I participated in my first readathon last weekend. A readathon is an event during which people read books for a certain period of time. This can be to raise money for charity or just for fun. My first readathon was a read-your-own-books readathon, starting Friday morning and ending Monday morning. I managed to read 5 books between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening, but I cheated a little.
The readathon was organized by the Bibliophilic Book Blog and the word was spread via Goodreads.
The books I read were mostly pockets, with each having somewhere between 100 and 150 pages — this is the cheating I mentioned.
My books in reading order:
- The Last Castle by Jack Vance
- Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph by Jack Vance
- Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching by Ralph Alan Dale
Before I started I thought that Ursula K. Le Guin‘s translation/interpretation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching would be better than Ralph Alan Dale‘s, but this was not the case. Ralph Alan Dale‘s book is a more modern interpretation of the 2500 year old verses, more accessible, easier to read and beautifully illustrated with black and white photographs to really get you into the mood. Doing a comparison on Tao Te Ching books could be an idea for yet another article as I already have read 4 of them.
I always wanted to read both The Last Castle by Jack Vance and Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin in a short period of time. The stories are very similar and so I thought, more than half a lifetime ago when I was a huge fan of Jack Vance, that Ursula K. Le Guin must have copied his work.
It was only more recently that I discovered that both books were published in 1966. So who copied who? Or is it possible that 2 very similar stories were published almost simultaneously. I now say that Ursula Le Guin is by far the better writer. Her writing and storytelling is better, her characters are more real and you get to know them, even her fighting and battle scenes are better written. But the comparison between both books will be the topic of a complete article.
The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph by Jack Vance is a combination of old school SciFi and detective story. A fun read.
Conclusion
This one weekend I read 5 books, which gave me inspiration for 3 articles, including this one. All in all a productive weekend. But the fifth book proved a bit too much, it felt more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.
Still, it was fun, devoting a weekend to reading. I am looking forward to doing it again, but not too often – a couple of times a year maybe.
| Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower |
