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2013 Reading Self-Challenge Thread


Inigima

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Well, not gonna have time to finish my current read before the end of the month, so:

42. Leigh Bardugo - Shadow and Bones - I wanted to like this but I didn't. It's a YA book that got a lot of good word of mouth, but it hews too close to standard and has a female protagonist who is defined primarily by what the men in her life think of her.

43. Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch - My first Hornby, and not a novel. Hit or miss memoir about being a soccer obsessive. And I do mean obsessive.

44. Terry Pratchett - Snuff - You pretty much know what you're getting with a Discworld novel. This is one of the Vimes books. Not bad.

I also read Nick Hornby's brief (~41pp) Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012 Football Season. I liked it, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I ought to count it as a book.

44/50

As always, full reviews on my Goodreads.

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Checking in for June as well since there's no way I'm going to finish the one I'm reading before the end of the month. 38/60 for me, Goodreads puts me 9 books ahead of schedule. As always, I'm not counting kids' board books or short stories.

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June was terrible, I only read Slaughterhouse Five, which I loved, The Lies of Locke Lamora, which was a lot of fun, and Mother Night, which was excellent. Now I'm at 23/30, which is why I'm not increasing my goal yet.

I'm currently reading The Handmaid's Tale, but I doubt I'll ever finish it, I don't like the writing, the plot is hidden under layers of pointless descriptions and the society is impossible to understand, it's as if in only a few years they'd managed to completely obliterate women, because all men are evil I guess. Not my cup of tea. At all.

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Didn't read much until the last week of the month, but I somehow managed to finish 26 books in June. So here are the updates:

Overall: 181/366 (right at 1 book/day, so just need to maintain that and add one more and that goal will be reached)

Women writers: 64/181 (35%; slightly above 33% minimum goal; only 6/26 this month, though)

Foreign language: 57/100 (7 books above pace; 13 read this month)

Spanish: 26/50 (1 book above pace; 8 read this month)

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Five books this month, so I'm at 22/40, two books ahead of pace. Started a new job with more of a commute, so audiobooks are going to be increasingly important in making/exceeding my goal. 7/22 by women so far.

Gates of Fire - Steven Pressfield. Decent book about Battle of Thermopylae, but a little too much glorification of the Spartans for my taste.

Donnie Brasco - Joseph Pistone. Pretty crazy nonfiction book about a guy doing a 7 year undercover operation to infiltrate the mob in the 70s and early 80s. What made it crazy? Unlike in the Johnny Depp movie, in real life he had a wife and kids. Who he only saw for a day or two every month. How could this kind of work possibly be worthwhile when you combine the danger and essentially abandoning your family? Crazy.

The Long Walk - Brian Castner. Not to be confused with The Long Walk by Stephen King, this is nonfiction about a man's experiences in Iraq in ordinance disposal. Since coming home he's been grappling with both the effects of PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury, from the shockwaves of explosions rupturing tiny portions of the brain). This was a pretty compelling read if you are interested in these topics.

Bossypants - Tina Fey. This book is a lot of fun and if you like Tina Fey or SNL, this is well worth picking up. I listened to the audiobook and having Fey read it is excellent (I've actually heard people say the book isn't as funny without that).

The Graveyard Book - Niel Gaiman. Nice short novel, more or less The Jungle Book set in a modern day graveyard. It's a YA book, but still enjoyable for adults.

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June was a weird month - didn't really find anything to hold my interest until Abaddon's Gate came out, but stayed on schedule.

Read

Abaddon's Gate, James SA Corey. Excellent book that had a few minor structural issues - more detailed thoughts in the dedicated spoiler thread.

Gods of Risk, James SA Corey. A novella but I'm counting it anyway (helps balance out the omnibuses). An interesting if slow story set in the Expanse universe. More detailed view of life on Mars.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. This one started out great and just cratered in the last third, IMO. The whole premise, shaky to begin with, fell apart. If you want to read it, the audiobook actors are terrible, with ridiculous accents and inflections. The actor playing the male lead was so smug-sounding and affected that I wanted to punch his fictional face.

The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes. Really good book! Rescued me from the post-Historian doldrums. Interesting concept, great plot and pacing.

Currently Reading

Right now I'm finishing up my long-going read of the second Ciaphas Cain omnibus and getting into The City by Stella Gemmell, which is interesting so far (30 pages in).

So that puts me at 27/52 for the year and 4/27 by female authors.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Man.

You guys are tough. People reading 50 and 100 books in a year? How?

And I trust you're not counting rereads of the 1st 5 books of ASOIAF, or LOTR, or HP?

Realistically, 0. But I'll say 3 because there are 3 I really should get through this year - they've been sitting on my night stand for lengths of time varying from 2 months to a year and a half.

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