Challenges for 2020 long series or not?

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Jemppu, here's what she says
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

and there is an update

https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

These are about all her books, not just the Vorkosigan books. You will see that she recommends chronological (which this is except for Falling Free) and she recommends reading Falling Free later. It is in the same universe but is 200 years before Vorkosigan proper.

See if you agree that her order is the same. If I'm wrong, I will change it. But I'm not, I reread these books regularly. They are my faves. :-)

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Also, is this too long a period of time? I figure everybody will just read them right away. I could condense down to 6 months. Or whatever everyone wants.

Discuss! Have fun.

[Allan]

I'm up for whatever on the Vorkosigan series. On McDevitt & Wolfe, I would suggest we vote for what follows, and pick one McDevitt series or the other.

[Kalin]

I think we should do the whole series.

My preferred reading order would be chronological by original publication date.

But I've never read a single LMB book before so maybe Kate's insights are more useful here.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

LMB suggests basically the same reading order that I have suggested. So, although I know that people do like to read series by publication date, that is not the way the author suggests it. https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

Because I have read all of these books before, I don't really care. If you guys can decide to read them some other way than set out above, OK.

To me, the strongest books are mostly towards the middle. Mirror Dance through Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. With Barrayar and the Vor Games almost as good. So you guys battle it out. I am planning on the order set out above, which is chonological by timeline within the books except for Falling Free, which the author even suggests not be read in chronological date order.

[Antti]

I'd follow Kate's suggestions; they seem well thought out.

6 months sounds too little time for a serres this long: after all, we still have 2 group reads every month on top of this. I think the timeline in message #44 is pretty tight but do-able.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

I think a year long is preferred, with just setting a discussion thread for the series and people jumping in when they get around reading these volume. If it is faster than 12 months, we just set another challenge later

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I had suggested a nine month breakdown originally, but I still think people will read them faster. Maybe not.

Go up to Message 44 and see if that doesn't look ok.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Kateblue wrote: "Go up to Message 44 and see if that doesn't look ok."

9 months are ok

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

OK, I am arbitrarily setting the challenge at nine months with the distribution in Message 44 of this thread. Plus, if anyone runs over, that's ok, too. Just say you need an extension and we can extend.
What I am going to do is, nothing for now. I will formally put up the challenge on New Year's Eve or thereabouts.

So if anyone has any input, please input. If not -- this is the plan.

P.S. The thing is, I would like to start some other challenge later in the year. Because I will breeze through all of these over again in, I estimate, about 3 weeks. :-)

[Kalin]

If we're going to do a second challenge in late 2020, let's do Gene Wolfe -- seems like enough others have supported it.

It's also short enough -- we could do 4 books in 3 months.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

For those of you attempting to collect all these books before January . . . a tip:

Don't get confused by the Vorkosigan omnibuses (omnibusi? . . . I like omnibusi!). All of those other names make you think there are more books than listed above, but there are not. The omnibusi and their contents are:

Cordelia's Honor (November 1996), combined edition of 
Shards of Honor, 
Aftermaths, and 
Barrayar 
an afterword by the author 

Note: The short story Aftermaths is not a necessary read because it really has no characters in common and is just a tearjerking comment on the horrors of war. Albeit beautifully done. Also, chronologically, it falls somewhere within the time period of Shards of Honor

Young Miles (June 1997), omnibus: 
The Warrior's Apprentice, 
The Mountains of Mourning, and 
The Vor Game

Miles, Mystery and Mayhem (December 2001), omnibus: 
Cetaganda, 
Ethan of Athos, and 
Labyrinth

Miles Errant (September 2002), omnibus: 
Borders of Infinity, 
Brothers in Arms, and 
Mirror Dance 

Miles, Mutants and Microbes (August 2007), omnibus: 
Falling Free,
Labyrinth and 
Diplomatic Immunity 

(yes, Labyrinth is in two volumes . . . you’ll see why eventually)

Miles in Love (February 2008), omnibus: 
Komarr, 
A Civil Campaign and 
Winterfair Gifts

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosi...

The omnibusi were given out free on a disc attached to hardbound copies of "Cryoburn,” and were also given away for a while on Baen books free library https://www.baen.com/allbooks/categor.... This has stopped, unfortunately.

Still, you can find them and save yourselves some money, plus, (advantage), all the short pieces are there, in chronological order.

Note: some are Kindle and some are not. I forget which.

NOTE2: IMPORTANT! Memory, a very necessary book, is NOT in the omnibusi. It falls between Mirror Dance and Komarr. And it is my favorite ever on the days when A Civil Campaign is not. So if you are lucky and find all the omnibusi, don't forget, or you will be really confused reading Komarr