Rob’s Comments (group member since Jul 06, 2012)

Rob’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

If you just look at the pictures without context it's even stranger..

I hope things are going well with the new job/home!

I imagine if you delete the shelf all credit will be removed from the challenges.

What I've done to avoid a ton of shelves is I have a single shelf for each challenge that I reuse each year. The challenges are time gated so any books you read in 2019 won't count towards your 2020 challenge, etc.

So I have books from the 2018 challenges and the 2019 ones on those shelves.

And if you already shelve your books for fantasy/sci-fi you could just use those.

I don't because I shelf my graphic novels and short stories as fantasy or sci-fi when appropriate and don't want those to count for the main challenges.

I felt like as last season ended Kaz was finally growing on me. The season premiere disabused me of that notion.

I spent about half my time being annoyed at him and half being frustrated at Tam.

I didn't love the first season, but it was interesting enough that I watched it all. We'll see how this goes. Especially since it's the last.

FYI img tags support the width and height options. Please make liberal use of them. Posting large images is not great.

If you really want people to see the full size you can provide the link as well.

If you really want to get fancy wrap the image tag instead of an href and the image when clicked will take you to the full version. Like so:

As we're now into October, I'm going to close this thread. Please feel free to jump into one of the other threads or make a new one to discuss the book.

Silvana wrote: "I enjoy tracking my own stat to see how many SF and F I read in comparison each year. "

Me too, that's why I build an application to parse my goodreads data and generate a yearly report: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I don't copy/paste it here, but when I run the code it shows year to year comparisons too!

It's what told me I could do more fantasy and sci-fi this year than last year, except that I think those numbers don't exclude graphic novels so it was throwing off what I could actually do for the S&L challenges.

I debated leaving my numbers alone and just falling short, but I decided I wanted to try to reduce them and hit those numbers instead.

The nice thing is everyone can do what works best for them.

For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:

Sword: 27/35 (77% complete, 2% ahead)
Laser: 13/15 (87% complete, 12% ahead)
Comics: 8/10 (80% complete, 5% ahead)

This month I've added +4 Sword, 1 Laser, 0 Graphic novels.

I decided to cut both my Sword and Laser pledges by 5. There was no way I was hitting either of my original targets, even with an extra book finished in September than August, I was just too far behind.

So now I'm slightly ahead on each, and should reach my new goals for both before the end of the year.

I think in general I'm going to cut my reading goals. My overall reading goal for the last few years has been 75 books, combing everything I consume: ebook, print, audio, graphic novels/comics.

Right now I'm about 2 books behind on that. Some years I've exceeded 100 books, others far less, but always easily more than 75.

With audio book being my main source of reading these days, and those hours cut for various reasons, that's probably going to cost me several books this year and in the years to come.

So I think I may drop my goal next year to 65 or maybe 70 instead of 75. We'll see where I end up this year.

I like the reading challenges, but I care more about completing my goals than I do using it to stretch myself.

I've never been able to compete with a lot of the people on the site who simply read faster/more often than I do, anyways.

So I decided recently I should stop worrying about it and just get back to enjoying as many books as I get to rather than worrying about the quantity I consume.

September Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 418 (+3)
Total Read: 5,200 (+603)
Average Books Read: 12 (+1)
Total Committed: 7,372 (+131)
Average Books pledged: 18 (+1)
Total Challenges Completed : 7 (+3) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 415 (+2)
Total Read: 4,195 (+390)
Average Books Read: 10 (+1)
Total Committed: 6,591 (+56)
Average Books pledged: 16 (0)
Total Challenges Completed (Goodreads): 3 (+1) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Graphic Novel Challenge
Total Participants: 118 (+2)
Total Read: 1,206 (+103)
Average Books Read: 10 (0)
Total Committed: 2,679 (+36)
Average Books pledged: 23 (0)
Total Challenges Completed : 3 (+1) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Short Story Challenge
Total Participants: 41 (+2)
Total Read: 301 (+15)
Average Books Read: 7 (0)
Total Committed: 557 (+15)
Average Books pledged: 14 (0)
Total Challenges Completed : 2 (0) NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.

The updated projections indicate we'll get about 6,900 fantasy books, short of both the pledged books of 7,372 and the goal of 10k books. Similarly we'll only get 5,600 sci-fi books short of the 6,591 pledged.

October means Halloween. Anyone planning on reading some spooky/scary books this month? If so, what? If not, what are you reading instead?

October Meetup: https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

I'd prefer spider-man to stay because he's my favorite and I'm not a huge fan of the live action movies Sony has done with him solo. But at least leaving on those terms would be better than leaving after Far from home.

This seems smart. Especially with how Far from Home ended.

Seems like a win-win.

Disney gets a bigger share, retains some control and gets to continue using spider-man in other MCU movies.

The WP article seems to be missing a key point (though maybe I just missed it) of the deal that i09 had:

"The deal will also allow Tom Holland’s iteration of Peter Parker to appear in future films in both Sony’s fledgling spider-verse of potential movies and Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe."

Sony gets some more power to use spider-man in other stuff, while not losing what they have going with their current one.



Once Holland gives up his webshooters, we'll see what happens. How many more movies can/will he make? He's starting to age out of the character a bit.

I haven't read this book, but King gets automatically binned as horror, even when he writes a non-horror book which always makes it harder to know what you're getting with a new book.

He's done a straight fantasy (The Eyes of the Dragon), or mystery/thriller (Joyland, Mr. Mercedes and its sequels), alternate history (11/22/63), etc and I've seen all of them called "horror"

I'm sure there are more examples since he's written so many books.

I might still read it this month even though it's not horror. I'm not a big horror fan anyways, but I've enjoyed most of the novels I've read by King.

katie wrote: "I love the artwork on this cover.

I also really really love Sam Sykes' twitter feed, but it didn't translate over when I read his City Stained Red. It just couldn't keep my interest, and I can't p..."

I must admit I have been avoiding his books because of his Twitter persona. I don't find his sense of humor very amusing I guess.

So maybe it will be a good thing for me if that doesn't completely translate to his books.

katie wrote: "I must admit I totally forgot until I saw the monthly email from Rob.."

Haha. Happy to help!

terpkristin wrote: "Have we read another Sykes book in the past? He and his Twitter cohort seem interchangeable at times so I don’t remember. I remember an interview show with him and I remember him seeming goofy and ..."

Nope. We haven't read Myke Cole either. We did read Chuck Wendig earlier this year though. So maybe that's what you're thinking of.

Our October pick will be Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes.

As with the last few months, I'll be locking this thread sometime next week.

If we have a volunteer to be discussion leader please let me know, otherwise feel free to start making threads to discuss the book.

But the thread is about the Far Side, not Zimbabwe! :-D

Well you have about 22 hours to post it here, so if you pick a date tonight please let me know and I'll include it.

So I know you guys are meeting tonight, but any idea when you'll be meeting in October? I'm going to be sending out the newsletter tomorrow, which will be a day too late. :(