Reading Challenge 2020

[Harriet]

6 hours ago, Akura said:

Good! Including comics I finished 6 books so far this year... (I started the first before Christmas...)

Nice job! I assume comics are reasonably quick to read? I'm trying to get through a ham of a book that includes ALL of E A Poe's short stories, and another which is the entire history of the United States. 
 

5 hours ago, Jupiter said:

I've read 5 books so far.  

 

Excellent. I am suitably envious. I must live up to your shining example. 

 

3 hours ago, fitnessgurl said:

Not so hot. I did finish a fiction book & am slowly reading the others I have.

As long as you're making some progress and not totally stalling, then it's still good.

 

5 hours ago, Scalyfreak said:

My goal was to get rid of books, and it is going pretty well. I have reactivated my account on BookMooch, so I can start listing paper books I no longer have a desire to keep.

 

Setting books free is good. Did you read anything yet?

[Scaly Freak]

16 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Setting books free is good. Did you read anything yet?

 

Yes, but I'm not tracking my reading at all, since I already do it every chance I get. I have my e-reader apps on my phone, which goes everywhere with me, so whenever I'm standing or sitting still with nothing to do, I read.  

[Mad Hatter]

I went on a slight reading binge and finished 4 novels, one novella and one novelette in 10 days or so.  The last two were The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which was excellent and uncomfortably real, and The Scorpio Races, which was too slow and predictable but horse people seem to absolutely love it so maybe it was just not a book for me. I did however very much enjoy that the horses ate people.

[Akura]

8 hours ago, Harriet said:

I assume comics are reasonably quick to read?

 

Eh... It depends... Right now I'm reading the re-releases of Monster and 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa. Relatively text-heavy thrillers/crime stories with 400 pages per volume. Hefty for a comic, but of course much faster to read than a "normal" book.

[Harriet]

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I went on a slight reading binge and finished 4 novels, one novella and one novelette in 10 days or so. 

 

Nice! I should be more like you. And I love it when sweet, herbivorous animals eat humans for a change  

 

12 hours ago, Scalyfreak said:

Yes, but I'm not tracking my reading at all, since I already do it every chance I get. I have my e-reader apps on my phone, which goes everywhere with me, so whenever I'm standing or sitting still with nothing to do, I read.  

 

Ah, that is admirable and worthy of emulation. You will surely read many things this year.

[Harriet]

4 hours ago, Akura said:

Relatively text-heavy thrillers/crime stories with 400 pages per volume. Hefty for a comic, but of course much faster to read than a "normal" book.

 

Ah, that sounds a bit more interesting than the phantom comics I read as a child. Not that I didn't love those, but sometimes a little more text is valuable.

[bigm141414]

23 hours ago, Harriet said:

How is everyone's reading going?

 

Pretty good so far. 4 books and one comic volume down. I am hoping to finish my 5th book this week and then I have coast to coast flights over the weekend which will give me lots of time to read another book. Probably read my first non-fiction of the year during travel. Non-fictions always slow my reading speed down. 

 

Also picked up William Gibson's new novel, Agency. I am so ready for some good cyberpunk. 

[Scaly Freak]

24 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Ah, that sounds a bit more interesting than the phantom comics I read as a child. Not that I didn't love those, but sometimes a little more text is valuable.

 

I LOVED THOSE!

 

In hindsight I'm sure several of them were very racist, but there is something about a Ghost Who Walks and how that part was done, that appealed to my creative superhero nerd. My favorites where the historical episodes about the many ancestors. The Phantom has the same appeal to me that Batman does, but without the sociopathy.  

[Elastigirl]

On 1/26/2020 at 7:56 AM, Harriet said:

How is everyone's reading going? I have to confess almost immediately after setting my goal to read fifty pages I had a bad two weeks where I did nothing. I'm getting back into it now. Share your stories of success, tell me you read every day and have finished five books already so I can feel appropriately admiring/envious and be inspired to do better. 

Finished two books. Then I started a non fiction book, and was struggling to get into it. Now I am reading a funny time travelling book, which is a pretty easy , enjoyable book to read. The book's title is TO Say Nothing of The Dog, by Connie Willis

[Mad Hatter]

2 hours ago, Harriet said:

Nice! I should be more like you. 

I would not recommend it. There's a fine line between reading for enjoyment and for procrastination. I think I crossed that line? It's hard to tell, because BOOKS!

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

There's a fine line between reading for enjoyment and for procrastination

 

It's paper-thin.

[Mad Hatter]

10 minutes ago, Scalyfreak said:

It's paper-thin.

 

[Harriet]

10 hours ago, bigm141414 said:

Pretty good so far. 4 books and one comic volume down. I am hoping to finish my 5th book this week and then I have coast to coast flights over the weekend which will give me lots of time to read another book.

Excellent work! That's double my numbers so far. I have to hold up my end of the library and get some more reading in. 

 

9 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Finished two books. Then I started a non fiction book, and was struggling to get into it. Now I am reading a funny time travelling book, which is a pretty easy , enjoyable book to read. The book's title is TO Say Nothing of The Dog, by Connie Willis

Two is solid. And time travel is always a winner.

