Bill's series challenge

[Bill]

2020 - Series Finished 0/6
Six of Crows - Bardugo (1 for 2)
Expanse - Corey (2 for 9)
Malloreon - Eddings (3 for 5)
Imperial Radch - Leckie (1 for 3)
Arthurian Saga - Stewart (1 for 5)
Rosewater - Thompson (1 for 3)


2019 - Series Finished 30
(view spoiler)[The Legend of Eli Monpress - Aaron - Finished 5/23/19
Winternight - Arden - Finished 1/9/19
Prince of Nothing - Bakker - Finished 2/26/19
Walking Dead - Bonansinga - Finished 10/10/19
Vorkosigan - Bujold - Finished 12/9/19
Xenogenesis - Butler - Finished 7/28/19
Black Magician - Canavan - Finished 1/14/19
Wayfarers - Chambers - Finished 7/9/19
Arafel - Cherryh - Finished 3/19/19
Dark is Rising - Cooper - Finished 12/28/19
Dominion of the Fallen - de Bodard (2 for 3) - last book not being released in US
Path to Ascendancy - Esslemont - Finished 4/18/19
Empire - Feist/Wurts - Finished 2/28/19
Southlands - Hartman - Finished 7/26/19
Tawny Man - Hobb - Finished 3/18/19
Sorcery Ascendant Sequence - Hogan - Finished 4/8/19
Dreamblood - Jemisin - Finished 10/8/19
The Sarantine Mosaic - Kay - Finished 6/9/19
Valdemar: Mage Wars - Lackey - Finished 7/19/19
Book of the Ancestor- Lawrence - Finished 6/30/19
The Giver - Lowry - Finished 4/29/19
Takeshi Kovacs - Morgan - Finished 5/8/19
Gameshouuse - North - Finished 12/11/19
Akata Witch - Okorafor - Finished 7/22/19
Song of the Lioness - Pierce - Finished 7/9/19
Lock In - Scalzi - Finished 6/5/19
Raven Cycle - Stiefvater - Finished 11/14/19
Bobiverse - Taylor - Finished 5/31/19
Lightbringer - Weeks - Finished 11/7/19
Oxford Time Travel - Willis - Finished 4/10/19
Cycle of Fire - Wurts - Finished 12/18/19 (hide spoiler)]

2018 - Series Finished - 36(view spoiler)[
Heartstrikers - Aaron - Finished 11/19/18
Kate Daniels - Andrews - Finished 9/8/18
Eternal Sky - Bear - Finished 6/16/18
Lighthouse Duet - Berg - Finished 5/17/18
Traitor Son - Cameron - Finished 12/29/18
Phèdre’s Trilogy - Carey - Finished 3/7/18
Imriel’s Trilogy - Carey - Finished 6/11/18
Naamah's Trilogy - Carey - Finished 9/9/18
Books of the Glittering Stone - Cook - Finished 4/4/18
Greatcoats - de Castell - Finished 7/30/18
Riftwar Saga - Feist - Finished 11/30/18
Coldfire - Friedman - Finished 8/23/18
River of Teeth - Gailey - Finished 9/11/18
Drenai Saga - Gemmell - Finished 11/8/18
Iron Druid Chronicles - Hearne - Finished 5/22/18
Liveship Traders - Hobb - Finished 5/10/18
Emperor - Iggulden - Finished 12/3/18
Time Quintet - L’Engle - Finished 6/18/18
Riddle-Master - McKillip - Finished 12/19/18
Damar - McKinley - Finished 1/23/18
Godspeaker - Miller - Finished 7/13/18
Binti - Okorafor - Finished 4/19/18
Who Fears Death - Okorafor - Finished 8/24/18
Discworld - Pratchett - Finished 7/29/18
His Dark Materials - Pullman - Finished 5/19/18
Dragon Prince - Rawn - Finished 8/12/18
Draconis Memoria - Ryan - Finished 10/31/18
Alcatraz - Sanderson - Finished 5/17/18
Grim Company - Scull - Finished 8/2/18
Shades of Magic - Schwab - Finished 4/23/18
Leviathan- Westerfield - Finished 1/25/18
Forbidden Library - Wexler - Finished 1/23/18
Shadow Campaigns - Wexler - Finished 1/10/18
Bone Universe - Wilde - Finished 8/11/18
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - Williams - Finished 9/30/18
Book of the New Sun - Wolfe - Finished 12/30/18 (hide spoiler)]

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

Excellent list.

[Bill]

Thanks. I have a bunch more open but tried to limit this list to either completed series or ones that will be completed in 2017.

[Bill]

Knocked off two series from my list. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood which was pretty good overall. It was a dystopia with some really messed up parts and some very funny parts.

The other series was the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander which I wish I had read when I was growing up. I think I would have really loved them then. Even now they were good but definitely for a younger audience. Great quest books with interesting companions acquired along the way.

