12 Months. 12 Trilogies. My New Reading Project.

[00:00:00]So, there's a really popular website in the entertainment business called Collider.

[00:00:05]Mostly pop culture, TV, streaming, movies. Does cover books occasionally, but it's an entertainment website, not a literature website. But they sent me a notification that they had just published an article, and I got the title of it written down here. It's called the 10 best book trilogies of all time ranked. And I immediately thought I'd be surprised.

[00:00:28]I just don't see Collider as a place to go for that kind of literary advice. But I thought I'd give it a look anyway because I do like trilogies. I do like spending a lot of time with a specific author in a specific book. To me, a trilogy is like even better than a chunker or or a mammoth because it's three big books instead of just one.

[00:00:50]They don't necessarily big books, but a lot of times they are. Anyway, so I went through the list and I thought, man, I could do better than that. So, here I am with an alternative list and an idea for a project, a reading project. I've had reading projects on my mind. This is my 12 trilogies in a year project. So, uh, this ought to be a cool fun video. My name is Randy Ray and, uh, this is the literate Texan. It's my channel on YouTube where I talk about books and literature, high brow, lowbrow, everything in between and try not to get too judgy or or or snobbish about anything. But here I am. I'm going to get judgy and snobish and I'm going to be a little pedantic even. So, the first thing I thought was, okay, if you got a list of trilogies from Collider, are they going to go the easy way out? Are they really going to tell me that The Lord of the Rings is the best trilogy of all time, even though Lord of the Rings isn't a trilogy?

[00:01:48]Okay, now let me point something out.

[00:01:50]Okay, I'm being pedantic when I say that Lord of the Rings was written as one book, but it was released as three separate books. And I think it is justifiable to refer to it as a trilogy.

[00:02:01]I don't think it makes anybody ignorant to call it a trilogy or to think of it in those terms. Your mileage may vary.

[00:02:08]Some some Tolken nerds will get real upset with you for referring to it as a trilogy, which which amuses me because I I thought it was a trilogy all my life up until the last few years when I learned that that was never the intention. So, it turns out there were so many pages it was just too unwieldy to publish in one volume, even though that's how Tolken had intended it. At any rate, that was the number one on the list. Okay, so no surprise there. I didn't need a list from Collider to tell me that. So, but you know that means that only 90% of the list is going to apply to you. What else made the list?

[00:02:42]Was it was any of it any uh any worthwhile. And I'm going to give you the their whole list, right? I'm going to tell you they I'm not going to go into detail. I'm not going to give you the the little commentary that they provided. But number 10 on their list was the Sprawl trilogy from uh William Gibson. Okay.

[00:03:01]Now, I love this choice. Actually, this is a really cool science fiction trilogy that was kind of one of the the early cyberpunk series of novels. Uh it's the the series of novels that starts with Neurommancer. A lot of people like the first time I read Neurommancer, I didn't realize it was the first book in a series of three books, but it is.

[00:03:19]There's a second book called Count Zero and a third book called Mona Lisa Overdrive. So, I thought, okay, that's pretty cool that they've got that in there. And that's from uh the 1980s, too. So, I also like the time frame of it, you know. Um, a lot of these kinds of lists have a recency bias, which I think is unfortunate.

[00:03:38]I was, of course, less impressed with the next few choices. Number nine is The Hunger Games from Suzanne Collins, which is fine. Is it one of the top 10 trilogies of all time? I don't think so.

[00:03:49]Um, but yeah, The Hunger Games are fine.

[00:03:52]Those were in published between 2008 and 2010. Number eight is the Bill Hajes trilogy from Stephen King from 2014 to 2016. These books are fine, too. This is a series of crime novels that he wrote, starting with Mr. Mercedes.

[00:04:07]And um they're okay. They're they're crime novels. You know, they they do have a horror element to them. They're still Stephen King books. I mean, you know, it's hard for him to get away from that. And they're okay, but do they belong on this list? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe maybe not. Then you've got u the Broken Earth trilogy from 2015 to 2017. This is a series of books written by NK Json. I have this trilogy. I've been meaning to read it.

[00:04:35]I've heard it's good. It gets recommended all the time, though. There is nothing surprising or exciting about being recommended this this trilogy, which which is okay if you don't want to if you don't want to write a list that delights in surprises. That's okay. And Collider did not. Um, number six, I thought was another really surprisingly good choice. This was as good a choice as number 10. and it's called Underworld USA from James Elroy. These are crime novels from 1995 to 2009.

[00:05:05]And then um what was next on their list here? Okay, so did I lose my notes?

[00:05:12]No, I did not lose my notes. My notes are stuck together. Mistborn arrow one from Brandon Sanders Sanderson from 2006 to 2008 is the next one on their list. I haven't read anything by Brandon Sanderson.

[00:05:27]I don't know. I I don't get the impression that he's a literary giant.

[00:05:30]Maybe he is, but I don't know. This just I kind I was kind of surp I was just surprised to see it on the list. Number four was the first law trilogy from Joe Alber 2006 to 2008. Not a surprise. I have it. Um I started reading it a while back and and what I read of it was good.

[00:05:48]I didn't finish it. That doesn't mean it was bad. You know, does it belong on this list of greatest of all time? I don't know. I'm not a big fan of greatest of all time lists anyway. You know, I'd rather uh books you've never heard of list would thrill me more. Uh but you know, like I say, it's no surprise. And then number three, his Dark Materials 1995 to 2000 was from Philip Fulman. This is a young adult series that I almost put on my own list, but I decided that I was going to do a no overlap list. So, it's not on my list, but if I were going to choose one of the books on this list to put on my list, this this would probably be it.

[00:06:29]Okay. It's good stuff. Um, yeah. And then, uh, that's been made into a movie, The Golden Compass. That that's the first series in the series, but it's also been made into an HBO miniseries.

[00:06:42]Number two, this was a cool one. I thought this was a nice they included it. The Dartanian romances 1844 to 1850.

[00:06:50]These are uh the three musketeers novels from uh unless I'm mistaken by Alexander Duma. I think uh I think it's really cool that they were willing to get that historical and that French. And then of course number one was the Lord of the Rings. But you know what I saw when I looked at this was a trilogy or a list of trilogies that didn't include a broad enough coverage of the literary cannon in my opinion. Um, five of the books have been published in the last 15 or 20 years, you know. So, I just didn't feel like it was broad enough in terms of era. I didn't feel like it was broad enough in terms of genre. It was largely fantasy. And of course, admittedly, fantasy really does like to publish trilogies because of the Lord of the Rings, oddly enough. Um, but so I thought, you know, a couple days ago, I had made a video about reading projects, and I'll include a link to that video and a link to the Collider article in the description below. So, just check that out at your leisure. It'll also have a list of the the trilogies that I'm going to talk about in this video.

[00:07:51]But I thought, you know, I don't have enough reading projects. In fact, last night I was lamenting a little bit of decision fatigue. I couldn't decide what to read next. And I don't want to be that person that sits around for an hour browsing through his Kindle, not reading, trying to decide what to read next. Because you know what? Your brain can't really tell the difference between you reading and you browsing through books. So, you know, if you wasted an hour browsing through books trying to decide what to read, your brain thinks you're reading and you just keep doing it. That's no good. I don't want to be that guy. So, if you've got projects going on, what you're going to read has already been decided ahead of time. You don't have to make a decision. You just sit down and read. So, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I had a project where I spent the next year reading a trilogy each month? 12 months, 12 trilogies. And that's what I'm going to present here. This list of trilogies that I'm going to present is in roughly chronological order. It's not in perfect chronological order in terms of when these were written, but it does cover a broad array of genres and countries and uh and it's important and I I say it covers a broad it's broader than the collider list. Okay. Um it's probably not broad enough or diverse enough, but but still it's better than the collider list. The first one on my list is uh the USA trilogy from John Doss Passes. My first encounter with this was in an American literature class I took in college, but these were written in the 1930s and published then and they helped define modernism in American literature.

[00:09:32]These three books are about a wide variety of characters and their lives during the first three decades of the 20th century. and he used some experimental techniques that have gone on to allow people to do things in novels that they never would have thought was possible before. So, so this is really cool set of books here. Um, news reels and camera eye were the names of the uh the the sections that that created the experimental stuff. These were uh let's see the 42nd parallel was the first in the series, then 1919 and then the big money. One of the things that I like about this particular trilogy too is that you can get it on the Kindle through Delelfie collections for like a buck.99 or $2.99. You can get John Dos Passos's complete works. It's worth doing because he's a good writer.

