Summer Reading

I haven't been a very good reader this year or at least not as good as last year. I think so far this year I've managed to get through two Chuck Klostermans (leaving only his latest "Eating the Dinosaur" to be read), one David Sedaris, the eponymous companion novel to Coheed and Cambria's "Year of the Black Rainvow" album, and then I can't remember if I read one or both of those Dan Kennedy books last year. I've got Norman Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron" on deck. I came across it via a sort of sideways recommendation by Warren Ellis when he mentioned this novel as an influence for his seminal "Transmetropolitan" comic series. It remains sitting on my side table though as I force myself to plow through my stack of unread graphic novels.

I seem to have a rather bad habit of acquiring graphic novels that I either never read or take months, sometimes years to read. This usually happens when I go to the comic shop and find nothing new to buy or that one time I visited New York a year and a half ago and didn't have any montly titles I wanted out at the time. I can't leave the comic ship without a purchase, so I'll often look for some interesting GN to pick up. This has served me well in the past, but has also left me with books I don't need to read right away.

As of last week my stack included the fourth volume of "100 Bullets", the second volume of the "Flight" anthology, the "Ace Trucking Co." collection I bought in New York, the third volume of "Batman: Black and White" that I also bought in New York, the second volume of "Berlin" (which will require to re-read the first volume thanks to the half-decade it too Lutes to finish it), "Batman: Year 100" (which I started, but never finished), volume 4 of "Freakangels", and "I Kill Giants". I was able to get through 100 Bullets, I Kill Giants, and Freakangels, and start Flight volume 2, but there's still a lot to go. This is a stack built up over the course of at least a year and a half though.

My goal is to deplete the pile before starting another traditional book and then to be sure that I get to any GN's between regular books or during my normal comics reading time in the future. The ultimate goal of this being to buy more comics. If I read everything I have then I can justify buying more and not only do I still need to finish 100 Bullets before I can satisfy my desire to collect the Hellboy GN's, but I know there are other fantastic stories like I Kill Giants out there waiting for me. In the end though, if having too much to read is a problem, it's a problme I'm glad to have.