2025 Reading Challenge discussion
ARCHIVE 2024
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Marleen’s Shelf of Stuff
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Shelf of bookcovers read in 2024
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Series I’m working on (and which book is next up)Priority series for 2024:
-The Murderbot Diaries:
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-Mistborn, Era 1: The Hero of Ages
-The Dark Tower:
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The rest (in order of when I last read from the series):
-The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (but reread original trilogy first after finishing the tv series)
-The Wormwood Trilogy: The Rosewater Insurrection
-The Space Between Worlds: Those Beyond the Wall
-The Lunar Chronicles: Scarlet
-A Song of Ice and Fire: A Clash of Kings
-The Arcadia Project: Impostor Syndrome
-Between Earth and Sky: Fevered Star
-The Kystrom Chronicles: The Unkillable Princess (not out yet)
- - - - - - - -series with 2023 progress: - - - - - -
-Shades of Magic: A Gathering of Shadows
-The Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Quest
-Alex Stern: Hell Bent
-Imperial Radch: Ancillary Mercy
-Wanderers: Wayward
-Thursday Next: Lost in a Good Book
-Wayfarers: A Closed and Common Orbit
-A Chorus of Dragons: The Name of All Things
-The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
-Supernatural Investigations: Amari and the Despicable Wonders
-The Last Binding: A Restless Truth
-LitenVerse: Defekt
-Southern Reach: Authority
-Monk and Robot: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
- - - - - - - -series with 2024 progress: - - - - - -
-Robert Hunter: Gezicht van het kwaad
-The Resolution Universe: Ocean's Echo
-Fourth Wing: Iron Flame
-The Thursday Murder Club:
-Bill Hodges: Finders Keepers
-Six of Crows: Crooked Kingdom
-Aaron Falk: Force of Nature
-A Kind of Spark: Keedie
-Wayward Children: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
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Reading goals for 2024▪️Number of books&pages: 75 books, 30.000 pages
▪️Series: going to try to focus on 5 priority series again, but with more of a mix in genres, not all chunky fantasy series. Also I’d like to try to read series books a bit closer together so I hopefully remember everything better.
▪️Challenges: abandon all pre-2023 challenges. No starting intense new ones. Small ones for fun are okay.
▪️Diversity: again increase %POC authors and %non-binary authors vs previous year's %.
▪️Physical tbr:
- goals per haul-year: 2023 13 to 6, 2022 17 to 10, 2021 5 to 2, 2020-and-earlier 20 to 14.
- read 33% of my 2024 hauls within 2024
- the current TBR shelves are the maximum TBR space
▪️Rereading: reread more books than I did in 2023 (only 5!).
▪️Numbers of books at once: 4 is the absolute maximum. 2 or 3 is better…
▪️Work books: at least one a month.
▪️ARCs: maximum one per publication month, and no requesting new ones if I have an outstanding request for that publication month.
Keeping track of my owned TBRStarting point of my owned TBR, including books I’m currently reading:
1/1/2024: 71 books: 56 physical books, 15 ebooks.
Minus: read/dnf-ed/unhauled without reading
Plus: bought/gifted/got for free
📚January: 67 books: 54 physical: +1 -3, 13 ebooks: -2
📚February: 65 books: 52 physical: +1 -3, 13 ebooks: +/- 0
📚March: 60 books: 48 physical: +2 -6, 12 ebooks: -1
📚April: 56 books: 45 physical: -3, 11 ebooks: +1 -2
📚May: 56 books: 45 physical: +4 -4, 11 ebooks: +2 -2
📚June: 56 books: 45 physical: +1 -1, 11 ebooks: +1 -1
📚July: 56 books: 44 physical: -1, 12 ebooks: +2 -1
📚August: 57 books: 46 physical: +2, 11 ebooks: -1
📚September: 60 books: 47 physical: +1, 13 ebooks: +2
📚October: 64 books: 49 physical: +2, 15 ebooks: +3 -1
📚November: 62 books: 50 physical: +2 -1, 12 ebooks: -3
📚December: 63 books: 51 physical: +2 -1, 12 ebooks: +/- 0
Physical books hauled in 2024 (and did I read them)January:
💰De geschiedenis van de steen en de fluit - en dat is nog niet alles
February:
🎁Assassin's Quest
March:
💰The Book of Doors
💰S.