[00:10:28]The Dely edition has a photograph here of what the first edition of the the first novel looked like. I think that's really pretty. Uh, one of the things that I like to do when I make uh, videos like this is let these books speak for themselves a little bit. So, I'm going to read an excerpt from this for you if you'll bear with me. And it's just going to be a sentence or two in this case, but he starts off with a really long sentence which is really cool. Um, let me see here pictures of the author. The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thins into the night streets. Feet are tired from hours of walking. Eyes greedy for warm curve of faces. Answering flicker of eyes, the set of a head, the lift of a shoulder.

[00:11:13]The way hands spread and clench. Blood tingles with wants. Mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and stinging. Muscles ache for the knowledge of jobs, for the road renders pick and shovel work. The fisherman's knack with a hook when he hauls on the slithering net from the rail of the lurching twler. The swing of the bridgeman's arm as he slings down the white hot rivet. The engineer's slow grip wise on the throttle. The dirt farmer's use of his whole body when winging the mules, he yanks the plow from the furrow. The young man walks by himself, searching through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy ears taught to hear by himself alone. That's the first two sentences. I almost want to quit making the video and just read the trilogy. That's how beautiful I think that language is. That's pretty impressive to me. Okay, so that's the first one on my list of a dozen trilogies to read over the next year.

[00:12:09]That's called The USA Trilogy by John Doss Passos. Number two on my list is a reread for me, but I read this one when I was in seventh or eighth grade. I don't remember which one. This is a CS Lewis trilogy called The Space Trilogy, which was originally published in the 1930s and the 1940s. I read this because my art teacher loaned me these three books and she highly recommended them. I had read the Chronicles of Narnia and loved it. So why would I not also love this and this is a series of books about a phologist I think his name is Ransom Elman Ransom who wanders into other worlds and philosophically looks at good and evil through a lens of uh Christianity among other things. CS Lewis gonna write about Christianity if he touches on no other things at all.

[00:13:03]And so u so yeah, I've got a picture to show you of that and I'm going to read you a little bit of it too. Okay, so here's the cover and it's the whole trilogy. I think it's just lovely.

[00:13:16]Uh the Out of the Silent Planet, Paralandra and that hideous strength. I think that hideous strength is such a great title, too. But let me read just a little bit of this for you, too. Chapter one. The last drops of the thunderher had hardly ceased falling when the pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut tree into the middle of the road. A violent yellow sunset was pouring through a rift in the clouds to westward. But straight ahead, over the hills, the sky was the color of dark slate. Every tree and blade of grass was dripping, and the road shone like a river. The pedestrian wasted no time on the landscape, but set out at once with the determined stride of a good walker, who has lately realized that he will have to walk farther than he intended.

[00:14:07]That indeed was his situation. If he had chosen to look back, which he did not, he could have seen the spire of much Natterby, and seeing it might have uttered a maladiction on the inhospitable little hotel, which though obviously empty, had refused him a bed.

[00:14:25]Really, really great stuff. CS Lewis, just such a good writer. But yeah, that's uh that's number two on my list.

[00:14:31]That's a great trilogy, and I'm I'm really excited to include it on my list.

[00:14:36]Next on my list is a fantasy trilogy called the Gormanghast trilogy which was written by Mvin Peak. Now this is a fantasy tril trilogy but this is nothing like the Lord of the Rings. It's gothic fantasy. The whole thing is set in an enormous castle. Like I say it's a trilogy but you don't leave the castle premises. It's just this tremendous castle and u it's ruled by a lot of ancient traditions. I've got a little reading from that if you'll permit me.

[00:15:03]The hall of the bright carvings goringgeist that is the main massing of the original stone taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one halfway over its neighbor until held back by the castle ramparts. The innermost of these huddles laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpetss to a rock. These dwellings by ancient law were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their regular roofs would fall throughout the seasons the shadows of time eaten buttresses of broken and lofty turrets and most enormous of all the shadow of the Tower of Flints. Really, really great stuff. And I've been meaning to get through these for for quite some time. So I'm excited to have a re reason to to get through them. But yeah, this is a fantasy classic. Um every bit as much of a classic as the Lord of the Rings is. So the names of these there's Titus Grown which came out in 1946, Gormanost which came in in 1950 and then Titus alone 1959.

