2021 Read All the Books: Around the Shelf in Eight(y) Years

[Emmett]

Well I have only read 21 books from the shelf, for a grand total of 6.54% of the SFFBC library.

25 to make a dent? I wouldn't want to hurt a bookshelf; I treat books with care.
12 as a recommendation? I am an underachiever.
I am going to go with 8.

Definitely going to tackle:
A Wizard of Earthsea
Semiosis
Prince of Thorns
The Killing Moon
The Graveyard Book (in Vietnamese for the added challenge)
+ will pull the other 3 from the endless stack

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Bonnie, I have all faith that you'll be watching it all with the eye of the tiger!

Emmett, I don't believe that's underachieving, I think that's an entirely healthy boundary, and 2021 is the year of healthy boundaries for me. All the props to you, my friend!

[Deedee]

Here are my stats to date:
321 books on shelf
115 books read
014 books started & discarded; 4 of the 14 I might try again
192 books to-read


009 books read 2 or more times

I've set my yearly goal to 16, like I've done the past few years but never reached. I came closer in 2020, reading Bookshelf Books:

#1 - Recursion (2019) by Blake Crouch (Hardcover, 336 pages) (01/04/20) *****

#2 - The Last Wish (The Witcher 0.5) (1993) by Andrzej Sapkowski; translated from Polish by Danusia Stok (Mass Market Paperback, 359 pages) (02/06/20) *****

#3 - The Goblin Emperor (2014) by Katherine Addison (483 pages) (03/11/20) *****

#4 – The Many-Coloured Land (Saga of the Pliocene Exile #1) (1981) by Julian May (Hardcover, First Printing edition, 415 pages) (04/13/20) ***

#5 - City of Stairs (The Divine Cities #1) (2014) by Robert Jackson Bennett (Goodreads Author) (Paperback, 452 pages) (06/24/20) *****

#6 - The Memory Police (1994) by Yōko Ogawa; translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Hardcover, 274 pages) (07/29/20) ***

#7 - Shadowshaper (Shadowshaper Cypher #1) (2015) by Daniel José Older (Goodreads Author) (Young Adult) (Hardcover, 297 pages) (08/26/20) **

#8 – Catseye (Dipple #1) (1961) by Andre Norton (Paperback, Ace #F-167, 176 pages) (09/09/20) **

#9 – The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire #1) (2020) by Andrea Stewart (Goodreads Author) (Hardcover, 438 pages) (11/28/20) ****


I've got Fate of the Fallen on deck right now. (I've already read The Best of All Possible Worlds back in 2013 when it first was published; definitely a 5 star read!)

The reason for 16 books: one per month plus one per quarter.

[Richard]

Loving the variety of goals and reasoning given.

I’ve been chipping away at the Club bookshelf as long as this challenge has been running but I now realise I’ve never actually officially signed up for it.
I managed to read 17 off the bookshelf in 2020 (not counting a reread) but that was an exceptional year cos‘ being in the travel industry I found myself with a lot more spare time on my hands to read than usual. I’m hoping things will pick up again this year and I will once again have to do most of my reading in different time zones.

Having 188 club books under my belt at the start of this year I’m going to go for a challenge of 12 to get me to the fabled heights of 200 read, but like quite a few here I’ll also secretly hope for a few more if I’m lucky.

[CBRetriever]

If I complete mine, I'll be at 127 but there are a lot of books that i really have no interest in reading (looking at the Dr Who books) so I doubt I'll ever come up to 50%

[Anna]

CBR, I was actually just today thinking that I should stop caring about reading group books. Some of the ones I've read just because they're on the shelf and available to me on audiobook have been real slogs. I rated several books in a row 1 star, and that was a very bad reading month. It's also not really fair to 1 star a book you had zero interest in and only read because you're an incorrigible completionist :S But I do still have some group books I'm very much looking forward to, so I'll try to focus on those :)

[CBRetriever]

if I own them I'll read them, but I won't go out of my way to get them to read them. Also, it can take a while for a new release to hit my price point and a lot of the monthly reads are immediate reads after the book is released which leaves me out. I do have 11 possibilities now but I'll still with my original 10 to actually read

[Anna]

I do try to read the ones we're picking now, but I'll probably give up on some of the older group reads. Terraphiles is a good example, I actually considered reading it as my 200th book, because it would've been a ridiculous thing to do, but fortunately I came to my senses :D

[Lowell]

**"Eye of the Tiger" starts playing**

Reading long, hitting the books
took my time, read my pages
Went the distance, now I'm done with that tome
Just a man, picking out a his next read!

It's the Eye of the tiger...


