So I finally finished reading Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth. It’s more history book than novel. Here you can witness the genius behind the creation of one of the most complex world in literature.

The book is divided into four parts: The First, Second an Third Age (in which the events of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings) and fourth part that explore mainly the Istari, the Druedain and the Palantari.

If your looking for the founding mythology and history of Middle-Earth this is a great place to start, but I only recommend this book to Tolkien buffs.The casual reader might find it a bit tedious.

For those who want to get lost in the vast territories of Middle-Earth I recommend to visit http://www.lotrproject.com

And to see detail maps and sections of buildings you can check this book out.

Also I started reading a book that can be considered a grandchild of Tolkien’s work, I’m obviously talking about Harry Potter. Right now I’m reading year 4 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, from which I have read quite a chunk, 521 pages to be exact.

In my nook I started reading another by one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, this time I choose The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. So far all the genius you can expect from this prolific author.

I also had some time off work and it gave me the opportunity to do a little work in my desert oasis.

I put some new decorative gravel and give the plants a mayor trim. It’s looking quite nice and with the huge shade from the ash tree I think is going to be the perfect reading spot for those warm desert nights.

Almost forgot to mention that I also finish reading Mort by the late great Terry Pratchett. The story focus mainly in Death and his newly acquired apprentice Mort, who takes over Death’s duties while he or she or it, whatever Death is, takes on the “human experience” which in his mind involves petting a huge amount of cats and working as a line cook in a shady tavern. As with all of Sir Terry Pratchett books highly recommended.

So here are the number for this period:

• Total pages for  the eight year : 6,930 pages
• Days left for the eight year: 187 days
• Books left for the eight year: 36 books
• Pages left to read in my goal for the eight year: 14,361 pages
• Total pages of Lost in a million pages: 174,075 pages

Happy Readings

azr

Some signs of spring have pop-up in my little desert oasis. And with it brings my ever present desire to spend some time outside and read.

Some flowers in my plum tree

New Leafs on my Ash tree

In the book front I have just finish reading the longest book in this year list. 1Q84 Libro 1 y 2 by famous japanese author Haruki Murakami. The book is amazing, in starts pretty normal, you know a Murakami normal, but it  gets pretty weird pretty fast, the story is view from two perspectives :Tengo, a quiet math teacher with a tremendous talent for writting and Aomame, a personal trainer/assassin. I won’t spoil much of the story because this book should be read by everyone, but at some point of the story there is “little people” coming out of a death blind goat. Yeah!!!!!

 Also, I hope to finish reading Mort this evening and get deeply into Unfinished Tales, which I have neglected.

The next book up is Viaje a Portugal by the Nobel Prize Winner José Saramago.

I think the my pace has gone up, things are looking better. Here is the numbers so far this year.

• Total pages for  the eight year : 6,160 pages
• Days left for the eight year: 215 days
• Books left for the eight year: 38 books
• Pages left to read in my goal for the eight year: 15,131 pages
• Total pages of Lost in a million pages: 173,305 pages

And finally on the subject of hoarding new things for my ever growing demand of pages I just got some Star Wars comics. They look great and where really cheap, which is always welcome.

For now back to reading.

azr

The next book I’m starting to read is a collection of stories and essays by legendary author of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m sucker for anything Tolkien, it was the author that got me obsessed with books and writers. This book is a glimpse of the fabric that created Middle-Earth, part of it’s myths and legends.

So let’s see how my wonderings back in a fictional place, that feels so much like home, goes.

Happy Readings

azr

It has been quite a while, 3 months and a few days to be exact. I’m please to inform that all is well with my reading and I have so much to write that is hard to start.

So here it goes…

I’ll begin with a side project that started on (Y-7) and it permeated to (Y-8). I’m talking about “6 months of Star Wars”. The really simple premise was to read, for 6 months obviously, only Star Wars Novels from the now dubbed “Legends” universe. This in build up to the december release of Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Let me first say that I loved the movie. Say what you may it had the same effect that the original trilogy had when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old and watch it for the first time. But getting back to the books, it was a great experience, the books really broaded the scope of this great universe. My favorite of the 21 books I read was probably Dark Force Rising  by Timothy Zahn, of all the books I think Mr. Zahn is the best to player in this vast universe of talented creators. The book that most impress me was Red Harvest, the idea of “zombies” or deranged sith if you will sounds a bit off but somehow Joe Schreiber makes it work. Here is the full list of my Star Wars side project.

Eight of this books are part of (Y-8), so in general it was a success.

Right after I finished with the side project I started picking off some of the books in my list for this year, which you can see in this previous entry https://lostinamillionpages.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/reading-list-for-y-8/.

The first book was A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin, what else can I say about this complex and deep series. I really like the book, still A Storm of Swords is still my favorite.

It took me 1 month to read it, but time well spent. The next books where La Frontera de Cristal by Carlos Fuentes, Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett and El príncipe de la niebla by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, in that particular order.

Right now I’m working on three books, 1Q84 Libro 1 y 2 by Haruki Murakami, which is apparently going to be the longest of the year at 944 pages, La larga marcha by Richard Bachman (a.k.a. Stephen King) and on my nook, Mort by the latte great Sir Terry Pratchett.

On the book front this pretty much gets you up to speed, the other cool things that happen over this extended period of time were two that stand out. The first the snow storm that hit my precious Ciudad Juárez the day after christmas. I haven’t seen that much snow in quite a while.

The other is my christmas presents, a gigantic coffee mug of my favorite Star Wars character and the graphic novel Sandman:Overture the newest of the series written by genius Mr. Gaiman.

So that’s in a nutshell my last three months. And to top of this entry here is my progress with this year project and the total in this 1,000,000 pages adventure.

• Total pages for  the eight year : 4,874 pages
• Days left for the eight year: 258 days
• Books left for the eight year: 40 books
• Pages left to read in my goal for the eight year: 16,417 pages
• Total pages of Lost in a million pages: 172,019 pages

happy readings

azr