[00:16:26]So, uh, number four is also, uh, foundational work of science fiction.

[00:16:32]Um, can you guess what it is? It's by Isaac Azimov. Okay. It's the Foundation trilogy. Uh, I'm going to include it here. Now, I don't know. Most modern readers might actually prefer the Sprawl trilogy over the Foundational Trilogy, but this is a science fiction classic.

[00:16:48]This did help shape what science fiction is. Isaac Azimov had read the rise and fall of the the Roman Empire and decided, you know, this would make a cool science fiction premise. And so the Galactic Empire is falling and it's been predicted by a mathematician named Harry Seldon. He's invented a branch of mathematics called psycho history which you know with a huge number of people predicts what's going to happen. This collapse of the empire is inevitable.

[00:17:19]What is not inevitable? What is subject to change is how long the galaxy is going to be plunged into darkness and chaos before order rises again. It might be a thousand years. It might be 50,000 years. They establish the foundation to shorten that length of time to as short a time as possible for the galaxy to be in chaos. It's terrific set of books.

[00:17:40]Now, some people are going to argue that the Foundation trilogy is not a trilogy as there are more than three books in the series. But the original trilogy came out in the 1950s, and that's what I'm talking about here. Azimov wrote three or four more books in the series starting in I want to say the 1980s, but those don't count to me as part of the trilogy. They're part of the series, but the trilogy or those original three books. That's what I'm talking about here.

[00:18:07]And I'm going to let the book speak for itself. Okay, this is from Foundation, the very first book. I'm not even going to bother to show you the cover art on this one because I don't like it. uh they updated the car cover art because they made an Apple TV series out of the uh trilogy. I don't know if you saw that or not. I don't know if you liked it or not. My understanding is it is not particularly faithful to the novel. So, I don't know that it really matters.

[00:18:31]Read the the trilogy anyway. I'm going to Harry Seldon born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era died 12,69.

[00:18:43]The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current foundational era as minus79 to the year 1 FE. Born to middle-class parents on Helon Arcterus sector where his father in a legend of doubtful authenticity was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet. He early showed amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are innumerable and some are contradictory. at the age of two he said to have and then there ellipses do anyway great series of books this is another reread for me I read these probably when I was a freshman in high school if I remember correctly so the foundation trilogy that's number four on my list and that covers foundation foundation and empire and second foundation those were published in 1951 1952 and 1953 so Number five on my list. This is interesting. Now, this is a departure right here. Sword of Honor by Eivelyn Wah, 1952 to 1961. This is historical fiction, which is something I don't read enough of about World War II, and it's based largely on the author's own experiences during World War II. This is uh the these are considered some of the finest English novels written about the war. Chapter one, Sword of Honor. When Guy Crouchback's grandparents, Gerves and Hermione, came to Italy on their honeymoon. French troops manned the defenses of Rome. The sovereign pontiff drove out in an open carriage and cardinals took their exercise side saddle on the Pinchian hill. Gerves and Hermione were welcomed in a score of fresco palaces. Pope Pius received them in private audience and gave his special blessing to the union of two English families which had suffered for their faith and yet retained a round share of material greatness. The chapel at Broom had never lacked a priest through all the penal years and the lands of Broom stretched unddeinished and unencumbered from the quant to the black down hills.

[00:20:54]Forebears of both their names had died on the scaffold.

[00:20:58]It almost sounds like a classic fantasy novel. The the writing is just really brilliant. Um there is a distinct difference in the literature of the United Kingdom in England and the literature of the United States. And sometimes English writing, you know, that's just that's just what you need. Anyway, cool looking cover art, too.

[00:21:22]So, that's the first book in the series.

