Happy Independence Day

 My Summer Reading Project, So Far

    Well, I would love for July 4th to be the middle of summer, but it just isn't. To be on pace, I need to have read/reviewed 18 books so far. I have read that many, and yesterday's review of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was my 17th review. So, I'm not off pace. But that's kind of been by hook and crook. Right now, I am reading almost a week ahead of what I'm publishing. Here's how that works. 

I check out two books from my library, when I finish reading the first one, I write up a review while I read the next. Then I request two more books from the library, and while I wait for the request to be fulfilled, I keep reading. Frequently, since I am requesting books off the shelf at my own library and they don't have to be shipped, I can pick it up the next day. Once I had four books in the house, two I am reading/reviewing, two I am about to review, I then have usually two on the waitlist. Then when I am finished with the next set of books, I go pick up my hold, drop off the two I just finished, and then I go home and request the next two on the list. Having the pipeline operating about a week in advance means that I can spend just a little bit more time writing up the reviews, and I can keep a book I finished reading, but I might want to refer back to, just a touch longer. So that's how it works. 

But it just barely works. The downside to reading the books from the library is I can't just walk across the room to double check what looks to be a continuity error in the story from a previous book. 

The upside is I am reading the books closely enough to together to get a real feel for how the novelist is working in their every day life. Even just the brief synopsis I give at the beginning of each blog post is sometimes enough to get a reference, especially since Anne Perry is taking risks by talking about morality and it's many layers and Agatha Christie, who tries an idea out on a smaller scale, and then when she's comfortable with it, will expand it out to novel length. Already, just six books into Christie's oeuvre I can see that. 

And while I love Anne Perry and appreciate Michael Connelly, it's clear that one of the reason's Agatha Christie is SO beloved is because there just so much more to say about her works. There's a reason she endures while others of her era faded away. I'm thinking of Mary Roberts Reinhart, a name I picked up on YouTube in a WWI lecture because she was a WWI war correspondent. She was called America's Agatha Christie. I haven't read Ms. Reinhart's work yet, so I cannot say how she compares, but I will. I've checked, the library system does have 1 copy of 1 book, so I will read it before this year ends. 

What I've Learned

    So to answer the first question, I'm not a speed reader. But I do think I read a touch faster than most people. I read at the pace of about 400 words per minute when I'm in the groove, that's about 100 pages an hour. A well written book, with tight sentences written as an easily understandable 5th or 6th grade reading level (the average reading level of a newspaper and therefore many books in genre fiction) just flies through my hands. Agatha Christie's work fits this to a t. And in all fairness, so does Michael Connelly's work. In fact, I read Connelly a smidge faster than Christie and I ready Anne Perry's work the slowest, but then she is my favorite author. Also, I am re-reading most of the Christies and all of the Perry's, but it's my first time through the Connelly's. But I cannot read at that pace all of the time, so I would guess I read about 75 pages an hour on average, which is about 300 ish words per minute. 

Holy cow does this take up a BUNCH of time. The Perry's and the Connellys are all 300-450 page books. And reading 200 pages a day is a MUST if I'm to keep up. And I can't read at 400 WPM all of the time. I read more slowly when I'm tired, extremely late in the evenings. Also, I have to cram in reading everywhere. Read a short chapter before breakfast. Try to squeeze in a few pages as I wait to take my kids places, squeeze in a bit more while waiting for dinner to cook, etc. The downside is there just isn't enough time for me to do anything else. I miss my knitting, that's what you hear me saying. 

Of Library Cards

    There is no way I could read this many books in a summer without a library card. And considering that, I decided to talk about the good things my library card has brought to me this summer. What's been interesting is now that I've started looking at the condition of the library books, when they entered my library, if I can figure it out, how much money they saved me, etc, I can see things that I wouldn't have ever thought to look at before. Such as, how long my particular library keeps a well loved book. What constitutes a well read book. When did we replace said book. Then, the books themselves are time capsules. Several of the older paperbacks have order forms on the last pages, which is something from my childhood that I totally forgot existed. Also, I can see the change in prices over time. That too has been interesting. A book with what the library would deem at "replacement cost" or the cost on the cover of the book when it was purchased, is not the same as what it would be if we actually replaced the book. I can document the inflation of the book as being higher than the average of the years using the US inflation calculator. This is because we were down to The Big Five publishers in the early 2000s and now down to The Big Four with the government prohibiting the mergers of the Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger late last year. We can see what the government was concerned about. So I think I will have something to say on that for the one year anniversary. 

So far, this has been a fun summer of reading, but I will need to slow down come the fall.