham would call “fragmentary”, roughly meaning that the writing we do on the internet isn’t the basic block of text that we see in books.  Writing on the internet is peppered with thousands of links throughout the text which successfully temps the readers into clicking, and thus pulling them away from the original article.  Now news websites and magazines online have started publishing abstracts on their pages to give the reader a quick snippet of what the story’s about without having to read it.  Wikipedia does the exact same thing with the first paragraph that often gives a summary about what the topic is about.  The internet is saving us from having to do all the “work” that goes into reading, and giving us distracting, short blurbs about what we want to know.

So it’s no wonder people don’t read anymore.  Anyway…   The original point of this post was to write down what books I’ve read so far and what books I’m reading now for Project 100.  I plan to give my thoughts on each of the books in future posts, so look forward to that!

Happy reading!