[00:21:25]uh or actually that's uh cover art for the entire series. Men at Arms is the first book in the series. Then it's followed by Officers and Gentlemen and then Unconditional Surrender. Okay, so that's number five on my list. What did we have for number six? Number six on my list is the Cairo Trilogy. This where we're getting really multicultural here because now we're going to include some Egyptian literature. This was written by Nagwib Malfus and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that. I'm sure I am. The first book is called Palace Walk. Then it's followed by Palace of Desire, which is followed by Sugar Street. And it's the family saga of three generations of a Cairo household. The um there was a lot of things going on during the time period that where this is set. What I understand is interesting about it is that the uh patriarch of the family is one way in public and a very different way at home. And that contrast is very interesting. But the author won the Nobel Prize for literature and he is credited in part because of this trilogy. And this has got a great opening. I'm really I've really been looking forward to reading this one all day. She woke at midnight. She always woke up then without having to rely on an alarm clock. A wish that had taken root in her awoke her with great accuracy. For a few moments, she was not sure she was awake. Images from her dreams and perceptions mixed together in her mind. She was troubled by anxiety before opening her eyes, afraid sleep had deceived her. Shaking her head gently, she gazed at the total darkness of the room. There was no clue by which to judge the time. The street noise outside her room would continue until dawn. She could hear the battle of voices from the coffee houses and bars.

[00:23:13]Whether it was early evening, midnight, or just before daybreak, she had no evidence to rely on except her intuition, like a conscious clock hand, and the silence and compassy in the house, which revealed that her husband had not yet wrapped at the door and that the tip of his stick had not yet struck against the steps of the staircase.

[00:23:34]Really, really good stuff. Also, this has got a beautiful cover. Um, I do most of my reading on a u Kindle Fire or they just call them a fire now, but that's because I don't mind that it's back lit and I like being able to see the cover art in color. Now, for this next one, we're going to go with some Canadian literature. I'm not going to read an excerpt from this one. This is from the Depsford trilogy and Fifth Business, The Manticor, and Worlds of Wonder make up the Depsford trilogy.

[00:24:09]And one of the ideas is that small events can have effects that ripple through the years following. And that's exactly what this uh this trilogy is about. there's an event in the uh the first book that happens that uh has a ripple effect that the novel follows through to the end or that the series of novels, the trilogy follows through to the end. But the author of this one, whose name I had at the tip of my tongue just a moment ago, but now of course I have to look at my notes, was uh Robertson Davies. These were published between 1970 and 1975. Robertson Davies is terrific. I'm reading a book from him now that's a collection of essays that he's written about reading in books and I'm loving it. Number eight's pretty exciting, too. It's uh the Fionavar trilogy, which I'm probably mispronouncing.

[00:25:04]This was written by Guy Gabriel K. And what's interesting about the Well, there's several things that's interesting to me about this, but these were published in the 1980s, 1984, 1985, 86.

[00:25:15]Apparently Kay, the author, guy Gabriel Kay, was uh an assistant to the Tolken and helped put together the Sylmerelion.

[00:25:24]Who better to write a fantasy trilogy than that, right? But you would expect something like that to be really derivative, but it's not at all.

[00:25:36]We're not looking at the sort of shinara here at all. Completely different. But he combines Celtic and Nordic uh mythology, Norse mythology along with Arththeran mythology.

[00:25:48]It's about five students who get transported to the first of all worlds.

[00:25:54]Uh which is, you know, we're living in an alternate universe. All the universes are alternate universes of one particular world. And that's where these characters go for their ad adventure.

[00:26:05]I'll read just a touch of this for you.

[00:26:07]This guy can write, too. This is good stuff here. And I'm not surprised.

[00:26:12]After the war was over, they bound him under the mountain. And so that there might be warning if he moved to escape, they crafted then with magic and with art the five ward stones, last creation and the finest of Ginserat. One went south across Saram to Cathol. One over the mountains to Areridu. Another remained with Rayor and the Dre on the plane. The fourth word stone colon carried home canary's son now high king in Paris Deval. The last stone was accepted though in bitterness of heart by the broken remnants of the liasar.

[00:26:51]Scarcely a quarter of those who had come to war with Rderain went back to the shadowland from the parley at the foot of the mountain. They carried the stone and the body of their king most hated by the dark for their name was light. It's just incredible. I mean, that's really good. Normally, I don't go in for something quite that ornate, but man, you I'm really looking forward to this.

[00:27:15]And this is a fantasy trilogy you're not going to hear about all the time, which is unfortunate because it's really good.

[00:27:21]Uh, The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road. Okay, so that's number eight. Number nine. Number nine.

