The 2019 Done and Dusted Pile, and a little update

Behold, the books that I read in 2019.

It's a more than respectable heap of books, given the dumpster fire of a year I've had. Much of my frame of mind of the past 12 months is reflected in the abundance of horror novels and works of a particularly nihilistic focus; The Vastarien Magazines in particular

but I've also actually managed to cross off a few books that I've been meaning to get to for a while. Titles that any reader and lover of fiction will undoubtedly have heard of; The old Man and the Sea, Beowulf, The Stars my Destination, The Turning of the Screw, Slaughterhouse 5, Roadside Picnic, The Art of War and The Crying of Lot 49.

Also, titles that have gotten used to staring at me in silent, unwinking judgment have also been dealt with; Exquisite Corpse, Lois the Witch, The Spook House, The Grimscribe's Puppets, The Haunted Doll's House, DarkWar and Winter's Dreams, Eldritch Tales, The Green Mile; these have been on my to-be-read shelves for literal years and I'm super happy that I can place them on the big shelves now, out of the dark into the light.

I've also read a bunch of short stories, and though in most cases I finished off the collections I began, there were a few that I didn't quite conclude with. They'll probably be read this year.

I won't do a top 5 of books of 2019 as the blogging is on a bit of a backburn for the moment, as I'm very much going through a season of gaming right now.

Before I began the blog I used to have these 'seasons' where I would obsessively devote all my free time to one specific hobby for a number of months before tiring of it abruptly and switching to another. From gaming to reading to Warhammer to Watching movies and so on. For the past few months I have been gaming more and more, starting from the Witcher 3, to Dead Rising 4, to rogue-lites, to Death Stranding, and now, for the moment Code Vein, which is kinda shit just FYI but nonetheless addictive, and so, reading has definitely become more and more sidelined in favour of obstinate escapism.

It also doesn't help that my book of choice at the moment just happens to be an unexpectedly difficult challenge. I knew The Dragon Waiting was going to be a tough nut to crack, but I didn't quite expect to have such a difficult time engaging with it.

The story requires one to be quite familiar with history, for one, which I really am not but which isn't a problem, but which secondly, and more importantly, requires one to be amazingly intuitive pretty much all of the time. Logically, politically, emotionally, and for the time being this seems to be a little out of my reach, even though it hasn't been like this for me before. I'm honestly wondering if I've been struck stupid in the past year.

Anyway, I'll post more regularly from now on, even if it's occasionally just going to have to be some incoherent trivial nonsense. We'll see how it goes, but for now I'll leave you with a reasonably blurry picture of my bookshelves, where I put all the regular non-Warhammer books that I have read and still own.

It's a bit of a dick move finally posting a picture of my main bookshelves with a less than stellar camera. At this point, I should just buy a new phone, but I'd honestly rather spend the money on some more books :p