[Harriet]

I'm afraid I'm not going to add many books to my finished list any time soon, because I'm reading two rather longer books, of about 1000 and 700 words. They are a history of the united states by Zinn and the collected works of E A Poe. One is a series of stories of indescribable darkness and depravity, of deeds of injustice and corruption in which every blackguard character is more dastardly and perfidious than the last. The other is a collection of gothic fiction and poems. 

[Scaly Freak]

I am very close to liberating my first printed paper book of 2020! I'm very excited. 

 

BookMooch has a wish list feature that lets you list books you want, if it turns out that no one on the site has a copy at the time you're searching for it. As it turns out, another member used this feature for one of the books I want to get rid of, and sent a mooch request early this morning. By fortunate coincidence I received a skin care shipment form Amazon this evening, and it arrived in a large padded envelope that is the perfect size for shipping my book.

 

I have responded to the request and committed to sending my book to this other book moocher, and packaged it up carefully to ensure it survives the trip. I will drop it at the post office tomorrow.  

 

This will put me at 9 liberated eBooks and 1 liberated paper book.

 

[miss_marissa]

On 1/26/2020 at 8:21 PM, Harriet said:

Nice job! I assume comics are reasonably quick to read? 

For me this depends on the comic. Sometimes I get REALLY into the art and just stare at the pages for much too long an entirely appropriate amount of time.

 

I'm at 7 for the year!

I finished books 2 and 3 of the broken earth trilogy from NK Jemisin and it was FANTASTIC. Loved the series and the conclusion so much.

I also read Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, which was a afro-futurist novella that I tore through in an hour or two.

Also working my way through the Wicked and the Divine comic series.

 

I've started The Brothers Sinister boxed set, by Courtney Milan on ebook. And I also have Guts by Raina Telgemeier and Becoming by Michelle Obama lined up.

[Harriet]

33 minutes ago, miss_marissa said:

I'm at 7 for the year!

 

That's impressive! And suitably spurring to my readerly instincts. All my industrious nerds have inspired me out of my idleness and I am back to reading. I am now 330 pages through Poe, roughly one third. I honestly don't think I'll read all the poems, though.

[NeverThatBored]

10 hours ago, miss_marissa said:

I also read Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, which was a afro-futurist novella that I tore through in an hour or two.

 

 

This trilogy is on my list for the year too! I read an interesting book by her last year called Who Fears Death, which made me want to read more of her work. 

 

 

[GodzillaKong]

Bit late to the party on this one, sorry. 

 

I had, by my standards, a good year for reading in 2019 getting through:

 

The Stars My Destination 

Neuromancer 

Annihilation
Authority 
Acceptance
Rendezvous with Rama 
High Rise
Sea of Rust
Flowers for Algernon
The Martian
Animal Farm 
Recursion
The Crystal World 

 

For this year I have 2 goals: Read more classics and read more new books. 

 

I tend not to read too many books that have come out in the last year or so. Going to try and do that a bit more. Also, there are a few things i haven't read which i have wanted to. Already made my way through Frankenstein. I have Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls and Beckett's Molloy lined up. 

 

However, right now I'm reading Jeff Vandermeer's Bourne. 

[Elastigirl]

9 minutes ago, GodzillaKong said:

 

The Stars My Destination 

Neuromancer 

Annihilation
Authority 
Acceptance
Rendezvous with Rama 
High Rise
Sea of Rust
Flowers for Algernon
The Martian
Animal Farm 
Recursion
The Crystal World 

 

I read The Stars My Destination, it was a really good book. One of those I'll keep to re-read.

[GodzillaKong]

2 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

I read The Stars My Destination, it was a really good book. One of those I'll keep to re-read.

 

I really enjoyed it. In fact, i enjoyed all of them. I did a good job choosing, even if i do say so myself. 

[fitnessgurl]

I just finished Atlantia by Ally Condie & it was pretty good.  I also liked her Matched trilogy.

[Harriet]

I think I'm going to be reading a lot of short stories this year, and I want them to contribute to my goal of fifty books, but obviously one short story is not equivalent to one book. I think I'll assign them 0.05 points each so that 20 short stories equals one book. That should help me set reasonable goals. I don't think I'm going to finish the entire works of Poe. I think thirty of his stories have sufficed to let me know what he's about. 

[nianjufe]

14 hours ago, Harriet said:

I think I'm going to be reading a lot of short stories this year,

 

If you're interested in science fiction and collecting possible titles, I suggest this book which has almost all of Orson Scott Card's short stories. I agree that Poe can have a one track theme. I haven't read a lot of his work, but I also think I've read enough.

[Harriet]

2 minutes ago, nianjufe said:

If you're interested in science fiction and collecting possible titles, I suggest this book which has almost all of Orson Scott Card's short stories. I agree that Poe can have a one track theme. I haven't read a lot of his work, but I also think I've read enough.

 

Nice! Cheers!