2005: The Year in Books

I was going to call it the "Year in Literature" but given what I often read, that's not necessarily the most accurate terminology to use. :)

The volume of my reading is sadly limited by the fact that I am a really slow reader. I'd read more if I had fewer limitations in this respect.

As always, I read tons of baseball stuff---including articles on espn.com and the 2005 edition of The Scouting Notebook. The scouting reports collected therein are very nice for keeping up with who is currently doing what. I also read lots of stuff pertaining to Caltech legends for the book that I am writing. I believe a couple articles have been posted verbatim as trailers somewhere on Caltech's website. I should go check, although the expressed desire was for topical ones, so I suspect that some Rose Bowl stuff and perhaps the article about the Lloyd Christmass tree are there.

In terms of novels, I'll mention one thing from December 2004---I reread the original Hitchhiker's Guide (for the first time since 1987), which I obviously enjoyed tremendously. I also reread The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I also enjoyed tremendously. I'll reread the later books in the series in a while, but I have several things before them in my queue at the moment. I also read a couple stories by Lovecraft (I'm gradually going through a a collection of his year-by-year) as well as a couple by Harlan Ellison (same deal). I finally read the second book in Weis and Hickman's Deathgate Cycle, and that book stands as the one I enjoyed most this year. I liked the first book in the series, which I read a couple years ago, but I didn't rush to read the second because I didn't get completely into it. However, once I am done with my current book (Amy Tan's new novel, which is unfortunately not as good as her other ones), I plan to go back to this series and concentrate on that for a while.

As usual, I read a bunch of D & D novels as well. Most recently, I read the new Salvatore novel (Promise of the Witch-King) that follows Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle. This is a direct sequel to a book from around five years ago that was one of the best Salvatore books in recent memory, and it didn't disappoint. It helps a lot that Jarlaxle is one of my favorite characters because I just love the idea of the foppish drow rogue with so many funky magic items that people risk blindess with their detect magic spells. I read the second and third books in the Dragonlance minotaur war series, and they were decent. I also read the final book in the War of the Spider queen series (encompassing six books). That was a fun series to read, and it's fun to read about the machinations of the drow. I really liked a couple of the old Drizzt books that took place in Menzoberranzan because they depicted how their society works really well, but Drizzt's surface adventures are much less interesting. I prefer reading about drow who are a bit more ambiguous morally. I also read the 3rd book in another drow book (this one following Liriel Baenre, who is chaotic neutral), which was originally supposed to come out several years ago. (The first two books came out in consecutive years around 1997 and 1998 or so.)

I think I read some other D & D novels as well, but they aren't coming to mind right now. I did read some rulebook type stuff (from hardbounds and from Dungeon magazine), but I'm sure there were some other novels too. As always, once I change institutions, what I read late in 04 and what I read early in 05 tends to mix together.

I was going to read the new Margaret Weis book (Amber and Ashes) in the main Dragonlance series, but it's release date of August 2005 first slipped to December 2005 and now seems to have fallen all the way to November 2006. Interestingly, it was going to be a hardcover book and now it's destined to premier as a paperback. I'm not really sure what's going on here, and I'm not convinced this book will actually be around in November 2006.

Well, that's it for this one. I'll post my 2005 movies and special New Year's resolution entry in the near future.