Currently Reading


On Deck


Finished!


DNF

[KelB]

2021 Goal: 12 Books ... inching closer to success each year ☺

Progress: 8/12

✔️ 1) Neverwhere -- 1/25/21
✔️ 2) The City We Became -- 6/2/21
✔️ 3) Six of Crows -- 6/13/21
✔️ 4) Shadowshaper -- 7/13/21
✔️ 5) The Time Machine -- 7/30/21
✔️ 6) Zoo City -- 9/20/21
✔️ 7) Station Eleven -- 10/17/21
✔️ 8) The Outside -- 11/24/21


The Stand
The Fifth Season
The Killing Moon
A Wizard of Earthsea

[Stephanie]

I only did 5 last year. Here's my list minus the 5.
Owned:
The Way of Kings
Leviathan Wakes
A Princess of Mars
The Night Circus
Seveneves
Spinning Silver
Ship of Magic
Foreigner
The Mote in God's Eye
Ubik
Watership Down
A Fire Upon the Deep
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Warbreaker
The Golem and the Jinni
The Song of Achilles
The Final Empire
Sphere
The Name of the Wind
Altered Carbon
The Lions of Al-Rassan
The Stand
The Crown Conspiracy
The Well of Ascension (Mistborn)

Not owned:
The Handmaid's Tale
The Eye of the World
A Clash of Kings
Armada
Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion
Old Man's War
Stranger in a Strange Land
Six Wakes
Parasite
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Long Earth
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Consider Phlebas
The Gunslinger
Pawn of Prophecy
The Last Unicorn
The Neverending Story
Flowers for Algernon
The Quantum Thief
Magician: Apprentice Volume 1
The Last Wish
The Way of Shadows
The Black Prism

[DivaDiane]

Haha, Lowell! Love it!

I’m not very interested in a lot of the previous group reads unless I already owned them before joining this group and I have plenty to keep me busy for the next couple of years. I doubt I’ll ever make much of a dent.

[Grace]

Delinquent book club member here finally figured out how to register for the challenge officially! I have 34 marked on TBR from the book club shelf but targeting 15 given my tendency to agree on a reading schedule, and then deviate from schedule or completely do my own thing. Might change things up, heavily influenced by Adrian Tchaikovsky books I squeeze in on my schedule, or new releases which I hope show up in the book shelf this year (Remote Control and Project Hail Mary)

Read January, so far:
1) The Poppy War
2) Planetfall

Currently reading:
3) Rendezvous with Rama

To read: (Books I own) - not in order
4) The Left Hand of Darkness
5) The Word for World is Forest
6) The Stars My Destination
7) Ringworld
8) The Forever War
9) The Caves of Steel
10) The Memory Police
11) A Scanner Darkly
12) Cat's Cradle

Things I may consume on Storytel or buy in a book sale:
13) The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
14) The Calculating Stars
15) Semiosis

[Anna]

Remote Control is too short for the shelf :( But buddy reads are always an option! I know I'm reading it on release day :D

[Grace]

Oh yes I keep forgetting short fiction are not on the shelf. I pre-ordered Remote Control yay! :)

[HeyT]

I hit my goal of three for the month yesterday with Remnant Population, Kindred, and The Warrior's Apprentice all complete. I found that playing RNG games has helped me be more enthusiastic about my goals.

[Lost Planet Airman]

HeyT wrote: "I hit my goal of three for the month yesterday with Remnant Population, Kindred, and The Warrior's Apprentice all complete. I found that playing RNG games has..."

RNG games?

[HeyT]

Random Number Generator I filtered my Calibre library by books on the shelf and then used a number generator to pick the title. In this case it was Remnant Population. I also play along with Book Spin on Litsy where you make a list of 20 books and the host draws two numbers each month that you then read. I made my list be all books from the shelf.

[Dj]

HeyT wrote: "Random Number Generator I filtered my Calibre library by books on the shelf and then used a number generator to pick the title. In this case it was Remnant Population. I also play along with Book S..."

Those sound less harmful than throwing darts at your bookshelf.

[Sylvie Helen]

I've set myself a goal of 24, almost all of them are books I already own in some form so I really have no excuse this year! Having said that, one of them is the first Wheel of Time book which I bought on a whim for 99p but I'm still not sure if I can bring myself to start such a monster of a series...

[Dj]

Sylvie Helen wrote: "I've set myself a goal of 24, almost all of them are books I already own in some form so I really have no excuse this year! Having said that, one of them is the first Wheel of Time book which I bou..."

At least it is done now, unlike when I started it. I figured seven books in a series, has to be done. Wrong.

