Late yesterday morning I finished reading the 700th book since beginning to track such things way back in the middle of 2015, back in the Before Time before the latest Before Time.
The book in question was the delighting collection of surrealist poetry and prose, The Milk Bowl of Feathers: Essential Surrealist Writings. Edited by Mary Ann Caws, I am not convinced that this small volume justifies its subtitle, but certainly there are treasures here to linger lustfully over, jewels to pick up and savor in the light. I cannot impeach the selection of Ms. Caws—she is an expert, after all, and verily so—but I could have wished for a bit more prose among the poetry, though there is more of the former than is usually the case for such presentations.* The reader who knows only the writings of Breton or perhaps Bataille will find a trove of new authors to seek out, and most worthy names seem to be represented here. (Though I missed Philip Lamantia, I am no expert, so who am I to disagree with the choices of the editrix?)
In this last set of a hundred books, once again, it seems to me that I read more genre fiction than anything else, mostly mysteries by authors whose last names begin with one of the first 7 letters of the alphabet (later analysis will show whether this impression is an accurate one). These are the only paperbacks I have access to just at the moment, so they’ve been getting more attention, though I have plenty of choices from those books not yet shelved.
My reading pace has dramatically slowed over this last hundred, when compared to the previous hundred books read.† I read book #600 on January 2nd, so it’s taken me almost nine months to read this most recent century of books. In fact, 264 days elapsed since then, meaning that I took over two-and-a-half days to read each book, on average. There were quite a few longer tomes in this last set, however, so perhaps the pages per day numbers will tell a slightly different tale. We’ll see when I write up the full analysis of this most recent set.(You can read the analysis of the previous tranche at this link.)
1 Book per 2.64 Days
I’ll return in a few days (a hopeful declaration!) with the full list of the last hundred books I’ve read, and (perhaps) in a few weeks with an analysis of the trends and other such data as will only be of interest to myself, but which I shall foist upon you natheless. Ta-ta for now.
*My favorite surrealist collection remains The Custom-House of Desire: A Half Century of Surrealist Stories, compiled by J. H. Matthews.
†As usual, I exclude those books within my ‘Comics & Graphic Novels’ genre from my calculations.
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