2015 A Year of Reading in Review

This year I set out to read 50 books. I managed to read 56 books. Next year I'm going to shoot for 60. What were the best books I read this year? I started off by reading the first Harry Potter book in January and then read all 7 of them all the way through in a row for the first time. Every one of those books was amazing. I loved each and every one. I was very impressed with J.K. Rowling's storytelling abilities and of course absolutely loved the characters in her books. Plus they were very fun. Brilliant books. Other great books were The Martian by Andy Weir, The Giver, Storm Front by Jim Butcher (1st Dresden Files Book) and a creepy Supernatural Thriller/Crime Novel called Nocturnal by Scott Sigler. Oh also Looking for Alaska by John Green - literary fiction. Ooh and Jurassic Park. My first time reading that one. Lastly I just finished Lost Stars, the YA STAR WARS book yesterday and it was amazing! I loved it. 

So, scroll down from here and check out the covers for the books I read in 2015. It was quite a ride. This is the most books I've ever read in a year. Last year I set out to read 35 and read 42 books. You can read the blog post for those books and see their covers in the post called My Year in Reading. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the scroll down. A big thanks to Goodreads.com for generating these great images and for creating the Reading Challenge. I would not have read this many books had it not been for the reading challenge. I love seeing if I'm ahead or behind and seeing my meter fill up! Now to catch up on some podcasts while I wait for 2016 to start reading more books!

That's it! Hopefully there will be even more next year! Thanks for stopping by! Have a happy New Year and Happy Reading!

Reading Paper Books Is My Last Choice

image source:
http://unwrittenwordblog.blogspot.com

I just finished The Giver by Lois Lowry. It was the first time I've read a book in paper in years. I've owned the paperback for a long time and have been intending to read it for years. I grabbed it from my bookcase because my wife and I were going on a trip where we planned to lay by the pool for hours. I didn't wan't an eReader and my phone screen isn't great for reading in bright sunlight so I opted for a paperback instead of my usual reading habit of reading via eBooks and audiobooks. While reading this story in paper I probably stopped to smell the pages at least once every reading session - but I found it really frustrating that once we were back from our trip I had a really hard time finding time to read it.

I have two hours of communting a day during the week for work and during this time I listen to audiobooks. That's how I do most of my reading. Someday my circumstances might change but for now I just can't find time to read paper books. One of my good friends who also has many young children told me he's the same way and get's most of his reading done with audiobooks. 

Electronic books are great too because they're easy to chip away at in small bursts. They're always with me in my pocket on my phone. I have gotten through a few pages while waiting at appointments or while in a long line at the grocery store. It's so convenient. Here's the other thing though - I actually prefer reading eBooks on my phone to reading a paper book even when I'm lounging at home. I like to read lying down and I've got to tell you that after holding my super light weight phone up above my head and having the ease of turning a page with a tiny quick tap even small paperbacks feel clumsy and annoying. I like to read with the text very large and my screen horizontal. It gets to be so I don't even notice I'm tapping it just becomes automatic and I think I read faster this way than with a paperback, or at least it feels easier. Also having a backlit screen is so much better at night than a clunky reading light perched above my pages that I might accidently shine in my wife's eyes while adjusting my posture in bed.

Yes I love paper books and as I mentioned even the smell of them but I will always choose to read via eBooks or audiobooks when given the choice. They're on my phone so they're always just a click away. They don't take up physical space in my house. They're usually cheaper. I can buy a new one and be reading it within seconds without having to even get up. For me eBooks and audiobooks win out everytime. That said I have hundreds of paperbacks I haven't read yet so I'll keep reading paper books for years to come, but when it comes to buying new books the only time I'll be choosing to buy paper books is when I'm planning on getting them signed and putting them safely on my shelf where they won't get bent and cracked.

What about you? Have you tried eBooks or audiobooks and they're just not your cup of tea or are you a paper defector like me joining the new electronic revolution and loving it all the way? I'd love to hear your side of the story when it comes to reading. Thanks for stopping by.

