Reading Extravaganza

Last night I finished book six of the Harry Potter series, The Half-Blood Prince, and promptly read the first 40 pages of the Deathly Hallows because it was my first real foray into uncharted territory with the series. This isn't entirely true because the amount of information and number of events that are in all of the books but don't make it to the movies is staggering, especially with book six where there are some key explanations of the origin, history, and even major motivations of the primary villain that are skimmed or completely skipped in the movie.

I am currently 83% of the way through the entire HP series, which means on Saturday and Sunday of this weekend I read a full 10% of the series and put myself WAY ahead of schedule. This is exactly what I wanted to do, but to be honest the books made it easy to accomplish. I now often find myself contemplating exactly what it is about certain books (HP being at the forefront right now) that make them so popular, interesting, easy and enjoyable to read.

As I've said a few times before, the crazy thing to me is that in just over two months I've read through six books, which is incredible for me considering the books are from 300 to 800+ pages which I would normally read much slower and do one book over the course of 1-2 months (or more). Both Becky and I are really hoping this continues even after I'm finished reading HP, because she is dying for me to get through all of the Wheel of Time books that are out so far, thankfully I have a bit of a head start because I'm currently almost all of the way through book 4, out of I guess 11+ books? Good god, that's going to be crazy.

Also on my reading list:

• Dune (the second time through will be awesome)
• Dark Tower
• 1984
  
• many and various HP Lovecraft short stories
  
• Game of Thrones (maybe?)
• Fall of Public Man and Conscience of the Eye (by Richard Sennett, Architecture/design/sociology books)
  

I'd actually love for anyone reading this to make further suggestions, if I haven't already read it I may end up adding it to my list and you will have greatly contributed to my edification in the wonderful world of books!