Tri - Yearly 2019 Reading Update: December through April

Here we are! First entry.

I read some wild stuff these past few months. Before I give you the rundown of my thoughts on the stuff I read, let's look at an overview and some stats. 

December was a slow month. I had just gotten out of a reading slump, brought on by the stress of school (it took me three months to finish a single book!), and was getting back into reading again for the year. I wanted to make real progress in 2019, so I needed to start slow and pick up some speed. Graphic novels are a good place for that. They can be consumed quickly (depending on the title) and keep you invested with more than just prose, but artwork as well. I read 9 books. 

After receiving some books for Christmas (and money with which to buy others) I read more in January, and managed to finish off a book I'd put down the year prior. I read 12 books. One of the standouts was Tales of the Samurai, a collection of ancient Japanese folklore like The 47 Ronin, The Wonderful Adventures of Funakoshi Jiueymon, and The Ghost of Sakura. My favorite of the tales was definitely The 47 Ronin, which is based on real history of 47 samurai taking revenge for their humiliated lord, and then committing mass suicide to uphold the idea that they had broken their vows of honorable combat.

February is a short month, and my reads dropped back down to 9 books. That being said, I was able to catch up on some of my favorite manga titles, and read my first Brandon Sanderson novel, Warbreaker, which I happened to really enjoy.

In March, I picked up speed. I had started Tokyo Ghoul: Re (the sequel series of Tokyo Ghoul) the month prior, and finished out the volumes I owned when the calendar progressed. I quickly realized I quite disliked it. I intend to see the series out, as I'm at 10 volumes (of a total of 16) and don't like parting with my collection even if I dislike the title... but the quality of the story took a massive nosedive. Despite that, I completed 16 books. 

Then April hit, and I was on a roll. I finally found the momentum of my time before college, and managed to read a whopping 40 books. As with all months there's a bit of roll over, if I start a book at the very end of a month I complete it in the next, but this month I actually went and got a library card instead of reading what I had or buying books new. This is one of the smartest things I've done all year -- I can consume stuff from the library relatively quickly, and find things I hadn't even thought of before. This goes double for anything non-fiction. When I want to read about something but don't know any specific books, the library will have something to check out. I read some comic classics, like The Dark Knight Returns, I finished out Neal Shusterman's Unbound (a short story collection set in the world of his Unwind books), and re-read several volumes of manga to refresh my memory.

All together, from December of 2018 to April of 2019, that's a whopping 86 books.

But something should be remembered.

Graphic novels seriously conflate these numbers. They're a lot less impressive if I take them out -- but I believe comics shouldn't be taken for granted. They're literature just like a novel or piece of poetry. The story is told with artwork too, which takes practice, skill, and talent just like writing does. I'm not going to do the medium a disservice by saying the volumes I read don't count.

So, that being said, here are the stats!

Novels - 15

Non-Fiction - 4

Graphic Novels - 66

Poetry - 1

Magazines - 0

Wow! It really is skewed. While not a bad thing, I can look upon the numbers now and see a need to read things from other mediums. Reading shouldn't have to fill a quota, but I'm excited to see what I learn from more magazines, poetry, and non-fiction in the future. 

Now, let's get on with the standout works. 

Novels

I haven't yet read many novels that I thought were that stellar this year, but there are a few. To start, Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone by G. S. Denning was a funny romp, parodying the titular character Sherlock Holmes by making him a host to the thoughts of a demon-ified Moriarty, and I liked it well enough. Clementine by Cherie Priest and Redshirts by John Scalzi were, however, quite forgettable. And the only Stephen King book I've read in the past few months, The Sun Dog, had a promising premise, and a terrible conclusion.

A Clash of Kings, the second novel in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, was quite fantastic, though. The artistry in his ability to worldbuild through the consequences of how specific characters are apart from one another/interact with their surroundings (especially off page) is pretty engaging. As with all multi-pov novels, some characters lag in a reader's interest, but every chapter is brimming with stakes and the guarantee that what happens won't be irrelevant. To follow, the newest book in Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, A Map of Days, has proven his ability to grow along with his characters. Important social issues (like racism and other forms of prejudice) are brought to light quite naturally, and the developments in the protagonist's love life are original and realistic. Unlike previous installments, the photographs used this time didn't make that much of an impression (either with being out of place or forced, as with all the three books in the series), and it left me with wanting more, which is far and away what a book should do when sequels are planned and coming. 

Other titles I read include Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker and The Rithmatist, which I thought were both very good -- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, a horror classic which I found to be a massive disappointment -- Kinslayer, the second book in Jay Kristoff's Lotus War trilogy, which I found a massive slog -- and It Devours! The newest novel in Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor's Welcome to Night Vale series. I liked it decidedly more than the first book -- but while I think the commentary on belief v.s. science was engaging and funny, Welcome to Night Vale as a whole relies far too heavily on a brand of humor that can quickly get stale. 

BEST: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

WORST: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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Non-Fiction

I didn't read much non-fiction. Only four titles fall within the category; Visual Reference Guides: Mythology by Philip Wilkinson and Neil Philip, Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki, Tales of the Samurai by various writers, and The Art of War by Sun Tzú.

I think the standout here goes without saying. The Art of War is the oldest piece of writing I've ever read, having been written somewhere around the 5th century B.C.E, and it presents a host of informative tips on commanding armies and rules to warfare that are broad enough to be applied to many different forms of conflict. It uses metaphor liberally, and paired with commentary from translator Lionel Giles (and various comments from other figures in China's history, like poets Du Mu and Mei Yaochen) offers a lot of knowledgeable insights on the nature of combat. That being said, I can't help but feel put off by the way war is described, even in the title. War is an evil that, while possessing many attributes of planning, communication, cooperation and the like, only ever results in more life lost than the day prior. To call it an art is a misuse of the word.

Besides that, I learned a lot about making manga from the perspective of industry giant Hirohiko Araki, mangaka of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and quite a bit about mythology from the visual reference guide. I don't know if I'll include a Worst/Best in this category in the future, but I don't think labels like that apply as readily and easily to non-fiction. And despite my issues with The Art of War's outlook on conflict, I did enjoy its knowledge regardless.

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Graphic Novels

Yikes. Where do I begin? To start with manga, which is what makes up the majority of these entries, I caught up on titles such as The Promised Neverland, The Ancient Magus Bride, Hunter x Hunter, Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Attack on Titan, and Tokyo Ghoul: Re. I started a few new series, such as Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, The Blue Eye of Horus, Black Torch, and The Rising of the Shield Hero. 

As always, Attack on Titan and The Promised Neverland continue to wow me with their complexity and, especially in Attack on Titan's case, nuance. Its character development has come a long way, it's been able to foreshadow intricately since day one, and things we would have thought are random twists have relevance and consequences unprecedented in earlier chapters. Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic is in a similar place in its story, and since it's wrapping up soon, it's fun to see how far the narrative has evolved. The Ancient Magus Bride was decent enough, but volume releases are few and far between, so it's hard to stay invested when I have to wait another seven or so months for the story to continue. 

Tokyo Ghoul: Re and The Rising of the Shield Hero, however, prove to me that you really need to learn where to invest in the manga hobby, because they are atrocious. I'm too far invested in Tokyo Ghoul (both in time and my money) to quit now, but luckily I borrowed Shield Hero from a friend after he got into it because of the currently airing anime. Both of these manga are good examples of how not to characterize or build your world, as Ghoul can be boiled down to, "This character you thought was dead! Nope! Look at all this movement! Blood! Oh, his head came off," where Shield Hero is dead set on putting the protagonist through such stupid trials that I can only scoff, all while having one-note side characters that I can only bear to look at for a few pages at a time.

I also read Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel, Abara, Batman: Haunted Knight, The Dark Knight Returns, Pokemon Adventures volumes 1 and 2, Spiral, Piper, Ultraman, among others. The Dark Knight Returns is a classic in Batman comics, and it shows; while I was a little underwhelmed when all was said and done, part four of the story, involving Batman's eventual conflict with Superman, was well illustrated and the perfect way to finish the narrative. Compare that with Piper, a retelling of an old Irish folk tale, which was astoundingly bad. The art itself was unconvincing at the best of times and laughable at the worst, with such bland panel flow that it may as well have been scribbles. The story had no subtlety and just barely a lesson about trusting others. Not even the protagonist's deafness, something that can be utilized to bring light to the difficulty of living with a disability (and thus used to humanize her) is treated with real sincerity.

BEST CONTINUING TITLE: The Promised Neverland by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu
STANDOUT VOLUME: Attack on Titan vol 27 (for outstanding narrative developments)
BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
WORST CONTINUING TITLE: Tokyo Ghoul: Re by Sui Ishida 
WORST GRAPHIC NOVEL: Piper by Jay Asher
And the most important award...
BEST HIATUS: Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi

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Poetry

The only bit of poetry I read this year has been Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, which was fantastic. I'm not one for poetry, so I think reading more will do me good, and who else to start it off but one of the greatest? I wasn't disappointed. 

The poems are broken up into four parts; Life, Love, Nature, and Time & Eternity. There's a lot of wisdom to be read from poems in every section, and none of them I can say I liked above the others. For a woman so reclusive, she had invaluable perspective and the ability to weave it into words that stand the test of time. I don't want to plagiarize her works, so I'll just leave a list of some of my favorites. 

The Mountain,

Unreturning,

Aspiration,

Life's Trades,

With Flowers,

The Chariot,

And, of course, Farewell. It was particularly hard to read, because its finality was present in nearly every word. Dickinson passed without ever having published a single one of her works, and while my knowledge of her is sparse and I know I wouldn't want to go without publishing my stuff, I can't help but feel she probably liked it that way. 

I definitely recommend it. 

Overall

Next round, I'm gonna work on reading more kinds of literature. I already have a particularly large pile of Ancient Egyptian history, as well as WWII books, a few old Marvel comics, among more books of varying types. I'm not in a rush to read more magazines, but I do think I'll take a look at what I can learn from things like National Geographic or Reader's Digest.

Thanks for staying with me for so long! Reading so much has been a joy, even the worst of it is knowledge and emotions from someone that I can glean wisdom from. Literature is a lovely thing, as all forms of art are. And that brings me to my last announcement for this article, and that's that starting with my next Tri-Yearly Reading Update, I will also cover the music albums I listen to and what I think of them. I'll see how that goes...

Until next time. Keep reading!