Monday Book Report: Bound For Murder

“I Read It So You Don’t Have To” Department
The 3rd in the scrapbooking series

I learned many things from Bound For Murder, the 3rd scrapbooking mystery in the series by the pseudonymous Laura Childs. In the end section devoted to scrapbooking tips and recipes I discovered that you can mix mango, cilantro, olive oil with red and green peppers and call it salsa. In the rest of the book I found out that … no, wait. That’s all. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention. After all, this book is replete with scrapbooking hints sprinkled throughout the vacuous pages. For example, the same skills used in scrapbooking can be used to make place cards:

The place cards Carmela had designed for tonight were truly miniature works of art. Four-by-six-inch pieces of floral card stock served as the canvas. Upon this, Carmela had created a mini collage, incorporating tiny Renaissance-style images of angels, pressed flowers, gold hear charms, and the guest’s names printed on peach-colored vellum. She’d used a crinkle cutter to create a deckled edge at the bottom of each card. The personalized ribbon threaded through the top would be the final loving touch.

— One assumes that the “guest’s names” refers to Beelzebub, Astaroth, Mephistopheles, and so forth

Make no mistake: This is a very poorly written book. Besides the problem with apostrophes called out above — and does anyone know how to use apostrophes any longer? — the author strikes the “mother load” several times in these meaningless pages. But good grammar a good mystery does not make — though if a whodunit series based on scrapbooking can run to fifteen volumes, as this one has (so far), perhaps someone might gift us with a series based on English grammar. The ‘Gritty Grammarian’? “Putting the ‘English’ in English mysteries.” Anyone? Please.

A sudden crack of thunder and bright flash of lightning caused Carmela to jump.

Yeeow! That’s positively cataclysmic!

Feeling foolish, knowing it was just positive and negative charges cast off from the storm’s roiling clouds, Carmela glanced out the window, wondering if Ava had been shaken by nature’s heroic display, too.

— Not just an energetic small business owner with a ‘can-do’ attitude, Carmela also has an appreciation of science and stuff, too

The actual ‘mystery’ content of the story is quickly told, but I won’t spoil this tale by trying to care. At first I thought I could guess the murderer’s identity, but then I realized that what I had thought a ‘clue’ was just a stupid trick to distract the reader from the fact that nothing was actually happening save the usual onrush towards the eventual heat death of the universe. The supposed clue — the hoary old ‘victim writes in blood as he is dying’ gag — turns out to be stupid and pointless and ignored and did I say stupid? Without giving anything away — hey, people are into masochism today, you may want to read this for thrills, what do I know? — I can say that this ‘clue’ is like if a dying librarian had muttered “page 95” in the death scene chapter, which was then ignored by the protagonist for one hundred and twenty pages, briefly remembered as the protagonist reflects while on a cross-country flight that the dead librarian could have meant any one of thousands of books, and then proceeds to pull an airport novel someone has discarded in the seat pocket, turns to pg. 95 and there reads the words: “I was murdered by Bob Saget.” (No, of course not, not that Bob Saget.)

Seriously, the finale is completely whackadoodle. You realize at last that the so-called ‘investigation’ has nothing to do with the so-called ‘solution’; this author does not play fair. The close of the novel stands is the Dallas season 10 opener, except we are not allowed to wake up.

Actually, I learned some very important lessons from these 238 pages:

  • I am a dope

There are fifteen — 15! — of these books out there. And a separate series about tea. And another mystery series by the same pseudonym which appears to be about eggs. Any critique I might wish to give seems rather petty and poor. Especially poor.

  • I am a snob

Who am I to criticize this fantasy where not-yet divorcées get together in sisterly camaraderie (it actually derives from the Latin for bedroom, not ‘comrade’) to explore their creative impulses through the latest stamps and crinkle cutters and simply delightful papers while the protagonist’s small scrapbooking store keeps going from success to even greater success? I am a pig, a Philistine, a destroyer where these gals are creative forces for all that is good in the world.

She didn’t want to come down too hard on Lieutenant Babcock or his colleagues. Criticism and negative pronouncements had a way of discouraging people.

— Too often other detectives forget to maintain a positive outlook vis-à-vis the police
  • I am not crafty

I couldn’t come up with the idea of wrapping the cover of the scrapbook in plain brown paper to highlight the delightful ironwork piece that mirrors the sconces pictured therein. *Sigh* Perhaps some day I may become a perfect sage. Or at least a sage. But that day is not this day. This day I fig– no, no, sorry. Until next time, then.

