Review of 2009 and What's Coming in 2010

This was an different year for me. I start working on an hard scheduled and that messed up my mind for some months. My physical conditions did hampered my reading as well... In the end it was not a lost year but it could have been better.

I've read only 73 books. And 11 of them I didn't finish. That's a new for me. As I said I wasn't good on my mind and some books didn't grab me.

But I will read them eventually...

My Top of the List books were

Gunheads by Steve Parker

On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

No Boundaries by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Harry Potter the first three books

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Cadian Blood by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

My Least Favourite or dissapointed of the year were

Only Forward - Michael Marshall Smith

Blood County - Curl Selby

Icebound - Dean Koontz

November's Mourns - Tom Piccirilli

Out of the Ashes - William W Johnstone

The Execution Channel - Ken Macleod

Shadow of the Xel'Naga - Grabiel Mesta

The Return of the Time Machine - Egon Friedell

Well let us see what this new year will bring. I will try to read more books than this year. 100 books is my goal.

Some of the books/authors that I will try to read...

Rick Riordan (The first three books)

Harry Potter (the other four)

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Two books by José Rodrigues dos Santos (our own Dan Brown)

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The first book of Dune (finaly)

Some Vampire Hunter D books (finally as well)

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Under the Dome - Stephen King

Flash Forward - Rober J Saywer

K J Parker

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Dean Koontz

Ice Station by Matthew Reilly

Ramsey Campbell

Mel Odom

Brent Wekks

R Scott Baker

John Scalzi

The City and the City

Of Course many books of Black Library (I've got them all), Abaddon (I've got them all as well), Solaris (I've got plenty of them) and AngryRobots (I've got several of them) and Forgottem Realms

Well...

This is my want to read list... There are several I forgot to mention and several will come up with time. I will try to make more revies this year... Maybe a little smaller...

Good day to you all...

Review: Mort – Terry Pratchett

Book Mort
Author Terry Pratchett
Pages 272
Year 1987
Publisher Corgi
Reading time 26 days (I was reading several books at the same time.)
Rating 8.5 / 10

Mort is an unpromising, gangling teenager who becomes as apprentice toDeath, but proves less than gifted at his new task of ushering souls out of the world. In fact, when it comes to the rather attractive Princess Keli (due to be assassinated) Mort fluffs it completely. He kills the assassin instead, thus interfering with the implacable workings of Fate. But reality isn’t changed so easily; history as it should have been begins to take shape around Keli’s city-state of Sto Lat. Can Mort save Keli before she is squeezed out of existence?

Death, having delegated much of his work to Mort, is displaying disturbingly human characteristics: drinking, dice-playing and becoming curious about the nature of fun. Mort, meanwhile, is becoming much less cheery and showing a worrying tendency to

SPEAK IN HOLLOW CAPITALS…

Everyone knows Terry Pratchett. Before of this book I’ve only read a book by him. It was Good Omens written by him and Neil Gaiman. I started several years ago another book but I didn’t enjoyed and didn’t finish.. Carpet People. Several years and several hundreds book later I tried again. I was… suprised. Before reading this book I watch Hogfather on my PC and it featured DEATH so I gave it a tried. In the beginning was hard to get into the world because of the nosenses but after reading several pages I was enjoying his writing style and all the comic and references to our universe. The plot itselfs it’s simple (or isn’t?). DEATH wants to train someone to cover for him. He want’s to learn what makes humans human. In the beginning we see him training young Mort and it resembles the first movies of Karate Kid. There are two other residents (well three if you count the horse); Albert the buttler and DEATH’s daughter (not real one) Ysabell. After teaching him the arts he entrusts Mort with several responsabilities while he take humans small pleasentries like drinking, fishing, dancing, gambling etc… Mort starts doing DEATH job and one of them doesn’t go as plan and he saves accidently a princess. But the problem is that reality doesn’t know that and so everyone (with the exception of mages) think that she is dead or simply ignore it.

The pace of the book is fast and the plot advances nicely. There are several secondary plots like Albert part on all, DEATH’s expriences, the princess way of coping of being (un)alive and several others… We get several (to be expected) cultural references and jokes that I enjoyed. The characters are funny and their talk is typic british. Next book I will read by Pratchett will be the first… Colour of Magic