Completed: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; also, The Tayinat List

Once upon a time, in 2005, I was on an archaeological excavation in southern Turkey. We flew in and out of an airport about 2 hours' drive away. On the very last night, we all sat up in our outside hang-out space - it was lovingly known as the Languidarium. The flight was at maybe 6 in the morning. But this meant heading for the airport at about 3. We chose not to sleep before we left.

I passed around a piece of paper. I asked everyone to contribute books that they thought I shouldn't live my life without reading, for whatever reason mattered to them. I got a varied and eclectic list. And although Watchmen got mentioned that night (for some reason I remember it distinctly), it is not in fact on the list. But lots of other great books are. I've read 11 of them:

• Life of Pi
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• My Name is Red (very much NOT my favorite book - took me 8 months to force myself to finish)
• The Bluffer's Guide to Archaeology
• Away by Jane Urquhart
• Baghdad Without a Map
• Pillars of the Earth (one of my all-time favorite books)
• Eye of the Needle
• Murder in Mesopotamia

I haven't read more, mostly because I tend to forget about the list - though I still have the original piece of paper:

So - should I get around to reading any more of these books, I'll tag them with The Tayinat List tag (Tayinat being the site I was working at), so that they're recognized as pieces of contribution by my colleagues that summer to my reading enjoyment (except for My Name is Red - that book was just terrible to me!). 

OK so back to Watchmen (which I always want to call The Watchmen, but it's not). This book is in the Time Magazine Top 100 Best Novels (of all years since 1923, all genres). It is one that has been made into a movie - a movie I did not watch, as I always try to read the book first. 

This was my first graphic novel, and I've never really read comic books or anything either.

So, with that precursor, this was not my favorite book. I truly understand some of the brilliance in the writing, in the story, and in the implications of the subject matter. But I really had to make myself read it - it didn't grip me, and having now read a graphic novel, I'm not sure if it is my favorite medium to read. So I guess this is a classic where I understand why it's a classic, but it's also really not my thing. 

My favorite pieces were Dr. Manhattan's reflections - on himself, on earth, on humanity. I loved his perspective, despite its heartbreaking coldness at times.In chapter IV, he talked about stars - that was my favorite quote, so here you go - upon reflecting on an old photograph of him and Janey: "I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away and their light takes so long to reach us... All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."

Title: Watchmen

Author: Alan Moore. Illustrated and lettered by Dave Gibbons

Published: 2008

Pages: Amazon tells me it's 416

Total books blogged: 32

Total pages: 9238