An old year-end Review for 2007

While cleaning up my hard drive, I found files where I kept track of the books I read for a given year. Someone had given me the idea (back in the 90s, I believe) to open a text file, and add the name of the book I'd read. What follows below looks like an "end of the year" post made to a bulletin board somewhere. It's past my time on Usenet. Many of these may have appeared elsewhere in this blog, if not the entire post itself. I'll post these files one per month.

It looks like 2007 was the last year that I have a file for. But that point, I was using a small notebook. Plus, I started this blog in December 2008.

2007: The Year in Review

The History of the Pelopennean War, Thucydides -- Intro, Books 1 and 2. Gave up. I'll be back

Knights of Dark Renown, Dave Gemmell -- loved it.

Asimov's Sherlockian Limericks, Isaac Asimov (1978) -- more of a chapter book, really. One limerick per adventure of Sherlock Holmes. Quick read

The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from Contemporaries, edited by Monte Beauchamp, intro by Matt Groening (1998) -- Fanboy praise from writers and artists about a guy I'd barely heard of who created comics that I never read.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (2004) -- re-read prior to the movie and the new book.

The Enjoyment of Mathematics, Hans Rademacher and Otto Toeplitz (1957) -- sucked all the "joy" out of the subject. Tedious.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling (2006) --

Mathematical Recreations, Maurice Kraitchik, (1953)

C is for Corpse, Sue Grafton (1986)

D is for Deadbeat, Sue Grafton (1987)

At this point, I was still catching up with the Harry Potter series --- it looks like I found another "reread" for my list. And decided to read the Alphabet mysteries at a rate of 2 per year, just because I didn't want to get bogged down with an entire series. (Plus, it gives you something to look forward to.) The math books may have come from the library, or they may have been tossed out from my high school's library (or by the Math Dept). The R. Crumb book, I wasn't familiar with although I had vague recollections of my older brothers reading some of his stuff when I was younger. I won that in a raffle and might've traded it away if someone had something worth trading for.

Note that in the past 14 years, I have NOT gotten back to Thucydides and it's highly unlikely that I ever will. I gave it that second chance, so many years after college, and now I've put it behind me. That said, if it turns out that the paperback is still in my closet and I one day find it, then who knows. But I wouldn't count on it when there are so many other things to read which aren't challeges and when there's little chance of me using the "History" as research for some writing project.

The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend (Gemmel)

The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend, by David Gemmell, 1994

This book is labeled The long-awaited sequel to Legend, but it is, in fact, a prequel. First Chronicles is not the first book in the series. It isn't even the second. However, if you picked up this book, there is little you would miss or would have to wonder about. In other words, you could read this before Legend, if you wanted to read them chronologically, but I wouldn't.

In fact, prior to this, I read The King Beyond the Gate, which was a sequel (or follow-up) to Legend. I was impressed by it enough that I loaned it to my brother and told him to read it now. I wanted someone to talk to about the book. He finally did -- and then turned around and bought the other three book in the series at that time. So I got to read his copies of Legend, and after rereading King, Quest for Lost Heroes, which is farther in the future, and finally Waylander, which is a the earliest in the timeline for all of these, so far, predating Druss's adventures in what are collectively known as the Drenai Saga.

Somehow I moved on to other things and put reading more David Gemmell on the back burner, which is a shame. He passed away several years ago after writing so many other things, not just in this series.

This book takes us back to when Druss was a young man, before he became a Legend. (And the plot of Legend was that he had retired from it long ago and was being called back in -- and had to live up to that status.) You meet his father and learn of his grandfather and the origin of his great axe. The book follows Druss's search for the only woman whom he has ever loved and who loves him, Rowena, after she is kidnapped by raiders along with the rest of the young woman of his village. It's not a shorty story; it's a long journey across the land and the sea and into war to find her and win her back.

It's a satisfying read. There's little magic but there are other fantasy elements, including spirit realms and demons, but the focus is on the men and women. And the axe. Don't forget about the axe.

I actually read this book before some of my earlier entries. When I was catching up, I went through the recently read entries on my e-reader, forgetting that I've had this paperback sitting on a shelf for quite some time. (True story: I started this book during the summer while lounging in the pool, but I switched to magazines which I wouldn't care if they fell into the water.)