The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I took my sweet time re-reading this book, and it was more magical and deep that I remember it.

We get introduced to Lord Morpheus, the king of Dreams, and how he was imprisoned by a order of so called magician, who by the way where expecting to capture Dream older sister Death. Eventually he breaks his imprisonment and sets out to reclaim his almost crumbling kingdom of Dreamland. He needs to recover some of this artifacts to restore said kingdom and he goes to Hell, literally, to do so.

If you haven’t read this amazing comic book do yourself a favor and go out, I do mean right this very instant, and buy it. You won’t regret it.

azr, hopefully making a return among the living.

It has been 15 days since the last entry and they have been mildly productive. At last, after two months, I have finish reading A Storm of Swords in my opinion the best book of the 3 books I have read of a song of fire and ice series. This mark then the beginning of 6 months of Star Wars reading. My plan is to read my all-ready vast Star Wars library and gear-up for the December 18 release of Episode VII. I’m going to begin this challenge with the first book of the series Jedi Academy written by the sci-fi giant Kevin J. Anderson. On a little side note, my challenge of reading 20,000 total pages for year seven before my 34th birthday is going to fail miserably, still I’m determined to finished the larger scope challenge of reading 50,000 + pages for this year. So to recap :

• Total pages for the seventh year: 11,297 pages
• Days left for the seventh year: 143 days
• Pages left to read in my goal for the seventh year:  44,638 pages

Quite a challenge but I’ll have fun with it. This two weeks have also been hectic and really fun, I had the chance to revisited a place that I help design and construct and it’s also one of my favorite spots to go and unwind. To read for a while in total peace. Just with sound of the wind and the trees.

The project consist in a park with a artificial lake holding about 3 million liters of reclaim water. This water comes from the nearby treatment plant is now use to water around 600 plants and is house to various migratory birds. It was a really privilege to work on a project like this and to watch it blossom through the years has been more that rewarding.

The other thing that happen was that my little desert oasis received some much deserved love.  It’s now more that ready for the mild nights of my beautiful desert.

So to open-up this season the order of business is to have a few cold ones and great conversation with friends.

Happy readings!!!!

azr

I know that I said that daily posts but to tell the truth this past two weeks have been real momentum changers.

That been said, I’ll catch you up to what I have been doing.

In the book front I’m still reading Storm of Swords (30% of progress) and The Killing Kind (52% of progress).

In the graphic novel front I finish reading Before Watchmen Vol.2 and have plans to start reading the third and final volume, probably as a light read before sleeping.

The best part from Volume 2 was the dark and gritty take of The Comedian by Brian Azzarello, this prolific author was the perfect fit to tell this story.

From Volume 3 I’m really looking forward to The Crimson Corsair.A story that was told in little snippets throughout the original Watchmen,also the art work seems really cool and the story is by the editor of the original series and comic-book legend Len Wein. It seems really promising.

On the progress front I have some brilliant days and some days I wish to forget, to be honest if I want to achieve my goal one word comes to mind, consistency, the one thing I’m lacking right now. So the run down of the last 12 days go as follow

April 8 – 32 pages

April 9- 20 pages

April 10- 28 pages

April 11-12 pages

April 12-10 pages

April 13- 10 pages

April 14- 34 pages

April 15- 20 pages

April 16- 349 pages (yeah, that’s not a typo)

April 17- 133 pages

April 18 – 156 pages

As you can see some awesome days and most of them a monument the my lack of consistency.

This numbers give me a total of 9,771 pages for this seventh year and a whooping 40,229 pages to go and 178 days to do it.

This gives me a really bumpy road ahead of me, but I think is really manageable.

So ,in recent days I had some inspiration to keep me going, first was in the form of music that I have already listen to and some new gems that I have hear of the groups but never really listen to. My first discovery was The Decemberists and their album The King is Dead, it has been playing at least two or three times a day, especially with my morning coffee. The second group was Death Cab for Cutie, which I know is a fairly popular group but I never really listen to it. I discovered that some of their songs I have already listen to but didn’t know who the group was. And the third group was the Alabama Shakes, that, with Britanny’s cool and raspy voice, almost prophetically, told me just to “Hold On”. The other music that has been really present this days are two albums that have been some of my favorite music of recent memory, Lazaretto by Jack White and Turn Blue by The Black Keys. This kind of music get my juices going, specially late at night with a good book and a glass of wine.

The second thing was the unveiling of the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer, my geek self had a little stroke, followed by about 15 minutes of tears of joy. If you haven’t seen it, or if you where living under a rock, here’s a link to watch it in all it’s glory http://www.starwars.com/video/star-wars-the-force-awakens-official-teaser-2 .

The real reason for my excitement that one of my favorite fictional universes is coming back in a big way, is that this can only mean one thing, new books of the expanded universe. What more can I ask for.

So I will work on my consistency and kick this challenge right on the ass. The order for today is to read 100 pages of Storm of Swords, wish me luck.

Happy Readings

azr

P.S.

The last post was my number 50 on this blog, cheers to those who read it, and hopefully I’ll reach at least 5000 more