May:
💰Ik kom hier nog op terug
💰De nomade
🎁Waterland
🎁Brandoffer
June:
💰✅Denk af en toe aan mij
August:
💰Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
💰Orbital
October:
💰Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
🎁The Pale Dreamer
November:
💰✅The Christmas Appeal
💰Senlin Ascends
December:
🎁De plot
🎁Het vervolg
Still to read 2023 hauled books💰Mickey7
💰The Hero of Ages
💰Catfish Rolling
💰De man met duizend gezichten
🎁Iedereen liegt
💰Schuilplaats voor andere tijden
💰✅Murder in the Family
💰The Best of All Possible Worlds
💰✅Strata
💰✅Six of Crows
💰It Happened One Summer
🎁The Troop
💰✅The Christmas Wish
Still to read 2022 hauled books🎁✅Winter's Orbit
🎁A Clash of Kings
🎁Omringd door idioten
💰SF Verhalen 6
💰Code 39
💰✅The Man Who Died Twice
💰✅The Night Circus
💰The Shining
🎁De 19 dingen die je nooit met collega's moet doen
🎁Zeven talen in zeven dagen
💰The Priory of the Orange Tree
💰Fairy Tale
💰Later
💰If You Could See Me Now
💰Nation
💰✅Blake's 7 (DNF)
💰My Best Friend's Exorcism
Still to read 2021 hauled books💰To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
💰Neuromancer
💰✅Foundation (DNF)
💰Rusalka
💰Grunts
Still to read 2020-and-earlier hauled booksTweeduister
The Science of Discworld
The City
✅Op de man af (DNF)
✅De trein (DNF)
Misschien wisten zij alles
✅De eerlijke vinder (DNF)
✅Het goud van de waarheid (DNF)
✅Villa Serena (DNF)
The Dosadi Experiment
✅Helse krachten (DNF)
✅Hals over kop (DNF)
✅Mr. Mercedes
✅Doodsengel (DNF)
✅Moederziel (DNF)
Everything is Illuminated
✅Nutshell (DNF)
✅Boek 256 blz.
Het Hemelse Gerecht
Best Kept Secret
Die Wand
Out of sight, out of mind…the owned ebook tbr✅De therapeut (DNF)
📖Tot snel
📖The Way of Kings
📖The Rosewater Insurrection
📖Under Fortunate Stars
📖Bang Bang Bodhisattva
📖Lost in a Good Book
📖The Well of Lost Plots
✅Murder in the Family (also owned physically!)
✅Jade Legacy
📖Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction
✅Neverest (ARC)
✅The Assassin's Blade
✅Tower of Dawn
📖Office Maxi
📖Iron Flame
📖Those Beyond the Wall
📖Interstellar MegaChef
Books I want to reread in 2024Books on my shelves I don’t remember, to decide whether or not to keep (can also just read a few chapters!):
-Jouw hart is van mij
-De Einstein code
-De verdronken tuin
-all my Nicci French books
Old (and new) favorites:
-The Neverending Story
-Ogen van tijgers
-Neverwhere
✅This is How You Lose the Time War
-His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
-Discworld: next up:
Books to get to soon(ish)-Crime and Punishment with Jayne
-The Golden Compass with Kelcii
-Sundial with Chloe
-The Troop (Secret Santa gift 2023!)
✅The Three-Body Problem (borrowed from R)
-All Systems Red (restart series with eyeballs)
-City of Bones (because I liked the movie)
Approved ARCs by pubdateApril 2023:
✅Neverest, Ghost Orchid Press, pub: 25-4-2023 (through ARC mailing list)
2024:
January:
✅The Grief House, Bloomsbury, pub: 18-01-2024, arch: 25-01-2024
✅The City of Stardust, Hodder&Stoughton, pub: 25-01-2024, arch: 25-01-2024
February:
❌Fathomfolk, Little Brown Book, pub: 29-02-2024, arch: 05-03-2024 (not read before it was archived)
March:
✅Floating Hotel, Hodder&Stoughton, pub: 21-03-2024, arch: 21-03-2024
Reviews still to write:
The City of Stardust
Floating Hotel
Challenges I'm doing (in this group or elsewhere)On the go:
📚Help Me Decide 2021/22 (CCC): message 608
📚Help Me Decide 2022/23 (CCC): message 32
📚2024 TBR Cleanup (Storygraph): 1/12 books
Completed:
📚January Marathon Challenge: 3170/3000 pages, message 60
📚Dare to DNF (CCC): 24/24 books, message 4
Buddy Reads/TBR Twins/etcFebruary: Dirk Gently #1, Buddy read thread
May: Six of Crows, Buddy read thread
January📚Plans: ✅finish The Night Circus, ✅finish The Christmas Wish, 📖finish Rogue Protocol, ❌finish The Shining, ✅The City of Stardust (ARC), ✅The Grief House (ARC), ❌The Sanatorium (Chloe's book club), ✅Handtekening van het kwaad, ✅Anna O.