300 Books: The List (Part I)

As promised earlier, here’s the list — or at least the first half — of the most recently read hundred books. Once again I strive to say a word or two about a volume or two in each set of ten books listed. I hope you shall not be too terribly bored, though if you dislike mysteries you may not find much here to like, as that genre preponderates. I’ll try to confine my comments to the winners, and ignore the losers (*looks askance at Cara Black, who won’t even be in this half-century of books*).

I have already spoken of Double Cross Purposes, back when I mistakenly thought that it was my 200th book read, so I won’t mention it further here, save to say that the very, very British mystery inaugurated my 3rd century of books, rather than closing the 2nd.

I was not expecting the Mr. Moto mystery — the second of the series — to be quite so good, though if I had reflected on the fact that Marquand is, after all, a ‘serious author’, I might have lifted my expectations higher. They would have been met even so. I also must confess that the first of the several medieval mysteries in this set, by Susanna Gregory, was quite good, a surprise to me only because I had judged it to be too ‘romance-like’ by its nondescript cover.

# Read Author Title Genre
201 6/27/18 Ronald Arbuthnott Knox Double Cross Purposes Mystery
202 6/30/18 Susanna Gregory A Bone of Contention Mystery
203 7/2/18 Peter Tremayne Absolution by Murder Mystery
204 7/6/18 Peter Tremayne The Subtle Serpent Mystery
205 7/9/18 Jacques Futrelle Best “Thinking Machine” Detective Stories Mystery
206 7/13/18 Peter Tremayne Valley of the Shadow Mystery
207 7/14/18 John P. Marquand Thank You Mr. Moto Mystery
208 7/16/18 John LeCarre A Murder Of Quality Mystery
209 7/16/18 Aristotle Poetics Philosophy
210 7/22/18 Alistair Maclean Fear Is the Key Mystery

 

Ross MacDonald is fantastic, and his Lew Archer is a worthy successor to the private eyes of Hammett and Chandler. These short stories come from the beginning of MacDonald’s career, and can be read either as noir par excellence or as a nostalgic set of signals from a lost California that perhaps never was. Also worth checking out are the Tey and Lovesey books, but you already knew that. My full-on mystery craze is pointed out by the fact that even the Asimov book in this set of ten is a mystery.

# Read Author Title Genre
211 7/24/18 Ross MacDonald The Name Is Archer Mystery
212 7/26/18 Margaret Frazer The Novice’s Tale Mystery
213 7/27/18 Isaac Asimov A Whiff of Death Mystery
214 7/29/18 Margaret Frazer The Servant’s Tale Mystery
215 7/30/18 Agatha Christie At Bertram’s Hotel Mystery
216 8/4/18 Elizabeth Peters Lion in the Valley Mystery
217 8/10/18 Elizabeth Peters The Last Camel Died at Noon Mystery
218 8/13/18 Elizabeth Peters The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog Mystery
219 8/16/18 Josephine Tey To Love and Be Wise Mystery
220 8/17/18 Peter Lovesey The Reaper Mystery

 

And now we make a sharp turn into the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Of course, Tales From The “White Hart” is a classic, and deservedly so. Though other imitators such as Spider Robinson have had some success with the wonderbar subgenre (see the following tranche of ten), I shall always return to the creator of geosynchronous satellites for these stories of scientific shaggy dogs.

I also continue to recommend the Dray Prescot series by the pseudonomynous Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer), both for his sheer joy in language and the protagonist’s irrepressible joie de vivre. There are over thirty-five books in the series … fifty is you include the novels published originally in German at the end of the series. Full disclosure: Though I do love these books, my mother thought the series quite silly. So there’s that.

# Read Author Title Genre
221 8/18/18 Gordon R. Dickson, Richard S. Weinstein, & Andrew J. Offutt Stellar Short Novels SF/Fantasy
222 8/21/18 Steve Orr Conspiracy Ideas and the Revolutionary Political Imagination after Thermidor: The Tragedy of François-Victor Aigoin History
223 8/22/18 Leigh Brackett, ed. The Best of Planet Stories, No. 1: Strange Adventures on Other Worlds SF/Fantasy
224 8/24/18 Arthur C. Clarke Tales From The “White Hart” SF/Fantasy
225 8/26/18 Alan Burt Akers Transit to Scorpio SF/Fantasy
226 8/29/18 Alan Burt Akers The Suns of Scorpio SF/Fantasy
227 9/1/18 Alan Burt Akers Warrior of Scorpio SF/Fantasy
228 9/2/18 Alan Burt Akers Swordships of Scorpio SF/Fantasy
229 9/5/18 Alan Burt Akers Prince of Scorpio SF/Fantasy
230 9/6/18 Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle Whizz For Atomms Humor

 

To read H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau is to understand both why moviemakers want to bring the story to the screen as well as why they fail. An understated story as simple as “The Most Dangerous Game”, Wells once again pushes his usual theme of the descent into barbarism from supposedly lofty motives. Of course, the idea of man struggling between the twin poles of godlike potency and bestial dissolution dates back at least as far as Homer. And any words I write here about this classic tale are like Tenacious D’s “Greatest Song In The World”*: nothing like the work itself.

