Lists 2008 - books

Ok I thought I would feed you my lists a little at a time, it makes for frequent updates, and you won't have such a big post to digest.
If your wondering what I mean when I say 'lists', it's like the blogging-highlight of my year (the result from 2007), where I showcase every little scratch of paper I've read, and strip of celluloid I've looked at during the previous year. So actually it's just a resume of my 'cultural artifacts devoured' section, you'll find in the right sidebar. But this year it's gonna be really exciting (for me, probably not for you, if you even read this far lazy bastard), because I've now got the data for two years, so I can do all kinds of crazy and entertaining statistics, like percentages and stuff weeeeeee! And after doing that, I'll make some TOP X lists, sentencing exquisite select artifacts to eternal fame in the annals of history. Who knows, you might even take some of my advice (trust me, I'm practically a professional), and spoil yourself with fore-mentioned artifacts (this might be the personality inducing break you've been waiting for, ending your ceaseless droning in front of X Factor).

Ok, but as I said, I'm gonna break it down in parts, for the already mentioned reasons, plus frankly it's quite a chore, doing all that statistics and calculating.



So I'm gonna kick it of with BOOKS! Yes BOOKS!! They'r just so full of paper.

Ok, first of all, I've added to new sub-categories since 2007, namely comics and plays/short stories. Comics is one of my new great discoveries of 2008 (thank God I'm so broad-minded and all-encompasing! Yay), and I felt it deserved a special mention, and ergo category here on FF. Plays and short stories...well they'r just so easy to read right, it would probably be deemed cheating by the world community if they figured in my book statistic, and I would have to step down as president of FF, and that would be kinda sad.

Ok let us begin ladies and gentlemen with...THE BASICS

• BOOKS READ 2008: 36

That's a pretty decent number, not flashy or anything but nice. An exact average of 3 books a month.

• MOST READ AUTHOR: Haruki Murakami (6 books)
• MOST READ BOOK: Haruki Murakami 'After the Quake' (2 times)

Why...I'm suddenly sort of dizzy with the feeling of deja-vu...Well he's ok I guess.

• FICTION/NON-FICTION RATIO: 31/5

That makes sense...non-fiction pffff.

Ok, now lets go over some fun fun statistic, comparing with the data from 2007.

• BOOKS READ 2007/2008: 36/36 INCREASE/DECREASE: 0%
  
• MOST READ AUTHOR 2007/2008: Haruki Murakami VARIATION: None
• MOST READ BOOK 2007/2008: Norweigian Wood/After the Quake SIMILARITIES: Both by Murakami
  

OH MY GOD, it's exactly the same as 2007! Please if you don't believe me check it yourself. Oh man, that's kind of depressing, exactly the same number, and Murakami leads most read author and book again. God this is a catastrophy.

Well let's hurry and move on from those depressing figures, lets hurry onwards to the...

TOP 3 BOOKS OF 2008
(not counting previously read books)

1. Shit this is gonna be hard, lemme think a little ok?

1. Yasunari Kawabata The Sound of the Mountain
   
2. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina
3. Vladimir Nabokov Lolita

Actually it wasn't that hard. Special mention goes out to Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead.

But it's not over yet, moving on to comics, my new passion. This is a new category, so no funny statistics (cheer up).

• COMICS READ 2008: 54

I've counted the traditional magazine comics and the mangas per volume. I don't really know what to say about this number, is it high? Is it low? Who knows...I like it at least: fiiiiftyyyyy-foooouuurrrr.

• MOST READ AUTHOR: Masashi Kishimoto Naruto (19 volumes)
• MOST READ COMIC: Naruto (19 Volumes)

Yup the Japs are sure here to stay. Lemme throw in another category for some variation:

• MOST READ GRAPHICAL NOVEL AUTHOR: Alan Moore (10 books)

OK then and now to the revealing of THE COMIC TOP 3

1. Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell From Hell
2. Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons Watchmen
3. Daniel Clowes Ghost World
   

That's some fine comics right there.

So almost done, stay with me, quickly moving on to PLAYS AND SHORT STORIES

By further consideration it makes no sense to handle these two types together, so let's just boot the 3 short stories and focus on THE PLAYS

Of course you should see plays and not read them, or maybe both, anyway:

• PLAYS READ: 8
• MOST READ AUTHOR: Anton Chekhov & August Strindberg (2 each)

THE PLAYS TOP 1

1. August Strindberg A Dream Play
   

That's it folks, look forward to the next time where we'll go over the undoubtedly biggest category - films.