Oh, We're Halfway There!

It's A Challenge

    So, I wrote back on July 4 a little bit about how my summer has been progressing. So what has it been like in the intervening 2 weeks? I've hit a rhythm with my reading. I'm getting through 200 pages pretty regularly. Honestly, the books that read the fastest by page count are the Michael Connelly's. Sometimes an Agatha Christie goes by pretty fast, and sometimes it's a struggle to stay awake. *cough cough The Secret of Chimneys cough cough*.  

    When I wrote for July 4th, I was having a hard time keeping up with both the reading and the blogging, but except for a little snag in one of the upcoming reads, I am not only on track, but a little bit ahead. (Knock on wood.) Having said that, it does take a lot of time, and I'm certain I am not reading these books as well as I should. 

The Blessings of the Fast Pace

    One thing I noticed while reading this quickly is a little insight into how the publishing industry has changed over time. I am now on book 9 of Agatha Christie's oeuvre and book 11 of Anne Perry's oeuvre. Both of them are still writing books that are under 300 pages, this deep into their career. In fact, I've only counted 2 Anne Perry's over 300 pages (which is approximately 75,000 words.) And several Agatha Christie's are under 220 pages, or just under 60,000 words. Whereas I am on book 22 or 23 of Michael Connelly's oeuvre, and they are all running about 400 pages. Considering I am approaching in time where Anne Perry's career overlaps with Michael Connelly's I will be able to see how the industry changed. 

    I suspect part of it is the amount of labor that went into publishing a book decreased from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. And that amount dropped pretty significantly through 1990s while the personal computer revolution took hold. With authors writing in things that would eventually become MS Word or Google Docs, and the improvements in spell check and grammar check, the writer could clean up a lot of little mistakes before it ever got to the editor. All of this saved the publisher money and let the writer be more productive. And until we get into the Kindle Revolution, things had never been better for the author, although it was getting massively hard to get picked up by anyone.

The Future

    It looks like I will be finishing up the Michael Connelly/Bosch run just at the end of this project.  I think I'll still have about 10 of his books left to read, but I'll do those another day. I keep adding instead of subtracting to my TBR list, so I think I'll work my way through those next. I will try to keep up a pace of 1 novel to read and review each week. And stay tuned, because I may or may not have an announcement coming up at the end of the summer.