# Read Author Title Genre
231 9/8/18 H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau SF/Fantasy
232 9/9/18 Spider Robinson Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon SF/Fantasy
233 9/10/18 Terry Pratchett The Colour of Magic SF/Fantasy
234 9/11/18 Isaac Asimov Foundation and Empire SF/Fantasy
235 9/14/18 Andre Norton Quag Keep SF/Fantasy
236 9/14/18 J. K. Rowling The Tales of Beedle the Bard SF/Fantasy
237 9/16/18 Ian Fleming Casino Royale Mystery
238 9/17/18 Tony Hillerman The Fallen Man Mystery
239 9/19/18 Tony Hillerman The First Eagle Mystery
240 9/20/18 Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger Mystery

 

Though I tell myself that I must have read Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man before, several of the stories seemed so fresh and new that I have my doubts. Perhaps I only thought I had read this collection qua collection, or perhaps this is just another benefit of age. Naturally, I remembered many if not most of the stories; we all know “The Veldt” and “Zero Hour” (the latter appeared in several versions on radio anthology programs). But … well, in any case, I could not be sure I had read the book, though now I have that surety. The stories are magnificently creepy, especially when taken as a whole, and I found the book more accessible (to me) than other Bradbury I have read. (If I have actually read other Bradbury….) I will also note that this book is apparently stolen, as the image reveals, though that library and the Eye Room with its Carol Doda sign are long gone.

# Read Author Title Genre
241 9/22/18 Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind Mystery
242 9/25/18 Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man SF/Fantasy
243 9/27/18 Isaac Asimov Second Foundation SF/Fantasy
244 9/28/18 Tony Hillerman The Sinister Pig Mystery
245 10/1/18 Jim Thompson The Nothing Man Mystery
246 10/5/18 Isaac Asimov Foundation’s Edge SF/Fantasy
247 10/9/18 Sue Grafton H Is for Homicide Mystery
248 10/10/18 Jack London Call of the Wild Fiction
249 10/11/18 Tony Hillerman The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other Indian Country Affairs History
250 10/12/18 Agatha Christie Hickory Dickory Death Mystery

 

So that’s all for this first half of the third century of books. I’ll note in closing the breakneck pace of reading: less than four months to read fifty books. I will be back in a little bit for Part II of the book list for these most recent hundred books. The lists of previously read books may be found here and here. TTFN!

* Yeah, I know it’s actually called “Tribute”. Sheesh.

Friday Vocabulary [UPDATED]

NOTE: Due to recently (24 August 2019) discovered repetition of a previously used vocabulary word, the offending entry has been replaced with a new word, definition, and example sentence. The original entry is preserved with strikethrough formatting.

1. mulligrubs — grumpiness; depressed state; bad mood or temper

I would not pester him with your request just now, not when he lies abed in his mulligrubs, complaining ever of the poor state of the world and expressing foul opinions about the people within it.

 

2. pluperfect — more than perfect

She expects us to give 110% effort 8 days a week, with a pluperfect attention to detail and six star customer satisfaction ratings.

 

3. fomes (pl. fomites) — objects which may carry infectious organisms after contact with contagious individual

Of course the bedding and towels in the patient’s sick chamber are the most obvious fomites and will usually be handled carefully, but one must not forget such surfaces as curtains and even air filters when dealing with a virulent contagion.

 

4. parboil — to boil partially, half boil

If you parboil your chicken before tossing it on the grill you’ll find it saves time and gives you a tastier dish in the bargain.

 

5. fulminant — developing suddenly

He remains in the hospital following the onset of fulminant hepatitis due to an accidental overdose of acetaminophen, and his prognosis does not look good.

 

6. anthophobia — fear of flowers

Though he failed to make a profit during the Tulip Craze due to his well-known anthophobia, he also didn’t suffer during the subsequent collapse.

