It’s definitely hard to read books when you have other obligations. This year I had two semesters of graduate school and the majority of the second year of Scarlett’s life. Now I know why my mother, who loved reading, would only make it through a couple books a year. Frankly I only got through this many books through a combination of reading during my lunch break and the fact that I’d rather read than watch TV most any time. (Links below go to my reviews of these books on Good Reads)

It’s December and I should have gotten all of my Kickstarter products by now. But that’s not exactly what happened. Every single one of my Kickstarters was late except the one I had the least faith and relationship with - Random Encounter’s Let Me Tell You a Story.

I Fight Dragons – Project Atma (music): Holy COW! This band - my first Kickstarter - nearly disbanded over the Kickstarter! I thought they were the surest bet. They’d self-published their first few albums and they had rented a studio and had a producer and everything. However, they clashed over the direction the producer was taking them and almost broke up.

I’m writing this in late August - by the time this post appears I should have received all of my Kickstarter goods or they should be in the mail. Interestingly, even though the Kickstarter backer cycles were spread over about a three month period, they’re all supposed to be delivering the product at around the same time - 4th quarter of this year. As of the time of this writing, this is the status of my Kickstarters:

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With this book David Sedaris is a modern day Aesop. In the same way that we use Science Fiction and Humor to allow us to discuss our condition without chafing (they’re not talking about good ole ‘merica, they’re talking about aliens!), by using animals Sedaris is able to get us to think about the way we interact with others and how we fit into society. Sure, sometimes of the time the metaphor/analogy doesn’t work perfectly as in a story that involved a breeder dog and was about infidelity. But it was still a pretty poignant story.

The God Engines by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very short book. Well, technically it’s a novella - it even says so on the jacket flap. The MSRP is $25 and I think it’s not worth all that for how short it is. However, it’s $9 for hardcover or $5 on Kindle right now and I think that’s a fair price. Because it is so short, I finished it in one day over about two hours, but that’s actually an indication of how good I found it. Last night, just before bed I planned to read 2 more pages to finish the chapter I was on. But I was very intrigued by what had just happened in the book. I didn’t want to stop reading. I look at at how many pages I had left and spent the next half hour finishing the book. Had it been a longer book I would have put it aside and gone to bed.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(warning: This whole review is full of spoilers!) When I first heard about this book I thought about it in the same way that I thought of the Battleship movie. The Red Shirt joke is a fun joke that’s been parodied endlessly. But is it enough to sustain a book? Yes, and it works because of the way that Scalzi does it. He essentially turns it into a space version of Stranger than Fiction. The characters learn quite quickly that things are a little off and that some of the individuals on their ship appear to be impervious to death. They act with a realistic amount of skepticism until too much evidence mounts for them to be able to ignore the idea that something screwy is going on.

Earlier in the year I came across an io9 article around 15 science fiction and fantasy novels that were rejected by publishers. The implication, of course, is what fools those publishers were - look at how many sales these books got and how how popular they remain today. Some of the books included The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Carrie by Stephen King, and Ha rry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J,K. Rowling. It’s a fun tale to tell ourselves. Look at all studios that could have made billions if they hadn’t passed on an aspiring writer with a little movie called Star Wars. But we’re just being tainted by Survivorship bias

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although I enjoyed Bill Bryson’s other book A Short History of Nearly Everything, I actually didn’t know that when I picked this book up. I had heard the other book as an audio book so I didn’t remember the author’s name. Also, it was nearly 10 years ago. My interest in Bryson’s book came from the media blitz he did to promote it - including NPR’s Fresh Air and, if I’m not mistaken, The Colbert Report. I put it on my TO READ list here on GoodReads and waited for a chance to read the book. That chance came when I flew to Florida for a family visit. However, now that I know it was written by him, it explains the style of the book.

Entirely separately from my recent reintroduction into the traditional comic world, I’ve been into graphic novels, as you’ve probably read on this blog.  An article I read on Cracked brought The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LoEG) back into my consciousness and then I read the [non-comic] books The Map of Time and Dracula.  So I was primed for another story that takes its literary cues from the Victorian Age.  The only other Moore books I’d read are Watchmen and The Killing Joke.  I enjoyed them both and so I looked forward to this one.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

this review originally appeared on Good Reads

Dracula is, like Frankenstein, a book that has influenced so much of our pop culture that we don’t even question that we know the facts of the book without having even read it. Before having read Dracula, I’d experienced Interview with a Vampire (book and movie), Discworld’s vampires, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Show, not movie), Vampire Hunter D OAV, From Dusk til Dawn, the Twilight Series (exposed to bits and pieces by the wife), and countless Hanna-Barberra or Saturday Morning cartoons that had vampire characters. In a lot of ways I knew about the original Dracula by what these other works of entertainment had done differently. For it seemed to be a game among authors and directors to take delight in having a scene in which one of the characters thinks he knows just how to kill or keep vampires away only to be chastised by the Vampire for believing such silly nonsense. So I set about reading Dracula, noting the differences from what we’ve come to know about Dracula.