Joon's 2021 Challenge, aka Back on the Horse (comments welcome)

[Joon]

After a year and a half of almost no productive reading, it's time to get my **** together. Going with the Alphabet Challenge this year (A-Z and 0-9) which is more ambitious than is reasonable after so long "away" but eh.

My list is tentative, and very sci-fi-heavy because that's what I want to read NOW but who knows how I'll feel in six months. I do have multiple options for most letters/numbers so there are subs on the bench.

There's also a few items on here that require me to read earlier books in the series, so I may have made this that much more unreasonable for myself, but I gotta try. I've done 40 books in a year before, but not in a very long time.

Will for sure make substitutions as the year goes on. I've got a few options for most of these letters/numbers, but I have a feeling as the year progresses I'm going to want to swap out some of the longest books for some shorter ones.

*** = Completed, 21/36

***Ancestral Night, Elizabeth Bear
Billy Summers, Stephen King, or Blackveil, Kristen Britain
***The Colorado Kid, Stephen King
Doctor Sleep, Stephen King
***The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey
***First Rider's Call, Kristen Britain
***Green Rider, Kristen Britain
The High King's Tomb, Kristen Britain
***The Invention of Sound, Chuck Palahniuk
***Joyland, Stephen King
***Killing Gravity, Corey J. White
***The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling
***A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine
Needful Things, Stephen King
One Day All This Will Be Yours, Adrian Tchaikovsky
***Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, Tamsyn Muir
***The Queen's Gambit, Jessie Mihalik
***Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells
***'Salem's Lot, Stephen King
***To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers
***Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey
***Velocity Weapon, Megan E. O'Keefe (BUDDY READ 3/20)
***When We Were Magic, Sarah Gailey
The Expert System's Brother, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Yellow Jessamine, Caitlin Starling
Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
***Full Dark, No Stars, S. King
***The First Sister, Linden A. Lewis
The Second Rebel, Linden A. Lewis
The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
NOS4A2, Joe Hill
***Take a Look at the Five and Ten, Connie Willis
Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente
Seven of Infinities, Aliette de Bodard
***Octavia Gone, Jack McDevitt
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir - Fun Fact: the German title of this book is ICH BIN HARROW which seems appropriate.

[CBRetriever]

like the title in German for the last book...

[DivaDiane]

Great list, Joon! I have a couple of those on my list as well.

[Joon]

Already making substitutions lol.

Swapped out:
Hammered by Elizabeth Bear for Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin
Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds for Princess Floralinda by Tamsyn Muir



I may still try to read Permafrost (it's short), but I dropped Hammered (for now) because there's no audiobook, and if I'm going to have a hope of hitting this goal, I need to leverage audiobooks, and there's a handful of others on the list that also don't have audiobooks that I'm much more reluctant to drop right now.

[Joon]

I'm also taking a glance at books that will release in 2021.

For one thing, the sequel to First Sister is coming out and is called Second Rebel, and I might swap it in for Second Chance if I wind up liking the first book enough.

EDIT: Yeah, shuffled my list a little more.

Tossed Girl Who Circumnavigated.... and Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart for two of Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books. I just really want to read those this year.

I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a little more of this. Just shoehorning in books I want to read and author variety be damned.

[Joon]

Oof how did I miss that.

Added:
Octavia Gone - Jack McDevitt (for "8"). And I still wouldn't have found it if it wasn't also the eighth book of the series.

Removed -
The Basic Eight - Daniel Handler


I'll still give Handler a try one day but I wasn't really bent on doing it this year.

[Joon]

This notion I had of variety, of reading a bunch of different authors, is quickly going out the window as I've been consolidating my list.

Already strongly leaning towards reading the entire Murderbot series (at least three or four of which would wind up on the list), five Becky Chambers books (three on the list). Considering tossing a third Sarah Gailey book on there.

[Joon]

Dang, lack of research strikes again. Apparently Stephen King's If it Bleeds has one story that's a sequel to The Outsider, which I haven't read yet because it's a pseudo-sequel to his Mr. Mercedes trilogy.

So I had to toss that.