 

7. gonfalon — banner or pennon, often with tails or streamers, suspended from a crossbar rather than flown from a pole

The grandstands for the tourney were decorated in quite festive bunting and flowers, and across the faux crenellations that ran along the top of the temporary stadium were hung dozens and dozens of wooden shields and gonfalons representing the many knights who had come to try their skill at the joust and other marital contests.

epizootic — outbreak of a disease in an animal population (an “animal epidemic”)

Outbreaks of hoof-and-mouth disease remain a fear for every country with large animal husbandry industries, each epizootic causing devastating financial damages and the loss of many animals.

 

8. aleconner — inspector of ale

Though the medieval position of aleconner might seem quite desirable to some, the bad blood from fines imposed as well as the bad taste from bad ale made the job unwanted by most.

 

9. snollygoster — shrewd unscrupulous person

The base quartermaster was a vicious snollygoster who’d give ten for a dozen unless you came through with a little something for his trouble.

 

10. cachectic — of or pertaining to general malaise with malnutrition; related to a depraved habit or mind or feeling

The croupier in Wilkie Collin’s “A Terribly Strange Bed” is an unemotional, cachectic fellow, whose voice never changes or rises or falls as the gamblers around him win and lose in the dissolute gaming house.

Time To Completion: at 300 Books

As previously mentioned, I want to focus upon a statistic first surfaced at the conclusion of my note explaining a data issue which messed up the analysis of my previous hundred books read. At that time I noted that at the then-current pace of 4.58 books per day I would need 106.5 years to complete my collection. Now, having just completed another century of books (300 read since tracking began), let’s look more deeply at this stat.

When I quickly tossed off my initial estimate of when I’d finish reading all my books, I simply looked at the number of books I have, how many I’ve read, how fast I was reading, and — Voilà! However, all three of these datapoints have problems of one stripe or another.

To take the last figure first, obviously the measurement of “days per book” is much less precise than the velocity formed by “pages per day”. The latter has just been added to my tracking, since I now capture just how many pages each new book read contains. But that very fact shows how impossible (or at least very difficult) it will be to use that stat; I do not have page count information for even a tenth of my collection, and am gathering it only for a) books which I have read, and b) newly purchased books. So the more precise number is (mostly) useless for projecting my future time to complete my collection.

As to the number of books read, that, too, is problematic. When I offhandedly grabbed the figures and calculated that I would take over a century to finish my books, I had only those books which I had read since tracking the same, plus a handful of books I had marked as having read in the past. Since then I have added many volumes to my ‘read in the past’ category, so that number has increased. But I wish to be scrupulous about my past reading, so I have only marked those books that I am absolutely certain I have read — if I am not sure I read a particular edition, if I may have read only an abridged version in the past, or if there is ancillary material that I don’t remember reading, I do not mark the book as ‘Experienced’, even if I am pretty sure I read it. Thus there are many books that I may have read that I will only know for sure upon re-reading. Such a one is the current thriller I’m reading at work, Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard, which I recall as I read it. I can’t remember how it ends, though, so that’s good on a couple of levels.

The final stat referenced above has issues which are, for the most part, of no interest whatsoever to those who are not myself. (By this I mean even of less interest than the great uncaring which most people feel towards the subject of my reading, or even towards the entirety of this blog.) I will only say here that I have recently begun cataloguing my family’s books within my own database (they previously were in member-specific databases) for reasons which are as previously mentioned — who cares? I also have to take into account any duplicates which exist, where ‘duplicates’ in this context refers only to volumes containing the same text (less copyright, inside ads, and outside ‘flapple’ (the stuff that gets written on the book’s dust jacket or ‘flaps’). Thus behind the scenes I have to make a couple of manipulations to arrive at the correct figure.

Anyway, my scratchpad calculations give me 8,066 books in my collection unread. Combining that with the overall reading rate of 4.03 days/book given in my last Book Analysis gives us a total of 32,506 days to complete the collection, which is to say just one day shy of 89 years. Using this figure, I would finish reading my books on April 9, 2108. Still in the next century, but getting closer to the 21st. Thus:

Reading Rate: 1 Book per 4.03 Days (includes Comics)
Time to Finish Collection: 89 Years
Estimated Finish Date (EFD): April 9, 2108
 

Now of course this is quite simplified. Besides the page count issue mentioned above, it elides over the fact that there are some books I have which I shall never read. For while I suppose it is possible that I may slog through an entire volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica or read The Auld Scots Dictionary from cover to cover, I will never — can never — read in its entirety the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics or the same publisher’s book of standard math tables. And how shall I account as ‘read’ a book consisting of images of various types of graph paper meant for photocopying?