[Lost Planet Airman]

Dj wrote: "Sylvie Helen wrote: "I've set myself a goal of 24, almost all of them are books I already own in some form so I really have no excuse this year! Having said that, one of them is the first Wheel of ..."

**cough** **cough** Game of Thrones

[Bill]

I read 39 books off the shelf last year but my reading dropped off heavily in the second half of the year. Haven’t really got back into reading fully so going to go for 12 and hope my pace picks up at some point.

1. Weaveworld by Clive Barker - 1/19
2. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - 1/20
3. Jade City by Fonda Lee - 2/8

[Dj]

Mike wrote: "Dj wrote: "Sylvie Helen wrote: "I've set myself a goal of 24, almost all of them are books I already own in some form so I really have no excuse this year! Having said that, one of them is the firs..."

And a few others. The Name of the Wind series comes to mind as well. But yeah, much like that.

[Sylvie Helen]

Dj wrote: "Mike wrote: "Dj wrote: "Sylvie Helen wrote: "I've set myself a goal of 24, almost all of them are books I already own in some form so I really have no excuse this year! Having said that, one of the..."

I think I have The Name of the Wind on my list but I might refuse to start it until we at least get a release date for the next book...

[Dj]

I finished my second book in the challenge. Turns out it isn't going to be A Closed and Common Orbit, but:
The War of the Worlds


Have to love the library. I found this to be a much better read than the Fafrd and Gray Mouser book. It certainly holds up much better over time than the other. In fact in spite of the fact that I have seen a number of versions of this on film and even listened to an album of it, that I enjoy to this day the book was still new and fresh in the reading. I was very impressed with the work.

[David]

I am new to this group and decided to rise to the Challenge. I'm trying to edit my first novel and also start the second book in the series, soooo my pledge is going to be only 1 book a month for 12 total.

Also, I wondering how people afford to buy all these books?? Libraries and used bookstores don't always have some of these great titles on the list and I have avoided buying a Kindle so far. (I have a somewhat alarmist conspiracy theory that the digital versions of books could easily be altered over time by publishers or some nefarious group and we wouldn't notice as readers). So how do people usually get copies of books to read?

[CBRetriever]

myself, I use a Kindle and multiple sources for books: gutenberg.org (free public domain books), Baen (SF&F with some books being free), the Humble Bundle (several times a year with the books averaging out to less than $2 each), Story Bundle (ditto) and Amazon (I track the book prices on ereaderiq and only buy when they're cheap enough for me).

Once you've downloaded a book to a Kindle, it will not change unless you have auto-updates turned on. And those updates are usually to either change the cover or correct reported typos. I can't think of what nefarious changes could be made to most of the books I read. I have heard of nefarious changes being made to physical history and biology books with the sneaking in of creationism...

[Midiain]

I live in a relatively small town and the library here is not great. Most things I've tried to find on Hoopla have to be transferred from somewhere else and have a months long waiting list. My only practical options, without spending a lot more than I can usually afford, are Kindle Unlimited and Audible.

I do buy some but I don't like buying ebooks from Amazon because they can, and have, removed them from people's devices so I don't particularly trust them. You can still read books with Kindle for pc or with the app so you don't actually have to buy one to use the service.

For paper books I buy used ones from Amazon or Thriftbooks.

[CBRetriever]

Amazon has only removed two books from people's devices (I think they were Animal Farm and 1984) and that was because the person selling them had no legal rights to do so. The uproar over that was so great that Amazon promised to never do it again

That said, some books have been removed from the Kindle Store, but they are still available to download from your Content and Devices page on the website. I have 20-30 books in this category including The Martian and for that book, it's because i bought it when it was self-published. It was subsequently picked up by a major publisher and there is no longer a product page for that version, but I can still download it from my account

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

You could also buy another e-reader, then you can buy your ebooks from other sources, actually have them on your computer (so they only get altered or deleted if you do it) and bypass amazon entirely, which is not such a bad thing to try to do.

[CBRetriever]

You can use books from other sources than Amazon (see my post) on a Kindle. I have over 500 books from Humble Bundle, Story Bundle, Baen, Gutenberg, Subterranean Press and other non-Amazon sites on my Kindle and stored on my Amazon account (makes it easier to download them to other devices). Mobi and PDF books can be read on Kindles

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

For devices sold in Germany, Amazon discourages that. You can only send ebooks you bought from other sources to your Kindle via a (legal) detour. For some books, this detour doesn't work because of their DRM, so you would have to crack the DRM to do so, which would be illegal. Amazon does that so you prefer buying ebooks from them.
I don't know how Amazon's policy is in other countries, but that's the reason I use an ebook reader from another manufacturer.