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

:O

[Bill]

Finished 2 series so far this month:

Eddie LaCrosse by Alex Bledsoe - UF with a good amount of action and avoids all the vampires/werewolves and other common races in UF. Think it suffers from not having a larger common threat running through the series.

Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson. Fantastic additions to the Malazan world. The last book was especially good and really funny.

[Bill]

Finished the Earthsea series. After originally finishing A Wizard of Earthsea which I liked but didn't understand why it was considered a classic I ended up loving the rest of the series. I'm glad I read them a bit out of order and left Tales of Earthsea for last because it really wound everything up nicely by filling in a lot of the gaps in the series.

[Kevin]

Bill wrote: "Finished the Earthsea series. After originally finishing A Wizard of Earthsea which I liked but didn't understand why it was considered a classic I ended up loving the rest of the series. I'm glad ..."

I started that series years ago but gave up on the first novel, I'll have to give it another look.

[Bill]

Hope you do.

[Bill]

Finished deed of Paksenarrion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon. Great series which some excellent action. Can't remember reading a story focusing on a paladin especially not a female ever. Really liked the ups and downs of Paksenarrion's quest.

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

That's Mike's favourite series.

[Bill]

Finished another series not on my original list. The Vagrant trilogy by Peter Newman. Great mix of Fantasy and SF. Really liked the evolution of the end goal throughout this series.

[Bill]

30 series finished this year. Got to be a personal best.

[Liam]

Wow. That's, um, *counting*, 30 more than me. I started 3 though. Er, so maybe that's a total of -3 for completion. Amazing Bill!

[Tnkw01]

Great job!

[Bill]

Liam wrote: "Wow. That's, um, *counting*, 30 more than me. I started 3 though. Er, so maybe that's a total of -3 for completion. Amazing Bill!"

Lol. Thanks. My main focus this year was finishing series so that was one challenge I actually did good with.

Tnkw01 wrote: "Great job!"

Thanks.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Whoa, that's impressive. And here I was, so proud of my 6 finished series in 2017... ;)

[Bill]

Thanks. It’s all relative. I still have another 70 series open. Percentage wise you might have me beat.

[Bill]

Want to get these out the way but keep a record of them

Series Finished in 2017
Chronicles of Prydain - Alexander - finished 1/4/17
Oryx and Crake - Atwood - finished 1/3/17
Divine Cities - Bennett - finished 6/10/17
Eddie Lacrosse - Bledsoe - finished 3/1/17
Memoirs of Lady Trent - Brennan - finished 6/7/17
Demon Cycle - Brett - finished 10/21/17
Belgariad - Eddings - finished 1/23/7
Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach - Erikson - finished 3/4/17
Second Sons - Fallon - finished 10/30/17
Bel Dame Apocrypha - Hurley (1 for 3) - finished 5/22/17
Broken Earth - Jemisin - finished 11/29/17
Wheel of Time - Jordan - finished 7/1/17
Earthsea Cycle - Le Guin - finished 4/29/17
Deed of Paksennarion - Moon - finished 8/3/17
Temeraire - Novik - finished 7/22
Inda - Smith - finished 9/9/17
Chronicles of Amber - Zelazny - finished 1/18/17

Edit: Finished a few series not originally on my list.
Foundation trilogy - Asimov
Witcher - Sapkowski
Abhorsen - Nix
Sandman - Gaiman
Original Shannara - Brooks
Vagrant - Newman
Dragonriders of Pern - McCaffery
Long Price Quartet - Abraham
World of the Five Gods - Bujold
Dark Elf - Salvatore
Books of the South(Black Company) - Cook
Watchmen - Moore
Assassin - Lebbon

[Virginie, Meow.]

Bill wrote: "Thanks. It’s all relative. I still have another 70 series open. Percentage wise you might have me beat."

70 huh. I don't think I've read that many series in my entire life.
Good luck :)

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

You did really well last year! I can't reading the Lightbringer this year.

[Bill]

Lost a series as Seanan McGuire added two more books to her Wayward Children series.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Bill wrote: "Lost a series as Seanan McGuire added two more books to her Wayward Children series."

I hate when they do that! It messes with my neat list of completed series!
(But I'm still happy to read more of a series I liked lol)

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

I wanted to read book 3 but I’m waiting for the price to drop.

[Bill]

I got lucky and my library had all 3.

[Helen, I·ᴍ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ]

Nice.

[Bill]

Had a pretty good April and was able to finish off 3 series. The biggest was knocking off the last of the Books of the Glittering Stone which is the final sub series in The Black Company. Also finished 2 trilogies with Binti and Shades of Magic.

[Bill]

Knocked off 4 series since my last update:
Lighthouse Duet by Carol Berg - only two books but took me way too long to actually read the second. Great series with some really original ideas.
Liveship Traders - Hobb - loved this series. Such great character development throughout.
His Dark Materials - Pullman - I enjoyed certain elements of the stories but they took too long to unfold for me. Enjoyable read though.
Alcatraz - Sanderson - I realize that I’m too old for this series but it was so bad. He had like three jokes that he just kept forcing into the story. Don’t think I would have enjoyed this at middle grade age either.

