Current location:	at my desk with Countdown
Current mood:	contemplative
Entry tags:	books, geek, teaching

Last Book Post Of 2008
I didn't do quite as good as I wanted to in terms of total books read for the year, but...now that I'm tracking it, 2009 will be better. Previously reviewed books are listed by title only; books new to the list get a blurb.

• Doom: Knee-Deep In The Dead, by Dafyddab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver (reread)
  
• A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain.
  
• Paradigm Shift Part One: Equilibrium, by Dirk I. Tiede (gn)
  
• Paradigm Shift Part Two: Agitation, by Dirk I. Tiede (gn).
  
• Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross (gn) (reread)
  
• Cybermancy, by Kelly McCullough
  
• Voltron Omnibus, by various (gn)
  
• A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
  
• Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
  
• Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
  
• Quantum Gravity Book One: Keeping It Real, by Justina Robson
  
• The Postman, by David Brin
  
• Star Trek: Vanguard: Summon The Thunder, by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore.
  
• ghIlghameS: A Klingon translation, by Roger Cheesboro.
  
• Code Spell, by Kelly McCullough. The third book in the WebMage trilogy, which again, patchwerkgirl doesn't much care for but I think is rather fun. Sure, it's disposable fiction, and the first person perspective leads to some clunky exposition in places, but there's a lot of fun moments per book. Plus McCullough tends to keep the "why the fuck is this here?" random sex to a minimum.
  
• World War Z, by Max Brooks. I thought it was amazing, from the perspective to the depths of the details to the tension and the drama of the writing and the characters. It covers every possible aspect of humanity dealing with a zombie apocalypse, including the stuff that usually doesn't get covered in the movies, like political ramifications and military doctrine. I finished this book in one night, with good reason.
  
• The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin. My gods Ben Franklin was incredible, and a hell of a writer too. Narratively it's a little disjointed given that he wrote this in two parts, about 20 or 30 years apart, but the insights into history, the wit of his writing, and a lot of the neat moments-him talking about being a womanizer, or about doing anything possible as a young man to get access to new books, or just talking about the then new form of the novel, that "mixture of dialogue and narrative", as a really good idea that people should do more of.
  
• What Every Middle School Teacher Should Know, by Trudy Knowles and Dave F. Brown. Eh. I borrowed this from earmata quite some time ago and finally got around to reading it. It had some good stuff and some good reminders about curriculum integration and creating a safe learning environment, but the authors also seemed to advocate a total lack of accountability and personal responsibility for the students. I was less than impressed.
  
• The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 1: Coming Home, by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna.
  
• The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2: Revelations, by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna. These are graphic novels collecting the first several issues of the holy JMS's run on Amazing Spider-Man. The man can write, pure and simple, and he had a great handle on the character.
  
• Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, by Steve Niles and Elman Brown. This is a graphic novel adaptation of Matheson's novel about a bacterial vampire plague. I thought the writing was very, very good, and the black and white line art really did a great job of telling the story. The ending is messed up, to say the least.
  
• Death: The High Cost Of Living, by Neil Gaiman et. al. Yes, this is definitely a reread, but the story of the 1 day every hundred years that Death becomes mortal, to better understand the lives she takes, is still one of the high points of Gaiman's writing./li>

So that's 2008. 22 books, with a couple of more in process or almost done. It doesn't seem like a lot, although it's hardly all I read this year, with the massive amounts of online reading, magazines, and single issue comic books I read. For 2009, I've got plenty on the stack-finally finishing The Philosophy Of History In Our Time, starting Battlestar Galactica And Philosophy (thanks witchywomanm!), a couple of other anthologies to finish, and probably using my Barnes & Noble giftcard to catch up with William Gibson.

Exercize Streak: 8

Blog Streak: 281

Writing Streak: 8

Practicing Streak: 283