Buried in Books and Loving It

These are the books I'm currently reading:

1. Decision Points by George W. Bush
2. Sunstruck by Polenth Blake
3. Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
4. The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia by Patrick Thorpe
5. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) by George R.R. Martin
6. If It's So Easy Why Isn't Everybody Doing It by Scott Welsh
7. Nocturnal by Scott Sigler
8. The Collective by Kenan Hillard
9. Jack Kane and the Statue of Liberty by Michell Plested & J.R. Murdock
10. Alive (The Generations Trilogy, #1) by Sigler, Scott

These are books I'm planning on reading this year. Let's see if I can squeeze them all in!

1. Armada by Ernest Cline
2. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
3. Dark Force Rising (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 2) by Timothy Zahn
4. The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells
5. The Drawing of the Three  (Dark Tower book II) by Stephen King
6. Finders Keepers by Stephen King
7. Revival by Stephen King
8. Mistborn: The Allow of Law by Brandon Sanderson
9. The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling
10. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Franke
11. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
12. Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

What are you reading? I can always use more books on my to-read list :)

My Year in Reading

This year I read more books than ever before! It was my first time doing the Goodreads reading challenge and I'm so glad I did! I looked to years past and saw that the most books I had ever read in a year was 27 so I set my goal to 35 books this year. As you can see below I ended up reading 41! If you see some short ones and think that doesn't count, just wander over a couple titles like "The Way of Kings" or "It" and you'll see all is in order. Way of Kings is as long as 5 normal books and It is crazy long as well. I had an excellent year of reading and I'm going to try for 50 book this year. Wish me luck! Words of Radiance, 400,000 words, is one on my to-read list for this year. :) Check out the graphic below compliments of Goodreads to see all the titles I read. If you're not already my friend on Goodreads you should be! It's easy - just click on the golden button with a brown lower case g on the upper right hand side of my website to go to my Goodreads page and become my friend. I love the site. You can see everything I've read there, how many stars out of 5 I've given the books, and many of them have reviews on them. It is from these that I get my scripts for my books reviews podcast. So thanks for stopping by and happy reading in 2015!

I Finished The Firm and We're Finishing The Year

I finished reading The Firm by John Grisham today. That makes 27 books read this year, and I'm a good way through The Wizard of Oz but I won't finish it tonight so it's twenty seven. If you look two posts back you can see a nice graphic showing all the other books I read this year thanks to Goodreads.

So resolutions and all that. My first resolution: read more than 27 books in 2014. My second resolution: publish a novel length work. This is also the first year I started narrating audiobooks. This year I narrated and produced 6 audiobooks. Most of them were very short, but one came in at over 8 hours long. Two of them even found me and offered a contract to me to narrate their books which blew me away. I auditioned for the others and many many more titles that I wasn't cast for. I feel incredibly honored for every book I was chosen to narrate. My third resolution: narrate more than six audiobooks in 2014.

Other than that I plan on writing more short stories and either podcasting them or seeing if Every Photo Tells will accept them and podcast them. That reminds me - I need to finish a story I started for them.

Image Source: Google.com

I also need to review The Firm. That will probably be the next post and the first of 2014. Anyways, I hope you all have had a great year. What are your resolutions? Reading, writing or otherwise? As always, thanks for stopping by.

Happy New Year!

I'm Reading The Firm

One thing I've noticed that I like about Grisham's writing is that his words don't get in the way. His prose is fairly vanilla but it does its job well. I think this shows great craft in his writing. You're able to just sink right into the story and get taken along for the ride. I'm really enjoying the book so far. I'm about halfway through it.