Just starting the last book of The Iron Druid so should have that wrapped up this week as well.

[Tnkw01]

Great job Bill.

[Cheryl]

You've had a great run of reading, Bill. Keep up the good work!

[Bill]

Thanks!

Finished The Iron Druid series today. Thought the series as a whole was ok. They were entertaining enough while reading them but doubt they will stick with me.

Going to take some work before I can finish off any more series as I think each will take multiple books now.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Wow, what a great job Bill!

I'm curious... If this list is only a portion of your uncompleted series... How many do you have open?

[Bill]

Thanks. I have 75 open series all together. Think I left off series that aren’t going to be finished by end of year.

I’m not great at planning but going to try to start picking off some of the open trilogies and maybe doing a Discworld book in between each book.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Oh, 75 is not too bad! When I read 'portion', I imagined 200 or so ^_^

I'm not really great at planning either. I'm trying to have 2 series that I buddy-read and just choose the rest based on my mood. I've found out that excessive planning leads me to stress, DNF a bunch of books and fall of the wagon (starting tons of series) :p

[Bill]

I think the stress of having 200 open series would probably kill me. I’ve seen people who have that and it blows my mind. I think my high was in the mid-90s.

Since I started tracking my series reads with the buddy read group in October 2016 I’ve finished 45(89 total) series which makes me feel better having more open series because the ratio is better than when I started.

I react the exact same way when I plan too much.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Bill wrote: "I think the stress of having 200 open series would probably kill me."

No kidding. I would spend hours looking at the list in despair! :o

I only started to track my series read this year. I used to read one series at a time, but I've now 10 incomplete and the same number 'on-hold' (which is basically a category I created in order not to feel guilty)... I've started 34 series this year! :o

[Bill]

I was the same. Joining Goodreads and r/Fantasy on reddit really blew up my open series list.

34 and not even halfway through the year is amazing.

[Scott]

You've done a great job consolidating Bill. I'm sure once you get it all the way down you'll never go back.

[Bill]

We both know that will never happen. I’ll be good for a while but will go off the rails at some point. I’m good as long as I keep a good rotation going.

[Tnkw01]

Bill wrote: "We both know that will never happen. I’ll be good for a while but will go off the rails at some point. I’m good as long as I keep a good rotation going."

Yes, keeping a good rotation going. Next year I will only do the series challenge.

[Bill]

I’m definitely going to cut down on my challenges next year too. 17 challenges was a bit too ambitious.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Oh wow, and here I thought I was doing a lot with my 7 challenges. What challenges are you doing?

[Tnkw01]

Bill wrote: "I’m definitely going to cut down on my challenges next year too. 17 challenges was a bit too ambitious."

Whoa!! I'm just trying to keep up with 3. That is quite impressive. I've decided next year it will be just 1 plus whatever the group is reading and then whatever my fancy is at the moment.

[Bill]

There is some overlap which definitely makes it easier but even with that I’m starting to fall behind. Much like starting new series I have no willpower to skip a new challenge.

In this group I’ve got this series challenge, sub-genre and bookshelf.

In Scott’s buddy read group I’ve got a team challenge, series challenge, book cover, A-Z topics, A-Z character names, Overflow(reading books I own). The team challenge is just getting points for whatever I read and the series is the same as this one.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy bookclub ive got a bookshelf, tbr topics, inclusive bingo and an owned books which is the same as the buddy read one with different scoring.

R/fantasy on reddit I’ve got bingo. This runs April to April.

Sword and laser bookclub I’ve got a group challenge to read 10k sf and 10k fantasy books. This one is really easy because you just use the books you read towards it.

GR reading challenge which is really just me racing my sister.

[Tnkw01]

Oh wow! I couldn't do it.

[Bill]

We will see if I can. I doubt it.

[Virginie, Meow.]

Thanks for answering, Bill. With all those challenges, isn't it tiresome updating all the threads?

I forgot to count the team challenge and GR challenge so... I'm at nine!

Next year, I'll probably do just the bookshelf in this group, and keep at my series and cover challenges in Scott's group. I went a little crazy with the Cover challenge (more than 100 categories) so there's no way I'll finish in 2018 hahaha :)

[Bill]

Updating all the threads has indeed become tiresome. I've fallen a bit behind on it.

I'm going to have to check out your cover challenge. I think I stopped adding around 60.

[Scott]

Bill wrote: "We both know that will never happen. I’ll be good for a while but will go off the rails at some point. I’m good as long as I keep a good rotation going."

"Off the rails" LOL that's a good description for it.

[Bill]

Finished 3 series for the month Godspeaker by Karen Miller, Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Greatcoats by Sebastian de Castell.