Peter's 2020 Reading Challenge!

[Peter]

Work in Progress

Here's my 2020 Reading Challenge.

Legend:
♻ = Potential to be swapped out
⚠ = 500+ pages
🎧 = Audiobook option
💻 = E-book option
♾ = Series
⌛ = Pending publication
✅ = Completed (and bolded)
★ = Star rating

1. A book with a title that doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y
Blood Song ⚠ ♾

✅2. A book by an author whose last name is one syllable
The Huntress 🎧
★★★★☆

✅3. A book that you are prompted to read because of something you read in 2019
The Last Colony 🎧 ♾
★★★★☆

4. A book set in a place or time that you wouldn't want to live
Queen of Fire

5. The first book in a series that you have not started
The Shadow of What Was Lost ♻ ⚠ 💻 ♾

✅6. A book with a mode of transportation on the cover
NOS4A2
★★★★☆

7. A book set in the southern hemisphere
The African Queen

8. A book with a two-word title where the first word is "The"
The Core

✅9. A book that can be read in a day
Long Way Down
★★★★☆

10. A book that is between 400-600 pages
The Fifth Season

11. A book originally published in a year that is a prime number
An Echo of Things to Come

✅12. A book that is a collaboration between 2 or more people
Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul
★★★☆☆

13. A prompt from a previous Around the Year in 52 Books challenge
The Traitor Baru Cormorant

14. A book by an author on the Abe List of 100 Essential Female Writers (link)
Frankenstein

✅15. A book set in a global city
Fleishman Is in Trouble
★★★☆☆

16. A book set in a rural or sparsely populated area
Moon of the Crusted Snow

17. A book with a neurodiverse character
The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius

18. A book by an author you've only read once before
Tower Lord

19. A fantasy book
The Light of All That Falls

20. The 20th book [on your TBR, in a series, by an author, on a list, etc.]
Indian Horse 💻

21. A book related to Maximilian Hell, the noted astronomer and Jesuit Priest who was born in 1719
The Skull Throne ⚠ ♾

22. A book with the major theme of survival
Countdown City

23. A book featuring an LGBTQIA+ character or by an LGBTQIA+ author
How We Fight For Our Lives ♻ 💻

24. A book with an emotion in the title
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet ⚠

25. A book related to the arts
The Water Dancer 🎧 💻

26. A book from the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards
The Institute

27. A history or historical fiction
Shōgun ♻ ⚠ 🎧 ♾

✅28. A book by an Australian, Canadian or New Zealand author
The Tattooist of Auschwitz 🎧 💻 ♾
★★★★☆

29. An underrated book, a hidden gem or a lesser known book
Ancillary Mercy

30. A book from the New York Times '100 Notable Books' list for any year
The Overstory ⚠ 💻

31. A book inspired by a leading news story
World of Trouble

✅32. A book related to the 2020 Olympic Summer Games in Japan
Pachinko 🎧 💻
★★★☆☆

✅33. A book about a non-traditional family
From the Ashes 🎧
★★★★☆

✅34. A book from a genre or sub genre that starts with a letter in your name
The Ten Thousand Doors of January 🎧 💻
★★★★☆

35. A book with a geometric pattern or element on the cover
Armada 🎧 💻

36. A book from your TBR/wishlist that you don't recognize, recall putting there, or put there on a whim
Brighton 🎧 💻

37. Two books that are related to each other as a pair of binary opposites: Book #1
Vengeful ♾

38. Two books that are related to each other as a pair of binary opposites: Book #2
Forgiveness 💻

39. A book by an author whose real name(s) you're not quite sure how to pronounce
The Night Tiger 🎧

✅40. A book with a place name in the title
A Gentleman in Moscow 🎧 💻
★★★★☆

✅41. A mystery
The Butterfly Girl 🎧 ♾
★★★★☆

42. A book that was nominated for one of the ‘10 Most Coveted Literary Prizes in the World’ (Pullitzer)
Middlesex ⚠ 💻

✅43. A book related to one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse
The Andromeda Evolution
★★★★☆

✅44. A book related to witches
Circe 🎧
★★★★☆

45. A book by the same author who wrote one of your best reads in 2019 or 2018
Artificial Condition ♾

46. A book related to the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire"
To Have and Have Not

47. A classic book you've always meant to read
Tarzan of the Apes ♾

48. A book published in 2020
Pending ⏳

49. A book that fits a prompt from the list of suggestions that didn't win (Poetry)
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

✅50. A book with a silhouette on the cover
The Whisper Man 🎧
★★★★☆

51. A book with an "-ing" word in the title
The Collapsing Empire 💻 ♾

52. A book related to time
Permafrost

[Peter]

Priorty Books

The Fifth Season
The Obelisk Gate
The Stone Sky

[Peter]

Best books of the year. Haven't decided if I'm going to do a top 5 or top 10 list.