There are a couple reasons I picked up this book. One is that I want to read at least one book from all of those big authors you always see on the shelves of your grocery store. I read Dean Koontz's novel The Door to December back in September of 2011 and now I'm giving John Grisham a try. I really enjoyed Koontz novel and it's the same with Grisham. I guess that's why those guys are on the shelves of the Grocery store. Aparently I like thrillers. It might have to do with the fact that they're fantastic page turners or something. :)

Photo credit: © Lisa Waddell Buser

Another reason I was interested in reading The Firm is that my wife and I love watching legal TV shows. We have enjoyed Law & Order SVU & Criminal Intent, The Good Wife, Drop Dead Diva, Boston Legal, Damages, and my personal favorite: Suits. It's incredibly funny, has fantastic characters that interact brilliantly, and it the most beautifully shot show I've ever seen period. They know what they're doing with the camera. I linked to the show websites but many of these are on Netflix and Amazon Instant Video if you want to check them out. So yeah we love those shows and while The Firm is a bit different because it's all at the law office not in the court room I'm still really enjoying it. I'll have a review when I finish it.

Have you read John Grisham? Which of his other novels would you recommend once I'm done reading The Firm? Any other authors other than Dean Koontz who are one of those grocery store shelf guys you'd recommend I give a shot? I've never read Tom Clancy. I'm definitely going to read Michael Crichton. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these authors and any suggestions you have. Thanks for stopping by!

Books I Read This Year

*After writing this post I finished The Firm by John Grisham making 27 books for 2013.

I received an awesome email from Goodreads today showing me all the books I read this year. It comes to a grand total of 26. Actually 27 as I finished The Firm by John Grisham December 31st. Is that pretty good or not very many? I was expecting the number to be a bit bigger. I've heard a lot of people who say they read a book a week. There is one explanation however. I read a lot of very long books. Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. The Passage by Justin Cronin was pretty massive. Dune was a decent length. So I think that's part of it. Hold on, now that I look back on my Goodreads history it appears that last year I only read 16 books. Many of those were also long epics but some were fairly short. Well, if anything I'm happy I read more this year. Weird, I also read 16 books in 2011. Well, I feel better now :)

It's funny, I have read a lot of the classics of literature so now I'm trying to catch up on the classics and current works of sci-fi and fantasy because that's what I want to write. Yes, I want to write genre fiction and I haven't read much of it, well I hadn't but now I'm making my way through it. I read many classics in high school and after because I was going to be an English teacher before I decided on 3D art and multimedia instead. Also one of my best friends did end up being an English teacher so while we were in college we would read a lot of the classics. We'd start the same book on the same day, then write how many pages we read  on a white board in the kitchen to goad each other to read more. It was really fun. We would also go to a St. Vincent De Paul every Tuesday I believe because we could get books for as little as 30¢ but usually just under a dollar. We would scour the shelves for a good 20 minutes and then walk to the counter with a decent stack of books. Mostly we bought classics. They had a steady intake of books and sometimes you'd find a nice hardback or a returned almost new paperback. Sometimes even newish books. We would also always try and find a copy of Wuthering Heights and sneak it onto the other dude's stack. We both hated that novel when we had to read it over the summer for A.P. English our senior year. Back in 09' I actually reread it for who knows what reason, and ended up liking it. The characters were deplorable people, but I appreciated the book for what it was and some of the things it did. Here's the review I wrote up about it.

When I hear authors answer the question "what's the best advice you can give to aspiring authors" they usually say two things. Write a lot, and read a lot. Now I'm not reading a lot just so I can become a better writer, though I do try and learn from every book. I read because books are a passion of mine. One of my favorite things to do has always been reading books. I used to work sometimes for my grandparents. They ran a TV repair business and sold Zeniths out of their basement and when they went on vacations sometimes they needed someone to be at the house for drop offs and pick ups. There were usually only a handful of these in a day and maybe a couple phone calls. So most of the time I had an empty quiet house for hours. I would always bring a stack of books with me and I loved the fact that I was getting paid to do a massive amount of reading. In high school at lunch I could usually be found with the little acoustic guitar I kept in my locker, or a book. When I finished my work in class, I'd whip out a book and get to it.

What books have you read this year that you absolutely loved? How many books have you read this year? Are you on Goodreads? It is a fantastic way to track what you've read and review them. If you're on there and you're not already my friend, add me as a friend. Merry Christmas! Have you heard my Christmas story yet? It's right at the top of the page and it will bring you cheer! Just sayin' :) Thanks for stopping by.