But leave aside those peccadilloes for the nonce. A far greater factor has been ignored heretofore in our calculations. I refer to what was called in my childhood home “The Book Problem“. In my house, books tend to seek out empty shelf space and fill it, and, having filled that space, proceed to overwhelm the rest of the otherwise unoccupied space within the domicile. One may say that I should stop buying new books, but one can say all manner of nonsensical things.

Put another way, we can look at the above Estimated Finish Date calculation as simply solving the following equation:

(1)   \begin{equation*} b_i - Rt = 0 \end{equation*}

where $b_i$ is the number of the books in the collection, $R$ is the reading rate, and we solve for the time $t$.

But this of course is not the whole story. A better representation would be:

(2.1)   \begin{equation*} (b_0 + b_T) - Rt = 0 \end{equation*}

where $b_0$ is the initial number of the books in the collection, and $b_T$ is the number of books added to the collection through the end time $T$.

If we represent $b_T$ by $Pt$ where $P$ is the purchase rate at which books are added to the collection, Formula ${2.1}$ becomes

(2.2)   \begin{equation*} b_0 - Rt + Pt = 0 \end{equation*}

and solving for $t$ gives:

(2.3)   \begin{equation*} t = \frac{b_0}{R - P} \end{equation*}

Formula ${2.3}$ simply says that as long as the Reading Rate is greater than the Purchase Rate, I will eventually finish the collection. Whereas if the Purchase rate is greater, the negative time value returned means that I missed my opportunity to finish my collection at time $t$ in the past, since my purchases kept adding to number of volumes and I will never be quit of reading. (The case where $P$ is equal to $R$ returns an error, of course, representing the case where I shall never, never catch up and will never be rid of meddlesome books.)

Therefore, much depends upon knowing the rate at which books are added to the collection. But this is a factor derivable from the database. A little manipulation (2 hours pass…) and …

Uh-oh.

I get a rough approximation of a $P$ of 1.1 books per day. Since a reading rate of 4.03 days per book gives an $R$ value of approx. 0.25, it is clear that I shall never finish my books unless something drastic happens.

I have to go off and think about this. Preferably while reading.

Music Methodology Migration

or, Minuscule Mind Misses Mark, Mixing Music Movies More, Must Ameliorate Material Maintenance

I must rescind my previous note that I had listened to 110K iTunes items, as I have discovered methodological problems which can no longer go unchallenged. I found the problems — or rather, found the problems to be intractable — whilst preparing my analysis of the most recent 10,000 songs/tracks/files/whathaveyou for posting on this site.

Put simply, the problem was this: Heretofore, I had maintained a so-called ‘Smart Playlist’ consisting of all items which had been experienced which I named “Already Played”. I also had the contrasting playlist, called “Never Played”. These two lists guided my apprehension of how many iTunes tracks I had heard. Malhéreusement, when I originally created these playlists many years ago, I simply selected “all media” as the domain upon which the rules were to be laid in returning the data. However, the disparity between ‘Music’ and other items in my iTunes has caused some difficulties, with the specific problem that I cannot in good conscience claim to have listened to (or “experienced” in the case of some items such as videos or movies) every single item within the “Already Played” playlist. This fact necessitates a change to the underlying methodology used to count how many tracks I’ve actually heard.

The specific problem stems from the fact that others in my household have listened to podcasts which, for reasons I shall not enter into, I have not heard. Though in the past I have tried to cull these items from my database — going so far as to delete these from my database along with the underlying files — I realized when perusing the full set of data that there would seem always to be a dozen or so podcasts which ended up in my “Already Played” playlist in spite of my efforts.

There were further problems with the old system. The inclusion of “all media” meant that every soi-disant ‘Digital Booklet’ which accompanied any iTunes Store album purchase would forever haunt my “Never Played” list. The various video files which I had watched sometimes (often, in the case of TV shows) had duplicates which somehow made their way into my system, with one item in 720p and the other in 1080p — both of which I was loath to delete given the fact that digital files once bought might not actually be available for later download in the future. And finally, the sheer size the video files tend to overwhelm the data size figures which have been a staple of my reports heretofore. Indeed, the 369 items in the new Smart Playlist I constructed consisting of the “Already Played not Music” files measure a hefty 121 GB — too great a proportion of the ~820 GB of all files I have ‘already played’ to ignore.

