2023 Recommended Reading Challenge - Discussion Thread

[Mike, Host & Producer of IRCB!]

This is the discussion thread for IRCB's 2023 Recommended Reading Challenge. Use it to discuss the challenge books you're reading, ask questions, and announce when you've completed the entire list.

Those who finish the challenge by December 16th, 2023 will get a personal shout-out on the podcast, and will get to help pick our January 2024 Book of the Month!

Also:
Progress Thread: for tracking your progress
Official Tracking Widget

RULES:
- You can join in at any point
- Books you have already read count towards the challenge
- Read any 24 suggestions from the podcasters and Goodreads mods, Patreon supporters, and your own picks for the Themes of the Month

From The Podcast Crew:
Danny - Batman: One Dark Knight
Erin - Ballad for Sophie
Kait L - The Arrival
Kate S - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Mike - Aquaman: Andromeda
Nick - Kaya, Volume 1
Paloma - Friday, Book One: The First Day of Christmas
Paul - The River at Night
Tia - Dracula, Motherf**ker!

Patreon Supporters
Tom - One Hundred Demons
Stephanie - Broken Frontier: Anthology
CK - Promethea, Book One
Paul G - Through a Life
Matt - Stray Dogs
Geoff - PLUTO: Naoki Urasawa x Osamu Tezuka, Volume 001

[Paul]

Heads up: As far as I know, Through a Life (my pick) is not available digitally. If you intend to check it off, don’t wait until December to request a hold at your library.

[kaitlphere]

And here I was almost caught up with my library stack and now I've put a hold on seven books!

[Evilblacksheep]

Hi, I'm new to the group and to this challenge and I have a question. Two actually. I hope it's also the right place to ask it, if not, I apologize in advance.

I assume the challenge is to read those books in 2023. What happens if we've already read some of them in the past ?

If we read more than one 'theme of the month' book for a specific month, does only one entry count or can we use everything we read that matches the theme ?

Thanks in advance for your help :)

[Paul]

Evilblacksheep wrote: "What happens if we've already read some of them in the past ?"

Rule #2 says they count. If you want them to show up in your tracker widget (which isn’t the official account of “completeness”) you will need to add a new read date between Feb–Dec. I mark them with a “-“ to mark that I could count them but will most likely re-read.

” can we use everything we read that matches the theme ?”

I’ve only ever considered one pick since it is “book” of the month, but I don’t know if there is a rule against it. Frankly, I find that I am better off reading a considered recommendation from the list than something I pick to match a theme—I have picked some real stinkers, and also tend to fall into my comfort zone.

[Evilblacksheep]

Thank you Paul for the clarification about the already read books!

I hope one of the mod will be able to clarify for the second point. I'm mostly worried about not being able to find some of the books from the fixed list and wondering if I can manage to still reach 24 read. I guess I'll do my best and see.

For picking stinkers to match the theme, there is always other people's recs. I posted a few recs on the february thread and I'll try to do this every month. I feel like unless you have something that fits the theme in your to-read list it's a good way to get something potentially interesting. ;)

[Erin]

Evilblacksheep wrote: "If we read more than one 'theme of the month' book for a specific month, does only one entry count or can we use everything we read that matches the theme ?."

Excellent question! To be honest, I don't think we've talked about it - let me chat with everyone else and I'll let you know!

[Mike, Host & Producer of IRCB!]

Evilblacksheep wrote: "Thank you Paul for the clarification about the already read books!

I hope one of the mod will be able to clarify for the second point. I'm mostly worried about not being able to find some of the ..."

Following up on Erin's check-in: We're totally up for folks counting multiple books within a BotM theme. We see 24 books for 2023 as the minimum number of books to read for the challenge. We just want folks to read more, diverse comics.

Heck, I think we should definitely award a "most comics read for the challenge" no-prize for the person who reads the most for the reading challenge!

[Evilblacksheep]

Sounds great, thanks for the follow up!! I'm so glad I found this group, I'm trying to tackle my evergrowing pile of reading backlog (a good chunk of which is comics/graphic novels) but also read more diverse ones and this challenge is great for it!

[Canavan]

As I recall, last year I fell just short of completing the IRCB reading challenge, but this year — success! Here are a few thoughts on the annual challenge and some of what I read (and didn’t read).

I finally got around to reading... I was able through this challenge to make at least a infinitesimal dent in my graphic novel to-be-read pile. I’ve long wanted to read Craig Thompson’s autobiographical Blankets , an account of his early spiritual and sexual yearnings. It turned out to be worth the wait.

This is going to date me, but I read the first part of Art Spiegelman’s Maus back when it was originally released in book form. When some years later the concluding volume was published, I felt that in order to do it justice I needed to go back and re-read the first part...but, perhaps because the subject matter is so dark, I never managed to do so. Until now. While I didn’t find that the second volume quite measured up to the first (perhaps because of the increased focus on the relationship between the author and his father), taken as a whole Maus is a tremendous achievement.

A ton of things still remain on my to-be-read pile. For example, someone here (sorry, I don’t remember who) recommended Joe Hill’s Locke & Key. I fully intended to read the series during the month of October, but simply failed to carve out sufficient time. Maybe next October!

The best thing I read for the challenge... I wanted to call out a recommendation from one of IRCB’s Patreon members, Tom: Lynda Barry’s semi-autobiographical One! Hundred! Demons! Most of those here reporting on their challenge experiences had a kind of luke warm response to this book, but I absolutely loved it. That’s perhaps not surprising since I’ve been an admirer of Barry dating back to the days when Ernie Pook’s Comeek appeared in alternative weeklies. Barry has a unique way of treading the line between the absurd and the poignant that often resonates with me.

Thanks... Speaking of recommendations, I wanted to thank everyone — the podcast crew, Patreon members, and others — for passing along their graphic novel endorsements. I appreciated them all — even those for books that, due no doubt to my personal quirks, failed to quite click with me. I wanted to specifically mention recommendations by Erin ( Ballad for Sophie by Filipe Melo), Kait L. ( The Arrival by Shaun Tan), Kate S. ( Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton), Paul G. (Darwyn Cooke’s Parker books), and Evilblacksheep ( Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol).

Thanks again to all and see you in the New Year...or, maybe not.

[Chad]

Canavan wrote: "A ton of things still remain on my to-be-read pile. For example, someone here (sorry, I don’t remember who) recommended Joe Hill’s Locke & Key. I fully intended to read the series during the month of October, but simply failed to carve out sufficient time. Maybe next October!."

That could have been me. It's one of my favorite comics of the last 15 years. I've read through all of it a few times. The good thing is by waiting there's a couple more things you can read. These days Hill and Rodriguez just return occasionally for one-shots and miniseries featuring ancestors of the Locke's. Now there's another miniseries and a crossover with Sandman you can add to the pile. The Sandman crossover is done exceptionally well, without messing up the existing mythos of Sandman. Every time Locke and Key releases a new one shot, IDW rereleases the same collection of one-shots with the new one added. It's a case where buying the one-shots is ultimately cheaper than buying yet another collection of mostly the same stuff.

[Canavan]

Chad said: The good thing is by waiting there's a couple more things you can read.

Thanks, Chad, for the original recommendation and for this update. Much appreciated!