📚Reality:
The Night Circus
The Christmas Wish
The Grief House
Anna O.
Nutshell (dnf)
Handtekening van het kwaad
Kwart over mist
The City of Stardust
Stink tegen Danny
Een voor een
February📚Plans: ❌finish Murder in the Family, 📖finish Rogue Protocol, ✅finish Better than the Movies, ❌Fathomfolk (ARC), ✅Dirk Gently #1 (buddyread here), ✅The Haunting of Ashburn House (Chloe’s book club)
📚Reality:
De trein (DNF)
Better than the Movies
Op de man af (DNF)
Helse krachten (DNF)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Als op een winternacht een reiziger
The Tweak
The Haunting of Ashburn House
Een schot in de roos
March📚Plans: ✅finish A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, ✅finish Moving Pictures, ✅finish Rogue Protocol, ✅All These Bodies (Chloe’s book club), ❌The Three-Body Problem, ✅Heir of Fire (reread)
📚Reality:
Hals over kop (dnf)
Moving Pictures (reread)
Blake’s 7 (dnf)
All These Bodies
Boek (256 blz.)
Rogue Protocol
Trauma
Murder in the Family
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
Moederziel (dnf)
Villa Serena (dnf)
Heir of Fire (reread)
The Old Man and the Sea
April📚Plans: ✅finish Act Your Age Eve Brown, ✅finish Dry, ✅The Assassin's Blade (readalong), ✅Jar of Hearts (Chloe’s book club), The Three-Body Problem, ✅Dag een, ✅Winter’s Orbit (nikki’s pick)
📚Reality:
Het goud van de waarheid (dnf)
Act Your Age Eve Brown
Dag een
Winter’s Orbit
Ollie de Viking
Foundation (dnf)
De therapeut (dnf)
Jar of Hearts
Dry
The Assassin’s Blade
May📚Plans:
TVD Readathon.
Books for prompts that are also commitments: ✅Queen of Shadows (readalong), ✅Six of Crows (buddyread here)
Other books for prompts: ✅Fourth Wing, ❌Tot snel, ✅Knot My Type, ✅The Man Who Died Twice, ❌Ancillary Mercy, ❌Het hemelse gerecht, ✅De vrouwen van het kamp, ❌De bloemist, ❌The Changeling, ❌It Happened One Summer, ❌Catfish Rolling, ❌Scarlet, ❌The Turn of the Key (also TFTT)
Other books I should read: ❌The Three-Body Problem, ❌Under the Whispering Door, ✅Mr Mercedes (TFTT)
📚Reality:
Knot My Type
Fourth Wing
The Man Who Died Twice
De vrouwen van het kamp
Doodsengel (DNF)
Mr Mercedes
Six of Crows
Queen of Shadows
June📚Plans: ❌Empire of Storms (readalong), ✅Survive the Night (Chloe’s bookclub), ✅Waarom we logen, ❌Uitbarsting, 📖Hero of Ages, 📖The Three-Body Problem
📚Reality:
Overleef de nacht
Waarom we logen
The American Roommate Experiment
Comfort Food
July📚Plans: ✅Empire of Storms (readalong), 📖Tower of Dawn (readalong), ❌Night Chills? (Chloe’s bookclub), ❌finish Hero of Ages, ❌finish The Long Game, ❌finish The Three Body Problem, ❌Uitbarsting, ❌De beste vriend
📚Reality:
This Is How You Lose The Time War (reread)
De eerlijke vinder (dnf)
Empire of Storms
August📚Plans: ✅finish Tower of Dawn, 📖Kingdom of Ash (readalong, library!), ✅The Dry (ETP group book), ✅The Book Thief (ETP, library ebook), ✅7 Best Short Stories by Horacio Quiroga (ETP), ❌Huisgenoten, ✅ALoD, ❌De Schaduwsluiper, ✅Just Stab Me Now (team book Buffy readathon), ✅A Kind of Spark (scythe for Buffy readathon)
📚Reality:
Tower of Dawn
The Dry
7 Best Short Stories by Horacio Quiroga
A Language of Dragons
The Book Thief
Just Stab Me Now
A Kind of Spark
September📚Plans: ✅finish Kingdom of Ash (readalong), 📖ACOTAR (readalong), 📖Die Wand (with Kelcii), ❌My Best Friend’s Exorcism
Buffy readathon!