[00:27:32]Number nine. You don't know how long I've been waiting to is the New York trilogy from Paul Auster, 1985, 1986. Okay, so now we're getting into literary detective fiction from the 1980s. I told you I wanted to do something that was a little broader than that list because it's out there and why would we not want to read it if it's out there? But even uh but anyway, as beautiful as the language was there, I just can't wait to read this Paul Auster to you. It was a wrong number that started it. The telephone ringing three times in the dead of night and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event and its consequences. Whether it might have turned out differently or whether it was all predetermined with the first word that came from the stranger's mouth is not the question. The question is the story itself. And whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell.

[00:28:40]As for Quinn, there's little that need to tell us. Who he was, where he came from, and what he did are of no great importance.

[00:28:47]We know, for example, that he was 35 years old. We know that he had once been married, had once been a father, and that both why his wife and son were now dead. We also know that he wrote books.

[00:28:59]To be precise, we know that he wrote mystery novels. These works were written under the name of William Wilson, and he produced them at the rate of about one a year, which brought in enough money for him to live modestly in a small New York apartment. Because he spent no more than five or six months on a novel, for the rest of the year, he was free to do as he wished. He read many books. He looked at paintings. He went to the movies. In the summer, he watched baseball on television. In the winter, he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk.

[00:29:30]And it keeps going. It's so good. And I don't want to stop. But yeah, terrific stuff right there. Crime novel set in New York. Literary fiction. These are considered examples of post-modernism. These three books from Paul Austster uh explores things like mean and uh language and that sort of thing. They're not just detective novels, in other words. Now, originally at number 10 on my list, I had his Dark Materials, but then I decided why would I want to give a space to something that's already been recommended on that other list. And I decided I was going to go with something a little different.

[00:30:07]Okay? And I have multiple ideas here, but the one I decided to go with was a biography.

[00:30:14]There's a trilogy about Teddy Roosevelt written by Edmund Morris. Number one is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, number two, Theodore Rex, and number three, Colonel Roosevelt. These were all published in 2010, and they're all big.

[00:30:32]I mean, they're one of them is over a thousand pages long. The other ones are about 700 pages long. Teddy Roosevelt, one of my favorite characters as a president, so I'm really looking forward to reading these. He was a big reader.

[00:30:45]He wrote a read a book a day while he while he was in office as president. In fact, he went on a trip to the Amazon um the river.

[00:30:56]It was an excursion and he carried books with him and uh the books got discarded along the way. But but yeah, he wasn't going to go without his books. uh the guy was just a reader and uh and I love the fact that we had a president who was that devout of a reader.

[00:31:13]So that's number 10 on my list of trilogies. I almost put the Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman in in that section. That's really good, too. It's kind of like Harry Potter for adults.

[00:31:22]It's made into a TV series. It's worth checking out, but I didn't want to lean that heavily into fantasy and young adult stuff either. I mean, there's a website called The Collider where you can go to get those kinds of lists, right?

[00:31:38]We're going to take a sharp left turn again. Okay, number 11. We're going to go with the Infected Trilogy by Scott Sigler. These were published between 2008 and 2014. I had a bookstore that specialized in horror fiction at the time these were published. The name of the bookstore is Eerie Books, but I have a friend who told me we lost a lot of money. Uh, but anyway, I had a friend who told me a more appropriate name for my bookstore would have been Ry's Folly, which I've thought was funny. That's that's been a great joke for years. But, uh, these books, they're absolutely terrific. It's about an alien pathogen that threatens all of humanity. Uh, infected, contagion, and pandemic are the three books. and he originally um promoted these by reading from them for free as part of a podcast.

[00:32:29]And I've been looking forward to reading an update from this, too. Okay, prologue. This is the place. Alita Garcia stumbled through the dense winter woods. Blood marking her long path, a bright red comet trail against the blazing white snow. Her hands shook violently. She could barely make a fist out of her talon-like fingers, nearly numb, wet from the big clumps of snow that fell thick and fast all around her, melting almost as soon as they hit her skin. When the time came, could she even pull the trigger on Louis's old revolver.

[00:33:04]A searing pain in her stomach brought her thoughts back to the mission, the divine mission.

[00:33:09]Something was wrong. Well, [ __ ] It was all wrong and had been from the first moment she started scratching at her belly and her elbow. But something was even more wrong. Something inside.

[00:33:21]It wasn't supposed to be like this.

[00:33:23]Somehow she knew that. She looked behind her along the bloody path through the snow, eyes searching for pursuit. She saw nothing. She'd spent years in fear of the INS, but it was different now.

