My numbers were a little off — which surprised me, really, I thought I had some busy weeks. But, oh well, I seemed to really like almost everything (average rating of 3.99 this month). Maybe I’m getting soft. Or I’m just reading a lot of good books.
The end of the month snuck up on me, I kept wondering why I saw all these August Wrap-Up posts Thursday night, and then I looked at the calendar. So I paused my other post and got this assembled (frankly, that worked out pretty well for me, I just didn’t have the energy to finish the other post). Turns out that August was a pretty good month — I liked everything I read, most things I liked a lot.
I didn’t finish nearly as much as I’d intended to this month — every book I’ve read over the last couple of weeks has taken me at least 1 more day than I’d estimated/planned. There are two books I was supposed to read and write about in July that I haven’t started yet — whoops.
Still, I read a lot of pretty good stuff this month, and that’s the important thing, right?
Read a lot in June — meant to squeeze in 2 more (at least), but that was close enough. I didn’t get nearly as much written as I tried (particularly last week — the book I spent most of last week reading took out all my mental energy). Most of what I read was really good and entertaining, but man…those that weren’t? Blech. Thankfully, The Force made up for it all.
22 books finished — not bad. Looking at this, I’m wondering if I gave out too many 4-Star ratings, but I can’t think of any of those that I’d change, so I guess I just had a really good month.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
One of my long-delayed goals is to write up a good all-purpose Tribute to Douglas Adams post, and another Towel Day has come without me doing so. Belgium.
Next year . . . or later.
Adams is one of those handful of authors that I can’t imagine I’d be the same without having encountered/read/re-read/re-re-re-re-read, and so I do my best to pay a little tribute to him each year, even if it’s just carrying around a towel (I’ve only been able to get one of my sons into Adams, he’s the taller, thinner one in the picture from a couple of years ago below).
TowelDay.org is the best collection of resources on the day, recently posted this pretty cool video, shot on the ISS by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Even better — Here’s an appearance by Douglas Adams himself from the old Letterman show — so glad someone preserved this:
Not as successful as March — in number of things read, or in the quality — there were some things I really didn’t cotton to (which took me longer to read than I prefer). Thankfully, there were a couple of standouts, and a couple of very nice reads, even if I didn’t go ga-ga over them.
All in all, March was a pretty good month — 29 books finished, nearly not enough written (I’m very tired lately, too tired to write, anyway). A good mix of good books and iffy — with a couple of really good ones thrown in. Which is a pretty decent way to spend a hobby/obsession, no?
I really thought I read more last month than I did — not sure how I lost track like that. On the plus side, this is probably the highest percentage of winners I’ve had in a while. I did intend to write more than I did, but I could pretty much say that every month. Anyway…
So, here’s what happened here in January — on the one hand, it seems like barely any time has gone by, and I know I have a low book count for the month (I’ve been very busy, apparently) — yet, I can’t believe I’ve read some of these great books already this year.
