I’m a somewhat slow reader, depending on how interested in a book I am. If I love a book I can burn through it at lightning speed, but if I’m struggling, I can take forever. It took me over a year to finish the fifth book of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Soul of the Fire, because I just couldn’t get into it (read: it was fucking terrible). And it’s a series I haven’t gone back to, even though my wife tells me that Faith of the Fallen is one of the best. Anyhoo…
I decided, kind of on a whim, that I would try to read 50 books over the course of 2014. I see a lot of people make huge claims about the volume of books they read in a year, some boasting numbers over 100. I even, recently, saw someone claim to read 350 books every year, upon which I thither summon “bullshit”. My own totals usually hover around 20, so my goal with the challenge was first to see what it would take to churn through a larger quantity in a single year, and simultaneously use the goal to read a number of books which I feel I should’ve read a long time ago.
I started out fine, setting myself a goal of one book per week, and sticking pretty well to it. I got tripped up on a couple of books that turned out to be either worse or just more dense than I was expecting, so now I’m WAY behind on the goal, having only just started my 31st book of the year. I’ve got 19½ books left, and only 10 weeks to finish them.
Here’s what I’ve read so far this year:
1. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
2. Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
3. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
5. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
6. Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey – This was the first book to set me back. I actually really loved it, but it’s way longer than I was expecting, clocking in at 934 very dense pages.
7. Vessel: The Advent by Tominda Adkins
8. The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
9. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
10. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
11. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
12. Death Masks by Jim Butcher
13. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
14. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
16. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas – This was my second stumbling block, this time because of quality. I know I’m in the minority amongst fantasy readers, but I just can. not. stand. the main character in this book. This one was a struggle.
17. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
18. The Black Company by Glen Cook
19. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Eriksson – Setback number 3. For the first time in a long time, this is a book that I not only disliked, but cannot for the life of me find what others like about it. It’s such a widely loved series that I thought there had to be something, but if it’s there, it eludes me.
20. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
21. Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig
22. ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King
23. Divergent by Veronica Roth
24. Alpha by Greg Rucka
25. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
26. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
27. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
28. Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
29. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
30. Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch – A minor slowdown, here. This book was fine, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as The Lies of Locke Lamora, which made it a bit of a struggle for me.
31. (currently reading) True Grit by Charles Portis
So far, of the books listed above, my favorites have been The Lies of Locke Lamora, Annihilation, The Handmaid’s Tale, Robin Hobb’s Assassin books, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
And, yes, this was the first time I’d read all the way through Hitchhiker’s Guide. When I was in high-school, I somehow read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe first and, only upon finishing it was I informed that it was the second book. I tried to start HHGTTG several times and never finished it, until now.
As big a fantasy nut as I am, I’d never read any of the Pern or Earthsea books, an error I will now rectify. I hope to finish both trilogies as part of this challenge. In addition to those series’, my TBR pile contains the rest of the Dresden Files books, the remainder of the first Black Company trilogy, Insurgent and Allegiant, Assassin’s Quest, Authority and Acceptance, the Mistborn trilogy, the rest of the Hitchhiker’s books, more Harry Potter, some Vorkosigan Saga, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, The Cormorant, Warlock by Oakley Hall, the first Expanse book Leviathan Wakes, and the ridiculous award magnet Ancillary Justice.
Not sure how many of those I’ll get to, but I only need to read 19 of ‘em to meet my goal.
Only.
::cries::
