Finally 147!!!!

After months of having my to be read number bouncing back and forth between 148 and 149, I have finally pushed it down to 147. The Hydrogen Sonata, the Culture book I let my wife talk me into buying when it was a Kindle Daily Deal, got the honor of being the book that gave me my first bit of progress towards Book Shelf Zero in several months. I always go into those Iain Banks books thinking they will be quick reads only to have them go on for weeks and weeks. I thought I would make it through Excession on vacation (I had a week) and failed (despite all the extra reading time I picked up at the beach thanks to crappy weather). The latest Culture book was also something I thought would go quickly only to have it take weeks to read.

The Hydrogen Sonata is the tenth Culture book. This one fits the formula pretty well. A central conflict is set up, the Minds gather to discuss, a human is pulled in, and the event unfold to a neat conclusion. It was a fun read despite repeating a formula very similar to Excession (which is actually referenced, kind of unusual in a series where each book's story is largely independent of what happened in the other books). I'm eager to move on to another Culture book, but I have to finish another of my owned books before I will buy one of the four Culture novels I still need to read. I want to push my to be read number lower still before I make another book purchase.

That next book will be Martin Chuzzlewit. I set this latest attempt to read another Dickens book aside while I read The H Sonata. I have read 20 pages or so in the few days since finishing the Culture novel. It's a bit of a drag at this point, but I'm still really early in the novel (yes, even a quarter of a way through the book I'm still in the early stages by Dickens standards). I know that it will pick up and read quickly once all the scenarios are in place. I just hope I can get there before the year ends. I still have a long way to go in the novel. I expect to have a pretty slow week at work. I have the ebook version of the novel in my work phone. I may use time just sitting at my desk to read a bit. A hundred or so pages read at work would make a big difference in finishing this one by the end of the year. (Thinking about reading a Dickens book at work reminds me of reading the climax of Bleak House on a computer while I was in grad school.)

Asymmetry will be a drag on finishing my Dickens book for this year. This is a much more engaging novel. It's also short and easy to read. The dialogue is so natural and the story moves despite much in the way of detail. The politics are predictably annoying, but the writing is worth overlooking the predictable liberal worldview of the central characters. This is a book I will definitely finish before the end of the year. I'm currently at 42 books read in 2018. I would like to hit 45. We'll see if that happens.