I therefore announce that from this point forward I shall only be considering those files classed as ‘Music’ within iTunes for my “Already Played” statistics, and its converse, those tracks not yet heard. Though only 15 podcasts which I know of a certainty I have not heard exist in the old version of the “Already Played” playlist, that number is too high, and the ongoing data scrubbing required too onerous, to justify using the former methodology. This means, of course, that earlier data will not be analogous to the numbers I use henceforth. I leave the question to some other data nerd, perhaps with a PhD in Economics and a devotion to ninth derivatives, to determine the weighting needed to conform the earlier statistics with those I shall promulge from this point.

I crave your forgiveness.

Diagram of Data Processing

Friday Vocabulary

1. bema — platform for public speaking, esp. in ancient Athens

Heady though it must have been to ascend to the bema, a new-formed philosopher assumed great responsibility when promulgating his doctrine, as the several prosecutions (and many more accusations) for corrupting the Athenian youth indicate.

  2. prodromal — premonitory (symptom)

The sufferer of oral herpes may experience a prodromal itching or tingling at the location where the lesions will appear.

  3. baize — woolen fabric with long nap, usu. green, resembling felt, frequently seen covering billiard tables

What I had initially taken to be a desk blotter was actually an inlaid baize band apparently used by Sir Roberts to better organize the documents he examined for signs of forgery.

  4. papule — small pointed swelling of the skin

The small dots seen as the first signs of chicken pox quickly develop into papules which will then support a clear vesicle at their center.

  5. mantissa — decimal part of logarithm; (obs.) small part or addition of little importance

A particular set of digits will all have the same mantissa regardless of where the decimal point is placed within that set of digits.

  6. selvage — finishing of woven material so that the edge will not unravel

The quality of selvage denim is greater than the non-selvage variety, due in part to the tighter weaves used in producing the former.

  7. teleology — the study of ultimate ends or causes

Most creationist texts exhibit a manifest projection of anthromorphized teleology upon the universe in general and biology in particular.

  8. colporteur — hawker or seller of books

The 19th-century colporteur evolved from a peddler of bibles to become an underworld vendor of French postcards and (in the next century) Tijuana Bibles.

  9. logorrhea — incessant loquacity; pathological talkativeness

We withstood the offensive flood of his painful logorrhea as long as we could, but eventually we had to simply take our leave — without, of course, getting a word in edgewise, for there was no space between his.

  10. antipyretic — tending to reduce fever

I gave her acetaminophen for its antipyretic effect, but you should stay with her tonight in case she suffers further acute intestinal distress.

Analysis: The 3rd Hundred Books

or, More Findings of No Ultimate Interest

As I said last week, I have now read 300 books of my collection since I started tracking my reading back in June 2015. Now follows a shallow analysis of the books in this last hundred books, eschewing (mostly) reference to books in the “Comics & Graphic Novel” category, of which I read only two since last report.

First we note (as previously said in the post hyperlinked above) that I read books at a staggering pace over the last 100 books. Merely 279 days elapsed during my last book century, giving me a blistering rate of a little less than three days to read each book (1 book per 2.79 days). Besides the fact that my page rate also soared (of which more anon), the speedy book reading means that my overall pace for the entire 300 books read also dropped to a respectable 4.6 days per book. This is in line with my pace for the first hundred books (4.83 days/book), which had crawled to only 6.19 days/book for the second hundred.

1 Book Read per 2.79 Days

Of course, if Comics & Graphic Novels are included, these reading rates drop even further — though only a couple in that category were read in this last set. The difference is most apparent in the 1st hundred books read, when 33 comic books and graphic novels were read, but the reading rate for the entire set (342 books all told) drops by half a day if these ‘picture books’ are considered.

Average Time to Read a Book

non-Comics All
1st hundred 4.83 3.63
2nd hundred 6.19 5.79
3rd hundred 2.79 2.74
All 4.60 4.03

I am highlighting the reading pace here because of a disquieting statistic I uncovered during my inquest into an error with my last analysis of the previous hundred books read. During that investigation, I found that I would not finish reading all of the books in my collection (at my then-current rate) before Pearl Harbor Day in 2124. I thus began reading with the explicit purpose of bringing my projected completion date more in line with currently expected human lifespans (though not my own, undoubtedly), or, failing that, at least within the present century. To this end I began reading much of my genre fiction paperbacks (as will be seen), which books I had yet another purpose in reading, as I was seeking to make space in my limited paperback shelving by retiring those books already read.

