2010 Reading List

This year I've tried to keep better track of what I've been reading than I have in the past. One of the projects I wasted time on this summer while taking a mental break was cataloging my book collection into a sortable database. The archive currently contains 1814 titles, but I have no real idea how many of them I've actually read. Like most rabid book buyers, I have a lot of books I've just never gotten around to reading (or finishing), for one reason or another - like most avid fans of reading, my budget of funds generally exceeds my budget of time. This is, of course, an ongoing dilemma of the human condition: more funds can always be gained, while more time cannot; and, regrettably, one must trade the latter in order to gain the former, while no matter how much of the former one spends, the quantity of the latter is inexorably fixed.


My Kindle Skin

The following list contains a more or less complete chronology of books read this year, in roughly the order I read them (I generally have more than one going at a time, depending on my mood). I say "more or less" because it does not include articles, snippets, or sections of larger works, such as the Norse mythology sections of Edith Hamilton's Mythology and Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, both of which I re-read this year (along with several others) as background to my present study of the Ring matter. In addition, there are no specifically non-literary reference works included, such a number of Poser 8 and Photoshop CS4 reference manuals I've perused over the course of learning 3D rendering and digital image manipulation this year. Nor are any specifically reference titles included, or any of the vast amount of matter one tends to slog through on the internet each day.

Today we are a society awash in a veritable flow of words, coming at us at an ever-increasing speed and from every conceivable corner of our lives. Computer screens are now the common mode of communication, and the average modern homo sapiens has many forms, from televisions to computer monitors to mobile phones to tablets and dedicated reading devices. The vast majority of people in the Western world spend the better part of their day staring at one screen or another, and what is mainly on them - aside from purely graphic games and shows - is words. For as much as parents and teachers are heard lamenting ever louder our reliance on technology, we are of necessity an increasingly literate society, immersed in a virtual universe of words.

And so, without further ado, here is how I spent a large part of my year:

1. Wagner, Richard - The Ring of the Nibelung (1853/1876; tr. Robb, 1960) *
2. Radcliffe, Ann - The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
3. Lee, M. Owen - Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round (1990)
4. Moore, Christopher - Fool (2009)
5. Sandell, Lisa Ann - Song of the Sparrow (2007) *
6. Cooney, Caroline B. - Enter Three Witches (2007)
7. Patterson, James - Jester (2003)
8. Sturluson, Snorri - Edda (ca.1225; Everyman Edition, tr. Faulkes, 1987) *
9. Anonymous - The Elder Edda (ca.1270; of Saemund the Learned) (tr. Thorpe, 1866)
10. Anonymous - The Elder Edda (ca.1270; tr. Bellows, 1936)
11. Anonymous - The Poetic Edda (ca.1270; tr. Hollander, 1962) *
12. Cornwell, Bernard - The Last Kingdom (Saxon Chronicles I) (2004)
13. Cornwell, Bernard - The Pale Horseman (Saxon Chronicles II) (2006)
14. Cornwell, Bernard - Lords of the North (Saxon Chronicles III) (2007)
15. Cornwell, Bernard - Sword Song (Saxon Chronicles IV) (2008)
16. Darnton, John - The Darwin Conspiracy (2005)
17. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún (ca.1920-30; published 2009) *
18. Irvine, David - Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung & the Conditions of Ideal Manhood (1897)
19. Aldrich, Richard - A Guide to The Ring of the Nibelung (1905)
20. Anonymous - The Fall of the Nibelungs (ca.1200; Prose tr Armour 1897; ill Rackham 1910)
21. Anonymous - The Nibelungenlied (ca.1200; Poetic tr. Needler, 1904)
22. Anonymous - The Nibelungenlied (ca.1200; Prose tr. Shumway, 1909)
23. Anonymous - The Lay of the Nibelungs (ca.1200; Poetic tr. Horton, 1898)
24. Anonymous - Völsunga Saga (ca.1220; tr. Morris & Magnusson, 1888)
25. Anonymous - Völsunga Saga (ca.1220; tr. R.G. Finch, 1965)
26. Dippold, George Theodore - Richard Wagner's Poem ... Explained (1888)
27. Hall Brownell, Gertrude - The Wagnerian Romances (1907)
28. Kobbé, Gustav - How to Understand Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung (1895)
29. Wagner, Richard - The Nibelung’s Ring (1853/76, tr. Forman, 1877)
30. Wagner, Richard - The Ring of the Nibelung (1853/76, tr. Jameson, 1900)
31. Ward, William - A Study of the Inner Significance of Wagner’s Music-Drama (1889/1904)
32. Weston, Jessie L. - The Legends of the Wagner Drama: Studies in Mythology (1896)
33. Fortier, Anne - Juliet: A Novel (2010)
34. Follett, Ken - World Without End (2008)
35. Bryson, Bill - Shakespeare: The World As Stage (2007)
36. Hawking, Stephen - The Grand Design (2010)
37. Akin, Florence - Opera Stories from Wagner (1915)
38. Gernett, Richard - The Twilight of the Gods & Other Tales (1903)
39. Frost, William Henry - The Wagner Story Book (1894)
40. Guerber, H. A. - Stories of the Wagner Opera (1895)
41. Shaw, George Bernard - The Perfect Wagnerite (1898)
42. Morris, William - The Story of Sigurd & the Fall of the Nibelungs (1876)
43. Sprague, Martina - Norse Warfare: Unvconventional Battle Strategies of the Ancient Vikings (2007)

A few of these you'll note are listed more than once, which is not uncommon when reading in translation if you're truly studying the subject (I read ten translations of Beowulf as well as reading it in the original Old English for my research on The Saga of Beowulf). But I count them separately because I read them each in their entirety - often more than once - while compiling my "Comparative Study Editions" (see the Fantasy Castle Books reference page for more on this: you can download them there for FREE!).

The last two entries I am currently reading now, but will finish before the year is out, with perhaps another one or two begun. But doing the math, these alone equate to one book finished every 8.5 days, which isn't bad considering everything else I've been working on in my "free" time. What people mean by "spare time" is beyond me. I guess that must be when I sleep.

A further interesting note here is that of the 43 titles read, only 6 of these were in print editions (those marked with an asterisk) ...only 6 printed paper books read this entire year! And of those, Tolkien's new book is the only one I actually bought this year (in hardback format), while Sandell's was a library loan recommended by a friend; the others were picked up in used book stores over the years. The rest are all ebooks in one format or another - increasingly Kindle toward the end. Not that I haven't laid my digits on a lot more printed paper than that, but most of those are history books and other encyclopedic references, which is likely what print books will be relegated to in my library from this point forward. If I buy any more at all.