Books Read in 2012

Look for something special in this one…

Twenty-twelve has come and gone and I have managed to read a total of 36 books, up from 21 books last year!  That’s pretty exciting to me, and although I wish I knew precisely how many pages I read I’d estimate that it was at least 8,000 pages (222 pages per book average assumed).  Then, with 250 words assumed per page (not sure how accurate this is in the slightest for the pages), that would be 2 million words in books that I read on my own with no requirements.  Of those books it looks like two were non-fiction while 34 were fiction with my beloved science fiction disproportionately represented.  Awesome! 

Highlights:  Early in the year I thoroughly enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s the Diamond Age, Charles Stross’ Accelerando, Vernor Vinge’s the Peace War and Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace.  Notably these are all repeat authors for me, having loved a book of theirs that I read previously.  Over the summer, I seem to have read a lot less than I would have hoped but I do remember enjoying Joe Haldeman’s Mindbridge for its uniqueness.  In the fall, I discovered Hugh Howey, the new author who wrote Wool and First Shift which I both highly recommend.  I also enjoyed John Dies at the End and the Atrocity Archives as horror fiction that I normally would not bother with.  In November, I notably read the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  Once the semester ended, at home and while on vacation I ripped through three great singularity books that I greatly enjoyed to cap off the year – After Life, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

Full List:  The Phoenix Exultant, the Golden Transcendence, the Peace War, the Ungoverned, Micro, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Against Peace and Freedom, Count Zero, a Princess of Mars, Ghost in the Wires, Accelerando, Forever Peace, the Hunger Games, Mocking Jay, Catching Fire, Mona Lisa Overdrive , the Diamond Age, Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Ringworld, Mindbridge, the Mote in God’s Eye, Consider Phlebas, Singularity Sky, John Dies at the End, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Wool (Omnibus 1-5), Children of the Sky, The God Delusion, First Shift, Angelmaker, the Screwfly Solution, the Atrocity Archives, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, After Life and finally the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars is the first book of Burroughs’ Barsoom series published in 1917.  Edgar Rice Burroughs is the author of Tarzan so naturally the style of this science fiction book is similar.  I was interested in reading this book focusing of John Carter after seeing commercials for Disney’s upcoming movie John Carter.

Since it was written in 1917 this book reads much more differently than most of the other science fiction I’ve read in the past.  In a lot of ways it reads kind of like a wild west book, albiet on Mars.  There isn’t really much explanation for any technology in the book which I think is typical of science fiction at the time.  A lot of the technology is described in the same way Jules Verne describes the technology he envisioned.

So while dazzling with descriptions and ideas of technology, the story is fabulous.  Burroughs is a great story teller and I’m glad to have read the book.  It was fun and easy to read and I’d recommend it to anybody looking for a classic science fiction book.