I should point out that the underlying calculation for ‘books read’ in my collection included those books which I have read before beginning this quite pointless endeavor in data tracking, but when I made my first stab at guessing my ETA for reading my last book I did not have many works marked as previously read. I have tried to denote those I have read before since that time (July of 2018), but … I found myself in a quandary. I am sure, for example, that I have read most of the Badger comics which I have, but am I positive I read all of them? Or, in another vein, I read a version on Melville’s The Confidence-Man online (what a terrific book!), but can I really say that I’ve read the edition I bought a physical copy of later? So … I decided that I will only mark as ‘read’ those books for which I am sure — entirely sure — that I have read in that edition, and that I read the entire book from cover to cover. More on this statistical kerfuffle anon.

All this prologue is merely an attempt to explain the ridiculous dominance of genre fiction in my last century of books. While over 40% of the previous hundred books were nonfiction works of one stripe or another, barely one tenth of the last hundred were nonfiction. Even Fiction itself was overwhelmed by so-called ‘genre fiction’ works read, contributing barely 5% of the total (and two of those books could more properly, if loosely, be labelled as ‘Horror’). The full breakdown is below:

Books Read by Genre

Mystery & Thriller 53
Science Fiction & Fantasy 31
Nonfiction 11
Literature & Fiction 5

And of course there is a chart

The breakdown of the not-quite-a-dozen Nonfiction books is as follows:

Nonfiction Breakdown

History 2
Poetry, Drama & Criticism 2
Children’s Books 1
Foreign Language 1
Humor 1
Language & Linguistics 1
Militaria 1
Philosphy 1
Religion & Spirituality 1

I’ll leave it for the complete list of these last hundred books for you to discover into which category I’ve placed Strunk & White.

Since I now have full data on page counts for each book I have read, I am able to track my reading over time more precisely, and so am able to see that I maintained a fairly steady pace over the past nine months, with few spurts or slogs. This can be seen by looking at the cumulative pages read:

The fast pace can be seen even more clearly by considering the average reading rate:

Though my pace got as high as 110 pages per day, the overall average turned out to be just over 90 pages per day.

90.13 Pages Read per Day

Just how drastically my reading speed jumped a gear is shown by the fact that my pace for the previous hundred books was merely 34.4 pages per day. I should point out that page count information is incomplete for that set of one hundred books, with ten books missing that datapoint, so the actual pace was higher, though obviously still much lower than that for the last hundred books. Aaaand … another chart:

I know, you’re thinking “Hey, wait a minute! That chart makes it look like the average pace was more like 35.5 pages per day! What gives?!?” You are eagle-eyed, aren’t you? Well, the truth of the matter is that I didn’t exclude the comic books from that chart, since I only read 7 of them, and since they didn’t really affect the pace that much. You don’t believe me? *Sigh* Okay, then, here’s the same chart showing the non-comics page rate, which diverges only slightly from the total rate:

Now are you satisfied?

Flipping the paradigm — or rather switching some axes — the page count per book slightly increased from last report (with the usual caveat about missing data etc., etc., blah, blah). While the previous set of books sported 236 pages per book, the just completed hundred books averaged just over 250 pages in length. Including the two comics read drops this figure to 246.5 pages per book.

Average Book Length: 250.5 Pages

Not only was the pace of reading increased, the actual number of pages read was also significantly greater, though this may have been more influenced than the ‘pages per day’ statistic by the lack of complete data in my previous report. Over 25,000 pages were read in this last tranche of books, even with comics excluded (which added 94 pages to the full total).

Total Pages Read (non comics): 25,052

The average rating rose slightly from last report, though here, too, some duds were to be found. Overall, the quality was quite good, which was a slight surprise since I was purposely choosing books which seemed as if they should be leaving my shelves for good. Many of the last hundred books read made my Best of 2018 book list. The average rating for all books was a respectable 3.96, or the only slightly lower 3.94 if the two comics are excluded.

Average Rating for Books Read: 3.94

I will return in the near future with the complete list of books read, after which I hope to delve into the question of when I might complete my collection of books (after which I guess I’d better get around to the analysis of the last thousand or ten thousand songs listened to).

Peccavi: Not Actually 110,000 (was One Hundred and Ten Thousand Songs (110,000)) [UPDATED]

NOTE: Due to recent (6 April 2019) changes in methodology, we can no longer support the contention that we have listened to 110,000 iTune tracks. In addition, the use of the term “Songs” in the original title of this post was misleading. Details to come in a new post describing the underlying problems with the former methodology and the new methodology for tracking this data going forward. When that post is written/complete we shall add a link here for your benefit. In the mean time, we are leaving this post in its original form with the exception of this note and the title changes. The initial posting was written in good faith, if poor data management, so we shall let it stand for what it is worth.

