Mr. Burke's Reading List

Amulet , by Kazu Kibuishi (2010-8) A couple of months ago, there was a Scholastic book fair at the school that I'm currently assigned to. While I wasn't officially "working" the book fair, it took place in the room I usually spent my free time in, so I did lend a hand, mostly straightening up piles. There were a number of graphic novels on one of the tables, and one of these (particularly one of the ones that had Volume One on the table) was Amulet . The cover looked interesting and a quick flip of the pages showed some great color artwork. I took a picture of the first book and made a note to look into it. Fast forward a couple weeks, and I find myself regularly in an English classroom where there is a pile of these books. Basically, almost a class set of book 1 and two copies of the rest. I spent the next couple weeks reading them, 50 minutes at a time. It wasn't until I was on book 5 that I realized that there were more than six books in the pile. (I...

Doctor Who: The Writers Tale , Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (2008) First book of the new year, and I'll count it as two because it was originally published as two books, even if the ebook collects them together. Plus, I'll only have time to read the first before the library loan expires. I only recently became aware that this book exists, and it was available at the New York Public Library website. It contains correspondence between Russel T. Davies, the Doctor Who showrunner (writer, producer, multi-hat person), and Benjamin Cook, a writer for Doctor Who Magazine , which took place from the time that Series Four was being conceived (and Series Three was to begin airing) through production of the Series Four finale, not counting the specials which came afterward. If nothing else, this book was fun for the trivia -- Note: SPOILER ALERTS for Series Four, both here and in the book . For one thing, Donna Noble was not supposed to be the Companion for the enti...

Last year, I seemed to avoid keeping track of what I was reading, giving the sparse use of the blog until the very end of December. Also, I seemed to avoid reading altogether, considering how long it took me to get through some of these entries. According to the sidebar, there were 26 entries for the entire year. Of those, three were not about specific books. On the other hand, there were a lot of graphic novels, particularly in the summer, and manga , particularly near the school library. So my book total was closer to 35. This comes with a little bit of a caveat: I counted the ROM comics as 4 graphic novels because I believe that's how they were available, even as I read 14 issues. Likewise, Clean Room , which had its review deleted by accident, and will get restored at some point, counted as 1 book, even though it was the first six comics in the series. Most of the graphic novels were similar to this. Additionally, there was at least one One Piece book in there, but I was ...