Are You Rereading The Hobbit Too?

If you're rereading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit as I am, I wanted to point you towards something really cool. Kate Nepveu rereads a book and then gives you an awesome post with her thoughts for each chapter of the book. Over at Tor.com you can find some really cool posts about rereading different books. I first found out about them when I was looking for some good summaries of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series - because I've been in book 4 of that series for years and now I finally want to pick up that epic journey again an read to the end to see how Jordan and Brandon Sanderson finish it all off.

So you should definitely check out Tor's There and Back Again ... Again THE HOBBIT REREAD - especially if you don't want to reread the entire book but do want a fairly in depth look at it chapter by chapter to help you remember the book before you go to see the film in the theaters this month. I would say read the book and these awesome summaries.

Also check out the podcast Secrets of The Hobbit by the amazing podcaster Father Roderick. Yes, he is a Catholic Priest and apparently they make great podcasters!  He is so great and has a cool accent as he podcasts from the Netherlands. He also has a Secrets of Middle Earth podcast which is very good. Honestly this is one of the funnest podcasts I've listened to because he plays Lord of the Rings Online the game while recording the podcast, so he describes what he's looking at as he visits places like The Shire, and then goes into some of the history of the place and talks about characters and a lot of things from the books. It's incredible and I highly suggest you listen to that too. Here's the .mp3 of the first episode so you can hear what I'm talking about right now!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Hugh Howey's Silo Books on Top

The world of Hugh Howey's silo books may take place under ground for the most part, but right now he is on top. I was just perusing Amazon this morning and look at what I saw:

Click To View at a Larger Size

That's right - his latest book in the Silo Series, Second Shift - Order is # 1 in High Tech Science Fiction, and # 3 in Science Fiction! If you read my review of the Wool Omnibus you'll know how amazing I thought the books were. Easily the best thing I've read in a long time, maybe ever. This just gives me more proof that I have good taste when it comes to my fiction :)

Hugh Howey's Wool Series

There will be no Movie Memory guest post today. As I'm sure many of you are, I'm busy. NaNoWriMo is going on, and a lot of other transitions in my life have happened recently. I haven't been writing for NaNoWriMo because I'm sick of writing full novels and having so much wrong with them that I need to fix - so I've been studying plot structure like my life depends on it. I'm hoping to get my outline fully laid out and then try and sprint towards the end of the month to get my 50K. We'll see.

So I have something else to share with you, and though there's no fun Movie Memory guest blog post today I promise you this will be just as good if not better. I've been reading the Wool series by Hugh Howey, and it has been blowing me away. It is SO good! Here's the description from Amazon:

Thousands of them have lived underground. They've lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Or you'll get what you wish for.

It is very well written, and an amazing story that captures your imagination and intrigues you so that you have to keep reading to find out more about the world and what will happen to the characters. So you're busy right? Well that's okay - the first book in the Wool series is very short, and you can pick it up for free! As Levar Burton used to say on The Reading Rainbow, "You don't have to take my word for it." So with no cost you can now read the first book in the series that has captured me this month. Hugh wrote the first one and published it, just to get the story out of his head. Then the readers all loved it so much that they demanded more, so he wrote four more books in the series and you can now purchase them all in one place as the Wool Omnibus. I picked it up as an audio book on Audible, and I've really been enjoying it. The narrator Minnie Good does a great job with it. She's really good. The best part of all this is that there is a new book out, First Shift - Legacy, that gives you the back story of the world, explaining how it came to be - something I can't wait to read! You can also check out his website and see how far along he is in the next Silo book, so you know that even after you finish the latest installment there is still more to come. There you go guys, my early Christmas gift to you - actually it's Hugh Howey's gift to all of us. Great stories with fantastic writing. Go grab Wool Book 1 and get to reading so you can see what I'm talking about! What are you waiting for? It's free! You're welcome - and to Hugh Howey: thank you and keep writing.