[00:33:35]They didn't want to deport her. Now they wanted her dead.

[00:33:40]Anyway, it's good stuff. Remember reading it when it first came out and just absolutely loving it. Looking forward to revisiting that one. Finally, at number 12, uh, The Last Policeman Trilogy by Ben H. Wyinners, uh, was published between 2012 and 2014. I loved The Last Policeman Trilogy. Okay. The first book's called The Last Policeman.

[00:34:01]Number two is Countdown City. And then the uh, third one was called uh, World of Trouble.

[00:34:08]But the premise is that the main character is a police detective. It's all he's ever wanted to be. And not particularly good at it either. But there's an apocalyptic event literally on the horizon. There's an asteroid that's going to that's going to destroy all life on the planet. Everybody knows it. So, nobody cares about anything anymore. Suicide rates are high. People are quitting their jobs right and left.

[00:34:32]There's some jobs that are still being done diligently, but not all of them.

[00:34:37]Murders that look like suicides are not high on the list of jobs that people are paying a lot of attention to because we're all going to be dead soon anyway.

[00:34:45]So why bother? Well, this guy bothers because that's his job. He's a police detective. That's his identity. It's all he's ever wanted to be. And even though everything's going to end soon, that's what he's going to do. He's going to investigate crimes.

[00:34:59]And I love this because it's combination of detective or mystery fiction and science fiction. So it blends two genres into one. And it does so seamlessly.

[00:35:07]Chapter one. I'm staring at the insurance man and he's staring at me.

[00:35:11]Two cold gray eyes behind old-fashioned tortoise shell frames. And I'm having this awful and inspiring feeling like, "Holy moly, this is real." And I don't know if I'm ready. I really don't. I narrow my eyes and I steady myself and I take him in again. Shift on my hunches to get a closer look. The eyes and the glasses, the weak chin and the receding hairline, the thin black belt tied and tightened beneath the chin. This is real. Is it? I don't know. I take a deep breath, depending demanding of myself that I focus. Block out everything but the corpse. Block out the grimy floors and the tiny rock and roll music from the cheap speakers in the ceiling. The smell is killing me. a pervasive and deeply unpleasant odor, like a horse barn that's been splashed with French fry grease. There are any number of jobs in this world still being efficiently and diligently accomplished, but the late night cleaning of 24-hour fast food restaurants bathrooms is not among them.

[00:36:12]Case in point, the insurance man had been slumped over in here, lodged between the toilet and the dull green wall of the stall for several hours before officer Michaelelsson happened to come in needing to use the job and discovered him.

[00:36:27]Michaelelsson called it in as 10545, of course, which is what it looks like. One thing I've learned in the last few months, one thing we've all learned is that suicides by hanging rarely end up dangling from a light fixture or a roof beam like in the movies. If they're serious, and nowadays everybody is serious, would be suicides fasten themselves to a doororknob or to a coat hook or as the insurance man appears to have done, to a horizontal rail like the grab bar in a handicap stall. And then they just lean forward, let their weight do the work, tighten the knot, seal the airway. Really, really good start to a novel. Um, that's it for me. Okay, that's a dozen novels there. Um, it's not a dozen novels, adults. It's a dozen trilogies. A dozen trilogies to be read over the next 12 months. So, I'm really excited about this. And what I like about the list that I'm presenting as opposed to the list that Collider presented is that I'm covering a lot more literature than they cover. You know, they have an opportunity with the top 10 list to cover a pretty broad range of literature that they just don't take the opportunity to do.

[00:37:38]My list covers literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction, detective fiction, historical fiction, and biography.

[00:37:46]A lot of historical depth here too. Um, not just United States fiction, but also from England, also from Canada and also from Egypt. And maybe I could have been a little more diverse there, but forgive me, this is a largely Englishspeaking channel, and that's largely the reading that I do. So, that's just how it is.

[00:38:06]But also, I feel like my list provides some genuine discoveries that you might not hear of elsewhere. That list over at Collider just didn't contain very many surprises, did it? You probably already knew about all of those. That was one of those lists where you're either going to nod in agreement or Yeah. Okay, whatever. I'm hoping that my list of trilogies might get you excited to participate in the project with me or part of the project with me. But even if not, that's okay. Anyway, till my next video, please stay hydrated and stay sexy.