[Joon]

Other books I need to read this year so that I can read those on the list:

The Gunslinger, S. King
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, B. Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit, B. Chambers
Rogue Protocol, M. Wells

[Joon]

Also on this year's TBR list:

Later, S. King
Void Black Shadow, C. White
Static Ruin, C. White
The Long Sunset, J. McDevitt
A Voice in the Night, J. McDevitt
Machine, E. Bear

[Joon]

***Ancestral Night, Elizabeth Bear - This was a long, chatty, navel-gazer of a book, but enough Big Stuff happened that I hung on, and the payoff in the end was pretty satifsying. I would have liked to see a bit more exploration of some things, particularly the stuff that happened at the end.

A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, Alex White
Caliban's War, James SA Corey (or The Colorado Kid, S. King)
A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine (Release: 3/2/21; BUDDY READ 4/10)

***The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey - Pretty compelling, and reading it, it felt like a movie waiting to happen. So imagine my surprise when it was optioned immediately.

Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells (Release: 4/27/21)
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers (Release: 4/20/21)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (BUDDY READ 4/15) (Also considering Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill)

***The Invention of Sound, Chuck Palahniuk - Question: "Do I still need to read Chuck Palahniuk?" Answer: "Eh, probably not."

***Joyland, S. King -

***Killing Gravity, Corey J. White - Fun, fast-paced, and over pretty quickly. Sometimes you just want to read about a space-witch wrecking everything in her path.

***The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling - Maybe the most frustrating book I've read so far this year. There were so many things I wanted this to be while I was reading it, and it wound up being almost none of them. First and foremost, I wanted it to be a mystery, and it just wasn't.

***A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (NEED TO FINISH BY 4/10)
Network Effect, Martha Wells
The Outside, Ada Hoffmann

***Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, Tamsyn Muir -

***The Queen's Gambit, Jessie Mihalik - Honestly thought this was going to be a throwaway. It made the list because the pickings are slim at Q and it was short, but I wound up liking it a lot and will almost certainly continue the series. It's a space-romance, but the romance does not overwhelm the story.

***Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells - I liked it for most of the book. Then the ending happened, and I was so furious I literally stopped reading anything for over three months. Check the timestamps.

Starsight, Brandon Sanderson

***To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers -

***Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey -

***Velocity Weapon, Megan E. O'Keefe

***When We Were Magic, Sarah Gailey - Liked this one a lot. First Gailey book I read and I was sold.

Exit Strategy, Martha Wells
Yellow Jessamine, Caitlin Starling
Zoo City, Lauren Beukes (alternate: Zeroes, Chuck Wendig)

***Full Dark, No Stars, S. King -

***The First Sister, Linden A. Lewis - Liked this a lot. Or at least a third of it. The problem with multiple POVs is they may not all be compelling.

The Second Rebel, Linden A. Lewis (Release: 8/24/21)
The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
NOS4A2, Joe Hill

***Take a Look at the Five and Ten, Connie Willis

Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente
Seven of Infinities, Aliette de Bodard

***Octavia Gone, Jack McDevitt - This book is like two years old, if that. Was positive I hadn't read it before. Then, while reading it, I realized I had read it before. Then, by the end, I again found myself wondering if I actually had read it before. There was a period where McDevitt was hands down my favorite author, but his recent efforts have underwhelmed. (Note: As of 8/11/21, and knowing I did read this this year, I already forget having read it. AGAIN. I genuinely can't remember a single thing about it now.)

[Joon]

After a very lengthy break where I couldn't be bothered to read anything, I'm chucking most of what remains on the list.

Remainder of list with mostly new considerations
# = Definite

B - Billy Summers, S King
D - Dark Half, Desperation, Doctor Sleep, Doloros Claiborne
F - Futuristic Violence, D Wong, Finders Keepers, S King, Full Throttle, J Hill
G - Gerald's Game, Gunslinger
H - Heart Shaped Box , J Hill
N - Needful Things, S King
O - Outsider, S King
S - Salem's Lot, Shining
X - Expert System's Brother, Tchaikovsky
#Y - Yellow Jessamine
Z - Zoey Punches the Future, D Wong; Zeroes, C Wendig
2 - NOS4A2 - J Hill
#3 - Drawing of the Three, S King
4 - Four Past Midnight, S King
6 - Six-gun Snow White, C Valente
7 -
#9 - Harrow the Ninth, T Muir

Others I'd have to read:
Mr. Mercedes, S King
End of Watch, S King
Shining, S King (reread)