After loving Dune I couldn’t help myself and I went right to the second part in the Dune series, Dune Messiah. It’s twelve years after the ending of Dune. The jihad of the Fremen is raging through the universe, leaving billions death and the Guild and Bene Gesserit are noticeably less influential than they used to be. I can’t say much more about the plot without spoiling the first book, but the main issue is a plot to kill Paul and return the Guild and the Bene Gesserit to their former greatness.
This book is so much more philosophical than the last one, which makes me think that I may need to read this again in a couple of years. It is a great continuation of the previous story, expanding the story and the universe. A great sequel, four out of five stars.

This is one of the books from my father’s collection. I have had it on my shelves a couple of years now, but now, with my new reading resolution to read more award winners, I had to read it. The book was originally published in 1965, my edition is the Dutch translation from 1978.
The story is that of the Atreides family, a noble family living in the galaxy. It is 20.000 years in the future, and while mankind lives among the stars on strange planets, the society is strangely backwards. Computers and robots have been outlawed, instead the society has mentats, humans trained as computer replacements, The Guild takes care of mathematics, and the order of the Bene Gesserit who try to control the mankind by long (loooong) term breeding projects. The galaxy is ruled by an emperor, has many noble families, a guild and the landsraad all influencing politics and daily life. Anyway, the Atreides are lured in a trap by the Harkonnen family and given the planet Dune or Arrakis to rule. From Arrakis comes the spice/melange, essential for life everywhere, very expensive, hard to get and addictive. The Atreides try to survive the trap. Meanwhile, several prophecies and plans come to head with Paul Atreides, the son of the Duke, who turns out to be a lot more special and powerful than everybody thought.
When reading Dune I kept being reminded of the science fiction of Iain M. Banks. The book isn’t science fiction in the sense of technology. Yeah the people travel through space, but have no robots, computers, technology, longevity etc. Daily life itself is very backward, with nobles and an emperor and without democracy or equality. Banks has some books like that, more focussed on the story and how it comes together than trying to impress the readers with what he thinks of the future. Dune hardly shows its age (excluding robots and computers was a smart move) and is a very good story still. Five out of five stars.

I have had this book, a Hugo winner, on my shelf for over a year now, and now that I have read it, I wish I had read it sooner. It is a wonderful science fiction story, which has two sequels already which I can’t wait to get and read.
It is the day after tomorrow, and all the stars disappear. Soon it is discovered that the Earth is encapsulated in a shield that keeps out everything, starlight, moonlight, sunlight. An artificial sun keeps the Earth alive. In the book we follow the twins Jason and Diane Lawton, and their friend Tyler through their lives. They are teenagers when the shield appears. Jason, who is smart and being groomed as an heir to his father’s business, and who makes solving the shield his only job in life, Diane who loses herself when the shield appears, and Tyler, the son of their housekeeper who will be a doctor and Jason’s closest confidant. Over the next thirty years the world, mostly through Jason, tries to figure out what is going on and how to solve it. One of the first things they figure out is that time outside of the shield moves a lot faster than inside. Soon Earth won’t be habitable anymore, despite the shield.
I loved everything about this book. The story of the three main characters and how each deals with the shield differently. The story of what the shield is, who installed it and what it is for. The story of what happens when time moves a lot faster in space than on Earth. It all integrates great in the book, which tells the story chronologically, with chapters of the far future spliced in between. Even though the future is pretty bleak, the story never got very depressing, there is always hope. A very deserving Hugo winner, five out of five stars.

In 2011 I read more and more science fiction. I also read a lot of books from lists (Prize winners, nominees and must-read lists). So, what do I want to read next year?

More of the same, for one thing. I really enjoyed most of what I read, and discovered some great stuff (George R.R. Martin, Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin). But I also want to do something different.

1. I want to reread books I loved.
   There are some books I read the last few years that were brilliant. Books that have stayed with me, and which I remember fondly. I almost never reread anything, because there is always something new to enjoy. But this year, I want to reread some of my favorites, hoping that I will still love them. I hope to reread in 2012: The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (after reading The Hobbit for the first time), Anathem by Neal Stephenson and the Harry Potter and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.
2. I want to try out some new (well-loved) series.
   I already follow some series, but the more the merrier :D. In 2012 I want to try the Discworld series. I tried to read one later novel a long time ago and didn’t like it, but who knows, if I start at the first one, maybe it will grab me. I also want to try The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Ringworld and Malazan Book of the Fallen. And that is just the few series of which I already have the first book in my bookcase.
3. I want to read what I own.
   I might have bought too many books in 2011. Where I (and my boyfriend, but his part is negligible) bought or received 171 books in 2010 (a nice number), we bought or received 521 books in 2011. So, read more of what I own. But I won’t promise to stop buying :D.
4. Read more classics.
   And with classics I don’t only mean those nice Penguin Classics of nineteenth century novels, but also modern classics. So, read more of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus award winners, and also more of the Booker winners and nominees, and finding some other award lists that I might like. And continue on reading more of the 1001 books you must have read before you die list.