[Peter]

I've got my 2020 list tentatively complete, excepting a couple minor prompts due to publishing/awards lists not released yet.

It's likely to undergo multiple revisions and changes though, but it's my start point for now.

I was pretty heavy on the sci-fi for 2019, and I'm finding I'm heavier on fantasy and literary fiction for my 2020 list, at least at this point.

I'm also planning on starting a couple new series as I've done a decent job of catching up or completing other series I've been reading. I'm (anxiously) waiting on the publication for a few series I'm heavily invested in:

The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss
The Gentleman Bastard by Scott Lynch
The Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft
The Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown

As of right now, there's no publication date for any of the next books in the series (the last two both having their most recent book just published in 2019), but if by some miracle any of these gets published, they will likely bump something off my current list.

[Peter]

I'm not off to a great start this year..... only three books read so far. They've been really good books, but I just haven't had the time to put towards reading much lately. I'm trying to get a little more reading in on my breaks at work or a little before bed to make up for it.

[Celeste]

I think you're doing great!
Your list is full of books I've read or are reading, which is surprising since I don't read long-lengths a lot of the time. Good luck! CELESTE.

[Peter]

Thanks Celeste! I only just saw this. I've been in a bit of a reading slump this year. Partly because one of the audiobooks I was listening to (Pachinko) automatically returned before I was finished and partly because I've been pretty busy with other things I haven't had a lot of time to devote to reading.

I tried reading The Water Dancer which I'd heard good things about, but I just couldn't get into it. The author uses overly superfluous prose. I just really disliked the style of writing so decided to move on.

I've since started The Last Colony which is book 3 of the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi and even though I've barely started, I've been sucked back into the world(s) of those characters. I'm pretty excited to get right into this one!

[Peter]

The Last Colony didn't disappoint. It was a great addition to the series and sets up some big things to come in the next installment - The Human Division. I wasn't planning on reading that this year, but I may have to find a place to fit it in.

In the meantime, it seems I'm coming out of my slump - I've got two books on the go right now, one audio and one paper. I'm currently reading The Andromeda Evolution. It's a continuation of the story originally crafted by the late Michael Crichton, and even though I've only just started it, I can attest that the author (Daniel H. Wilson) has done an excellent job of capturing the essence of a Crichton techno-thriller.

I'm also listening to Fleishman Is in Trouble. I think I came across is in the nominations for Goodread's Reader Awards last year. It's definitely a book I wouldn't normally pick up - it's content is just not something that I'm particularly drawn to most of the time. But for some reason this one piqued my interest and so far it's been good. Definitely an outlier in my reading choices, but sometimes those end up being really great reads.

[Peter]

The Last Colony didn't disappoint. It was a great addition to the series and sets up some big things to come in the next installment - The Human Division. I wasn't planning on reading that this year, but I may have to find a place to fit it in.

In the meantime, it seems I'm coming out of my slump - I've got two books on the go right now, one audio and one paper. I'm currently reading The Andromeda Evolution. It's a continuation of the story originally crafted by the late Michael Crichton, and even though I've only just started it, I can attest that the author (Daniel H. Wilson) has done an excellent job of capturing the essence of a Crichton techno-thriller.

I'm also listening to Fleishman Is in Trouble. I think I came across is in the nominations for Goodread's Reader Awards last year. It's definitely a book I wouldn't normally pick up - it's content is just not something that I'm particularly drawn to most of the time. But for some reason this one piqued my interest and so far it's been good. Definitely an outlier in my reading choices, but sometimes those end up being really great reads.

[Peter]

Well, I'm still a little behind where I was hoping to be, but I've got a couple more reads under my belt. I recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow and Long Way Down, both solid 4 star reads.

I think I'm going to try and knock off a couple from some series that I'm in the middle of next - my sights are set on The Skull Throne or The Dragon Republic.

I'm waiting for the audio version of Circe to come available too.

In the meantime, I've decided to get back into Worm. It's a finished web serial that I started reading in 2017, but it is really good. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been picked up by a publisher yet. Anyway, for anyone reading my comments here, it's really good, but really long - I started reading it because I was looking for a long book and it was the longest one I could find - at 6680 pages, it's long. I think the word count is somewhere around 2 million. I'm about 60% of the way through it, which is equivalent to nearly four times the length ofA Dance with Dragons. With physical library books not available right now and usually long wait times on audiobooks, I decided to pick it back up and get back into the "wormverse". I took a break just for a change of pace but I'm excited to hopefully finish it off this time.