{"id":798,"date":"2007-01-02T18:11:09","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T18:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=798"},"modified":"2007-01-02T18:11:09","modified_gmt":"2007-01-02T18:11:09","slug":"2006_media_wrapup_the_deadtree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/02\/2006_media_wrapup_the_deadtree\/","title":{"rendered":"2006 Media Wrap-Up: The Dead-Tree Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

And we’re back. Here’s the other half of my annual media retrospective, focusing this time on my literary pursuits.<\/p>\n


\nWhile my movie-viewing<\/a> dropped off a bit last year, my reading increased significantly: I completed 36 books total, up from 22 total last year. I don’t believe there was any real competition between the two activities, i.e., reading vs. viewing; the biggest factor in my increased book consumption was riding the train on a near-daily basis. Also, some of the novels I read — The Colorado Kid<\/i> and the Star Trek: New Frontier<\/i> books — were a bit on the thin side. Not that we’re measuring, of course. Here are the titles, broken into convenient categories:<\/p>\n

Books Completed in 2006 (fiction)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Colorado Kid<\/i> by Stephen King<\/li>\n
  2. Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon<\/i> by Richard Hatch and Christopher Golden<\/li>\n
  3. Battlestar Galactica: Warhawk<\/i> by Richard Hatch and Christopher Golden<\/li>\n
  4. The Tokaido Road<\/i> by Lucia St. Clair Robson<\/li>\n
  5. The Ghost Brigades<\/i> by John Scalzi<\/li>\n
  6. Cell<\/i> by Stephen King<\/li>\n
  7. Paragaea: A Planetary Romance<\/i> by Chris Roberson<\/li>\n
  8. Star Trek: New Frontier, Book One: House of Cards<\/i> by Peter David<\/li>\n
  9. Star Trek: New Frontier, Book Two: Into the Void<\/i> by Peter David<\/li>\n
  10. Star Trek: New Frontier, Book Three: The Two-Front War<\/i> by Peter David<\/li>\n
  11. Star Trek: New Frontier, Book Four: End Game<\/i> by Peter David<\/li>\n
  12. The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril<\/i> by Paul Malmont<\/li>\n
  13. Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze<\/i> (Doc Savage #1) by Kenneth Robeson<\/li>\n
  14. Tuf Voyaging<\/i> by George R.R. Martin<\/li>\n
  15. The Armageddon Rag<\/i> by George R.R. Martin (re-read)<\/li>\n
  16. Eddie and the Cruisers<\/i> by P.F. Kluge (re-read)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That’s 16 works of fiction, up from 13 (which included graphic novels) in 2005. This year, I chose to list the graphic novels separately. I’m not sure why, since I made a big deal last year about how they ought to count as literature. I still think they’re literature, I’ve just decided they’re a different kind of literature. In any event, here are a couple of comments before I list those:<\/p>\n

    Favorite fiction books of the year:<\/b> The Tokaido Road<\/i>, Paragaea<\/i>, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril<\/i>, and The Armageddon Rag<\/i><\/p>\n

    The one fiction book that made me cry this year:<\/b> The Ghost Brigades<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

    The “so bad I can’t believe I finished not only one, but both of them” books this year:<\/b> Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon<\/i> and Battlestar Galactica: Warhawk<\/i>. Dreadful, miserable things. (One of my big gripes with media tie-ins is when the author can’t even be bothered to watch a few episodes of the source material to get the terminology of the universe correct. Not to mention the gender<\/i> of the minor characters. Bridge officer Rigel was a girl<\/i>, people.)<\/p>\n

    And moving right along:<\/p>\n

    Books Completed in 2006 (graphic novels)<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Blade of the Immortal, Volume 3: Dreamsong<\/i> by Hiroaki Samura<\/li>\n
    2. Blade of the Immortal, Volume 4: On Silent Wings<\/i> by Hiroaki Samura<\/li>\n
    3. Blade of the Immortal, Volume 5: On Silent Wings II<\/i> by Hiroaki Samura<\/li>\n
    4. Blade of the Immortal, Volume 6: Dark Shadows<\/i> by Hiroaki Samura<\/li>\n
    5. Blade of the Immortal, Volume 7: Heart of Darkness<\/i> by Hiroaki Samura<\/li>\n
    6. DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1<\/i> by Darwyn Cooke<\/li>\n
    7. DC: The New Frontier, Volume 2<\/i> by Darwyn Cooke<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I liked all of these, so there isn’t much to say in terms of awarding “favorite” status and such. I will say that I loved the Jetson-y art and sheer comprehensiveness of DC: The New Frontier<\/i> and that Blade of the Immortal<\/i> is quite simply a brilliant piece of storytelling, in any form.<\/p>\n

      And now for what my fifth-grade teacher used to call “true” books:<\/p>\n

      Books Completed in 2006 (non-fiction)<\/span><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism<\/i> by Bob Edwards<\/li>\n
      2. The Investigation: A Former FBI Agent Uncovers the Truth Behind Melvin Dummar and the Most Contested Will in American History<\/i> by Gary Magneson<\/li>\n
      3. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology<\/i> by Ray Kurzweil<\/li>\n
      4. Longitude: The True Story of the Long Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time<\/i> by Dava Sobel<\/li>\n
      5. Travels with Charley in Search of America<\/i> by John Steinbeck<\/li>\n
      6. Looking for a Ship<\/i> by John McPhee<\/li>\n
      7. Uncommon Carriers<\/i> by John McPhee<\/li>\n
      8. Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival<\/i> by Anderson Cooper<\/li>\n
      9. Conservatives Without Conscience<\/i> by John W. Dean<\/li>\n
      10. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates<\/i> by David Cordingly<\/li>\n
      11. Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Murder<\/i> by Mike Sager<\/li>\n
      12. 1939: The Lost World of the Fair<\/i> by David Gelernter<\/li>\n
      13. There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale<\/i> by Sean Astin with Joe Layden<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        My favorites<\/b> in this category included The Investigation<\/i> (I’m fascinated by Howard Hughes in general and the infamous “Mormon Will<\/a>” in particular), Longitude<\/i> (an amazing story of perseverence), Travels with Charley<\/i> (pure Americana), and Under the Black Flag<\/i>.<\/p>\n

        The Singularity is Near<\/i>, which postulates that human beings will merge with technology within the next 50 years and evolve into some new and ultimately non-physical species (just like Decker, Ilia, and V’Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture<\/i>!) was too far out and downright scary to be plausible, in my opinion. And 1939<\/i> — which I still hope to blog about in detail — was a strange, uneasy fusion of fiction and non-fiction that didn’t really satisfy me as either a novel or a history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        And we’re back. Here’s the other half of my annual media retrospective, focusing this time on my literary pursuits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}