I have no idea how well I do, but this will give me some handles to select my reading for this new year, and at the end of the year, I can look back and see if these goals changed my reading in any way.

In an effort to read more award-winning books, and even more (classic) science fiction, I picked Double Star by Robert Heinlein as my first read of 2012. It is the oldest unread Hugo winner I own, and even though I have 8 books by Heinlein on my shelves (or in boxes, because the shelves are overflowing), I had never read anything by Heinlein.
This is the story of Lorenzo, an actor. It is the future, and mankind has met the Martians, Venetians and other aliens. We have colonies on the moon and live and travel to the planets. There is one great human empire, ruled by the figure-head Emperor Willem (yes, of Orange, great to see our royal house do so well in the future). Lorenzo is contacted to do the acting job of his life, which leads him to a nest of Martians (who he can’t stand) and to a meeting with the emperor himself.
The book was written in the fifties, and in some ways shows its age. The only woman is an in-love-with-her-boss secretary, and computers are nowhere to be found (slide rules are still going strong). And except for aliens and space travel, the book isn’t really science fiction. It is more about politics and could have taken place on earth, where the aliens are people from a different culture. But all this doesn’t matter if you keep it in mind. It is a very enjoyable novel, short but good. Four out of five stars.

This year, I feel my reading has been a lot of catching up. Books that other people loved to bits years ago I have been discovering just now. I have read some great modern classics, it has been hard to pick just five. But, my five most favorite reads of 2011 are:

A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
I found this book cheaply and remembered hearing about the (then upcoming) TV show by HBO. I decided I should read it. When some of my friends found out I hadn’t read it yet they were jealous I could experience it for the first time. And for me, the hype is true, what a great story. After this book I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the other parts, and I am proud to say that I have read all books in the series this year, and have joined the impatient fans waiting for the sixth book.
This book, while seeming a fantasy story, is more about power, love, war, and family. I love how you can never be sure with Mr. Martin where the story will go, who will win, or who will survive. Fantastic stuff.

The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
On the blogs I read I picked up on the anticipation for the sequel to this book, The Wise Man’s Fear. I figured if so many people where excited for book two, book one must have been quite something. And it sure was. Great storytelling, great world building, and a great adventure.

Ender’s Game – Oscar Scott Card
In my mission to read more science fiction, more of the classics, I picked up Ender’s Game. And I wasn’t sorry. Even though I am no fan of those books concerning space wars, this was fantastic. Ender is great, the universe that is built up is… well not great but a good story, and the ending… I have part two already on my shelves, and I can’t wait to start it.

The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
This is a classic, even for me. I have read this book many times (in Dutch) when I was a child, and loved the movie. I have been looking forever for an English copy printed in two colors (like the Dutch book I read before), but when I found a second-hand copy in English I could not resist. It is as great as I remember it, a wonderful story of a fantasy world to keep our world in balance and of a boy being teased.

The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
This may be one of the most hyped books of 2011. Hypes don’t always deliver, but I (and many others with me) can honestly say, this one did. A wonderful, magical book about magicians, feuds, contests and love. A book to lose yourself in, especially in the dreary weather we are having now.

In 2011 my reading goal was to read 100 books. Last year, 2010, I read 132, so 100 books should be do-able. And it was, because this year I read 153 books, I finished the last one this morning. Tomorrow I will do a post of my five favorite books of this year (not published this year but read by me), but in this post I want to share some of my nerdy reading stats. For the first time this year I did some serious tracking of my reading, not only making a list, but also tracking the number of pages, language, kind of book, ratings etc. I also entered the data for 2010, 2009 and 2008 to make comparisons possible. I know, I am a nerd. But now I do have these nice stats :D.

The first table shows how many books I read each year. A slight dip in September, because I had the whole month off from work and we were on vacation. Strange, I know, but since I do my reading on my commute to and from work, I always read less when I don’t have to work. Same thing goes for December.

The books I read this year were pretty good, no 1 or 2 stars. This is partly because I abandoned one book I really couldn’t stand (Night Train to Lisbon), and I took some more care in selecting the books I read. I tried to evaluate each book for what it was meant to be, so a young adult novel, while nowhere near as brilliant as a Haruki Murakami book, can also be four stars, because it is a good YA novel.

