Another in a series of year-end lists that no one will comment on:

Books read since July 11:

• London, Edward Rutherfurd (unfinished as of this date, and interrupted by:)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling (read in three days)
• V for Vendetta, Alan Moore (re-read)
• The Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (airport buy, from Chicago to Dublin)
• Angels and Demons Dan Brown (another easy travel buy, bought somewhere in Ireland.)
• A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa-Puffs, Chuck Closterman
• I'm A Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson (that's what, at least six books by Bryson I read this year? And yet he still didn't write my favorite book of the year.)

• Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Back, Frank Miller (in which he pisses all over the new archetypes he created with the Dark Knight Returns. Miller is fucking dead to me after this and All-Star Batman and Robin. Just accept the good you did, Frank, and stop trying to destroy all of the classic work you did in the past.
• 1602, Neil Gaiman (Marvel super-heroes in Elizabethean England. (Good, but not great.)
• Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman (A very fun read, but not quite as epic as American Gods.)
• Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman
• Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Story, Paul Whitelaw (horrible writing, only for die-hard B&S fans)
• Inkspell, Cornelia Funke (Germany's answer to J.k. Rowling delivers another blitzkreig; goddamn she is a good writer!)

• The War of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (the early drafts of the later sections of The Lord of the Rings, only for those that are interested that Eowyn died in the early drafts, and what early conceptions of Minas Tirith looked like.)
• Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis
• The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis (and yes, I read through all of the dearly beloved Chronicles of Narnia, and I have to say, they are absolute rubbish. I just can't appreciate them. If you disagree with me, then let's meet for a pint and we'll argue them properly. It doesn't mean that I dislike you; it only means we have a different opinion.)

And for the list-makers, here's my other lists of the entire year's reads:

January 1 - March 28:

• McCarthy's Bar, by Pete McCarthy;
• Long Way Round, by Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman;
• Letters, by J.R.R. Tolkien;
• Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson;
• The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby;
• The Art of the Lord of the Rings by Gary Russell

April 1 - July 1:

• The Princes of Ireland, by Edward Rutherfurd;
• The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson;
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe, Bill Bryson;
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, Bill Bryson;
• State of Fear, by Michael Crichton;
• Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell;
• Batman: Year One, by Frank Miller (reread);
• Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller;
• A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck;

The Princes of Ireland was the most enjoyable book I read all year. A long, intricate, gorgeous epic on pagan and early-Christian Ireland. Click the picture above to get info on the second part, The Rebels of Ireland, to be published next month.

It's easy to see from the list of books that I've read this year that I love good stories by an author of English/Scottish/Irish origin.

Look back at that quote by Tolkien from yesterday:

"I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English." ~On reading the Cynewulf lines about the star Earendel.

That's what I feel when I read books mentioning places with names like Rathmines, or hear a song mentioning a long-forgotten world like the 19th century railways, or hear names like Cynewulf or the Ui Fergusa. It awakenes something within me I can't explain, but it's like the siren song, or like the Pied Pieper. It calls to me, and it won't let me sleep.

I may sound dramatic, but I'm serious; within those titles lurks the thing that I've been searching for my entire life. Maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe it's just a romantic idea of a world that doesn't exist.

But sometimes I feel that when I look at the things that I love, the things that I pursue and examine, I sometimes can find secrets inside, secrets that might explain what the hell I want out of this life.




Ahhh, I'm full of shit, arent' I?