Yesterday morning I hit the milestone of 110,000 unique iTunes tracks heard at least once. Track #110,000 was “Kelly Watch the Stars”, a nice enough poppy little number from the first album by the French duo Air, Moon Safari. Yestereve I listened to the 110,001st track, some stage talk by The Clash from a 1976 London concert (shades of Consolidated!), included in the CD soundtrack meant to accompany Greil Marcus’s masterful Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, which soundtrack you can listen to right now at UbuWeb for free!.

110,000 unique tracks makes up 821.02 GB of data, with a total duration of 442 days, 9 hours, 45 minutes, and 52 seconds (ignoring multiple plays). Left unplayed in my iTunes collection at the moment of impactful milestone crossing were 82,173 songs, which is only 291 less than last report (thus over 700 songs were added in the meantime (I finally got around to ripping my Christmas presents)). The unplayed tracks comprise 581.72 GB of data (↓ 3.26 GB) with a playing time of 331 days, 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 8 seconds (↓ 8.9 days).

To reach the 110,000th unique track, I listened to 1,297 songs (since track #109,000), which total 10.21 GB of data, and laid end-to-end comprise 11 days, 8 hours, 51 minutes, and 12 seconds of audio.

It took only 44 days to listen to the last thousand songs (less than half as long than it took to hear the previous 1k), meaning 22.72 new songs per day were heard. This is a significant rate increase (from 9.8 per day), putting me back on my usual pace. This was due to the fact that the Xmas CDs were finished, at least the listening part.

22.2 New Tracks Heard per Day

 
If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 29.5 tracks per day.

29.5 Tracks Heard per Day

 

A fictional life event milestone such as this deserves some sort of analysis, so I will promise same, which I’ll get right on after I complete my analysis of my last hundred books read, for which I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath.I am no longer promising further analysis, as I’m still owing the same for the 103Kth and 102Kth sets of iTunes songs, though that promise recedes and may be broken soon.

Friday Vocabulary

1. apostrophe — rhetorical figure wherein the speaker digresses and pointedly addresses some person or personified object

But twenty-first century man has made hash of all rhetoric, and even Childe Harold’s apostrophe to the sea has been overtaken by modern humanity’s ability to pollute even the oceans themselves.

  2. marge — margin

And thus the crepuscular light palely illuminates the marge of night.

  3. Aceldama — field of bloodshed (from the field bought by Judas with his thirty pieces of silver)

One can speak of the brilliant strategic victory of Marlborough at Blenheim, but the landscape was a veritable Aceldama once the fighting had ceased.

  4. snooks — rude gesture in which one puts the thumb on the nose and extends the fingers

We all gave the snooks to the cop on the beat and then ran laughing up the alley and over the abandoned field to our hideout in the supposedly abandoned warehouse.

  5. guerdon — reward, recompense

Let these strokes of the lash be the guerdon for your treason and your betrayal.

  6. staunch — determined, steadfast, true to one’s principles or purpose

He was a staunch friend, as willing to hurry down to the bail bondsman as to help manhandle the corpse into the trunk.

  7. glebe — portion of cultivable land assigned to clergyman as part of his benefice

We found the rector tending to his radishes in the glebe behind the parish house.

  8. animadversion — criticism, esp. that implying censure

I had thought only to proffer friendly advice and helpful comments, not to cast animadversions at the work which has obviously cost you much effort in time and thought.

  9. deontology — study of duty or moral obligation

I am afraid you misapprehend me, for though my position as professor of deontology permits me to advise you on the best course of action, I cannot remove your painful tooth.

  10. holt — grove, copse

We found ourselves in a beautiful holt such as Chaucer described, so recently dead and dry in the winter, but now gloriously green from the spring rains.

300 Books

This morning I finished my 300th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. The book which pushed me over this milestone was the surprisingly good anthology 101 Famous Poems, originally published in 1958. (Hence my surprise.)

This book had been sitting in the meditation chamber of my bedroom for some time; I highly recommend the practice of having a book of poetry in the bathroom. Finishing this volume — which actually has one hundred and eleven poems, plus 7 small pieces of prose — means that I have read another hundred books* since the last such milestone reached on June 16, 2018. Thus 279 days, or just over nine months, have rolled on their weary way since I completed 200 books in this purposeless project. On average, therefore, each book in this last century was completed in 2.79 days, a staggering drop from the 6.17 days per book of my last report, or even the 4.83 days required to finish each of the first hundred.

   1 Book per 2.79 Days   

As usual, I’ll be back with more detailed analysis after I have a chance to massage the data into me-friendly form.

*As usual, I exclude comic books and their ilk from my calculations, though I believe only 2 such books were read in this last pell-mell dash of reading.