This graph shows the total number of books I read each month in the past four years. This year was pretty similar to last year (I also had my holiday in September then). The last two years I have been reading more and more, and you can see that here.

This is the total number of books I read the last few years, reading more and more each year. However, I think +/-150 books a year is my max. I read towards my goal of 100, which I surpassed. However, I read some pretty big books of 1000+ pages, and read without pressure. I know myself, and I know if I set the goal of 175 for next year, I won’t pick up those big novels as easily. So 100 will remain my goal, and everything else is a bonus.

This graph shows the total number of books read at the end of each month. This shows that in the beginning of this year I read a bit less than last year, and then I read more and more. The previous years, 2009 and 2008 lag far behind.

But what does reading lots of books say if they are all 50 pages? So I also tracked the number of pages I read each year, to see if I really did read more. And I did. I was surprised to see that even though I only read 31 more books this year, I read 18000 more pages. That is insane. Just insane.

I also track the language of the books I read each year. Blue is Dutch (my mother tongue), green is English, yellow is German. I used to read almost only English books, because the books popular in England and written by British and American writers appeal more to me. But this year I couldn’t buy books as I used to, and had to save money. So I became a member of the public library, and I also bought a lot of second-hand books. And these were mostly in Dutch, translations from English. I’d rather read the English version, but if I have to choose between a price of €0,50 for the Dutch version or €10,00 for the English one, I know which one I’ll pick. I sometimes read German (not this year) when a book is published by one of my favorite writers, John Ajvide Lindqvist. He is a Swedish writer, and most of the time his books are translated in German first.

The last graph shows the kind of books I have read, fiction (blue), non-fiction (green) and graphic (yellow). This year it was mostly fiction, and some non-fiction (mostly history books).

Well, that was my reading in 2011. Next week I will also do a post about my reading goals/wishes for next year.

My last book of 2011 is An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is the story about and told by a Japanese artist just after World War II, who is coming to terms with his role in the war and Japanese nationalism.
The main character, Ono, is an old widow living in Tokyo. He tells the readers about the struggle to find a good husband for his youngest daughter. While he tells this story, we as readers find out about Ono’s life and career, and the different way the younger generations look towards what he has accomplished. He was a very respected artist, and now the view on his work, which was nationalistic, has changed, and also the view towards elders has changed. Slowly Ono comes to terms with this, and the changing world.
The “Floating World” refers to the world of pleasure before the rise of Japanese nationalism, and the world in which Ono was trained. He says that with his later works he wanted to fight against this superficial world, with a few rich people and many poor. It takes him some time to realize that what he has done, or worked for, wasn’t all good.
Like the other Ishiguro books that I have read, I loved the language and the story telling. His works have a slow rhythm to them, part of it is also about the feeling it gives you it seems to me. I really enjoyed this work, and the story. Four out of five stars.

I don’t know how, or from where, but the title “The Day of the Triffids” (or De Triffids komen in the Dutch version) has always (in my memory) been familiar to me. I have never seen the film, and had never read the book, so when I saw this book in a second hand bookshop I picked it up.
It’s the seventies, and in a hospital Bill wakes up to a strange day. He has bandages across his eyes, due to an accident the week before, but he can hear something is wrong. He hears no traffic, no people, only screams now and then. When he investigates he finds that everybody who has seen the spectacular green meteor shower the night before has woken up blind. The rest of the story is the story of how Bill and a few others try to come to grips with what has happened, and try to survive. And the Triffids? They are plants, or plant-like, that have appeared a few years before, that are more than just your average invasive species, even more so after the blindness has struck.
For such an old book (first published in 1951, pretty old for a sci-fi novel) it seemed pretty modern to me. For me it reminded me of The Road, Oryx and Crake, and of The Passage, both stories of people trying to survive in a very bleak dystopian future. The story was very good, and seemed very realistic too. Like all older novels it was pretty short (my version was 256 pages), for me it could have been as massive as The Passage, but it was still very good. What else can I say, for lovers of dystopian novels, this is a must read. Five out of five stars.

After seeing some Doctor Who reruns on TV this past week, I couldn’t wait to pick up another Doctor Who book to dive back into that world and experience another Doctor Who adventure.
In this book, the Doctor (the ninth), Rose and Captain Jack are on a world that has been colonized by humans. But even though we are far into the future, progress hasn’t been made. The strangest thing is that dreaming, lying and fiction are illegal on this planet. At first they suspect a sinister ruling force trying to keep the human population dumb, but soon the Doctor figures out that the truth is a lot more complicated than that.
What can I say? Like the other Doctor Who books, this was another fun read, in the same vein as the show and the other books. I loved being back with the Doctor and Rose, and am glad I have a few more waiting for me. Four out of five stars.