[Beth]

Goal: 7
Read: 1

Currently reading:

Finished:


On deck (subject to change!):

[David]

CBRetriever wrote: "myself, I use a Kindle and multiple sources for books: gutenberg.org (free public domain books), Baen (SF&F with some books being free), the Humble Bundle (several times a year with the books avera..."

Thanks so much for the suggestions. I'm going to look into all those sources. Good to know about the Kindle settings too.

[CBRetriever]

Ines wrote: "For devices sold in Germany, Amazon discourages that. You can only send ebooks you bought from other sources to your Kindle via a (legal) detour. For some books, this detour doesn't work because of..."

none of the sources I listed have DRM and you can either send them to your Kindle via email or using a Send to Kindle app

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindl...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindl...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindl...

and provided they are in mobi format w/o DRM, all will be fine. However, Amazon does not consider them Books, They're Docs.

and I forgot to list the free Tor short stories and free book of the month which also do not have DRM.

I acquired several of the Book Club books from either Tor or Humble or another non- Amazon source and here are some

Kushiel's Dart
The Calculating Stars
All the Birds in the Sky
Witchmark

[Lost Planet Airman]

David wrote: "I am new to this group and decided to rise to the Challenge...

Also, I wondering how people afford to buy all these books?? ..."

Welcome, David, and congratulations on your novel (just follow the rues about not promoting it in this group!)

I use inter-library loan (ILL). I use it a lot. I think the librarians have wept when they saw me approach the information desk. (Of course, it is all electronic now. But I think a heard a faint scream, like a hard drive fusing itself, last time I hit my Marina* "Submit" button.)

As a last resort, after libraries including hoopla and Libby* and Marina*, and LibriVox and Project Gutenburg, I have an Audible subscription and Amazon Prime. I've done a few Club books on Audible for convenience, but I don't think I've had to downshift to Amazon for a Club book, ever.

(*Libby and *Marina are Maryland library services. Libby connects to Overdrive electronic/audio books, and Marina provides ILL to Maryland libraries with outreach to national requests)

[Grace]

@CBR how are you now loading non amazon books to Kindle? I used to maintain Calibre on my desktop but ... lazy now! Curious if there’s now another lazy way?

[DivaDiane]

You can send the files by email, as long as they are DRM free.

[CBRetriever]

Grace wrote: "@CBR how are you now loading non amazon books to Kindle? I used to maintain Calibre on my desktop but ... lazy now! Curious if there’s now another lazy way?"

I use the Send to Kindle app most of the time

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindl...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindl...

it seems to have a bit of a glitch filling in the author name, so you need to do it yourself

[Megan]

I'll be reading semiosis and the ocean at the end of the lane so far since I own these two :)

[Beth]

Finished my first book for the challenge, The Last Wish, and edited my post above to reflect that.

[Marije]

I’m gonna try for 10 books from the list

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

a nice solid goal!

[Meredith]

I’ve read 3 of my goal of 19 so far.

Alphabet of Thorn,
The Best of All Possible Worlds,
Six of Crows.

[Dj]

Meredith wrote: "I’ve read 3 of my goal of 19 so far.

Alphabet of Thorn,
The Best of All Possible Worlds,
Six of Crows."

I really enjoyed the Alphabet of Thorn when I read it. How did you find it?

[Dj]

So I finished: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?


What is there to say about this book. Contorted, Convoluted, Contrived, Lacking in characters that make you feel the least bit of concern or empathy about, Major class Deus ex Machina, Unnecessary plot twits, and about the only thing lacking to prove and altered state was the Albatross.

One of the few books that I can say that the movie was better.

[DivaDiane]

How did you like the PKDick? I was worried because I love the film, but I liked it a lot *because* it’s quite different.

[Meredith]

Dj wrote: "Meredith wrote: "I’ve read 3 of my goal of 19 so far.

Alphabet of Thorn,
The Best of All Possible Worlds,
Six of Crows."

I really enjoyed the Alphab..."

I liked it a lot! I was intrigued by the description when it came up as a group read so I picked it up and I'm glad I did. Would definitely read more McKillip.

[Dj]

DivaDiane wrote: "How did you like the PKDick? I was worried because I love the film, but I liked it a lot *because* it’s quite different."

I wasn't enthralled with the book. It left me wondering why he is ranked so high as an author, but then it is a personal taste as much as anything else. It was interesting but not enough to make me want more. I find it interesting that so many really good movies come out of his work when for the most part I struggle to get through them.

Someone is seeing something I am missing it would seem. Well, that is the way of the world after all I guess.