Prompts:
📚Reality:
Prio 1
Kingdom of Ash
A Song for a New Day
The Hating Game
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Three Body Problem
The Space Between Worlds (reread)
October📚Plans: ✅The Waste Lands, ✅The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, ❌My Best Friend’s Exorcism, ✅So Thirsty, ✅Every Heart a Doorway, ❌The Hero of Ages
Spookoplathon!
📚Reality:
The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
The Waste Lands
Every Heart a Doorway
So Thirsty
November📚Plans: ❌The First Day of Spring (Chloe’s bookclub), ✅Jade Legacy (buddyread with Justine)
Vacation pile of possibilities:
Physical: Senlin Ascends, Mickey 7, ✅Strata.
Kobo: ✅finish Jade Legacy, Those Beyond the Wall, possible work books?
Phone iBooks: Interstellar Megachef, Office Maxi, Under Fortunate Stars, Bang Bang Bodhisattva, ✅Neverest.
Everand: Black Sun reread, Mockingjay audio, 📖Space Opera, ✅Cycle of the Werewolf
Library app: Timeline, Project Hail Mary
📚Reality:
As Good As Dead
Hello Temptation (dnf)
Jade Legacy
Texel
Cycle of the Werewolf
Strata
Neverest
December📚Plans: ❌A Certain Hunger (Chloe’s bookclub)
📚Reality:
Space Opera (dnf)
Reaper Man (reread)
The Christmas Appeal
De wraak van Balthasar
2025 plansJanuary month of (mostly) rereading favorites?
➡️ Immortality thief with the sirens. Other options: Het oneindige verhaal, Dora, Book of M, Starless Sea, Hex.
Also: library books: Dallergut Dream Department Store, The City We Became, Exit.
February Chloe’s readalong
50 by 50I turn 45 in February of 2024, so I thought I’d make a list of 50 books I’d like to read before turning 50. List is a work in progress and subject to change.
1 One Hundred Years of Solitude
2 Never Let Me Go
3 The Love Hypothesis
4 The City We Became
5 Crime and Punishment
6 Pet Sematary
7 The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
8 Project Hail Mary
9 From Blood and Ash
10 The Last Wish
11 Klara and the Sun
12 A Wizard of Earthsea
13 The Haunting of Hill House
14 Snow Crash
✅15 The Dry
16 Wool
17 The Bear and the Nightingale
18 The Priory of the Orange Tree
19 Children of Time
20 The Plot
21 Hell Bent
22 A Head Full of Ghosts
23 Perdido Street Station
24 Earthlings
25 Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
26 Senlin Ascends
27 Middlegame
28 S.
29 The Sword of Kaigen
30 XX
31 Frontier
32 Zondagskind
33 Weaveworld
34 Mexican Gothic
35 The Curse of Chalion
36 Gardens of the Moon
37 To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
38 Sleeping Giants
39 De Camino
40 Old Man's War
41 Leviathan Wakes
42 A Winter's Promise
43 A Court of Thorns and Roses
44 The Ninth Rain
45 De Citadel
46 The Girl on the Train
47 Dracula
48 We Have Always Lived in the Castle
49 American Psycho
50 The Long Walk
Evaluate goals for 2024▪️Number of books&pages: 75 books, 30.000 pages ➡️ almost made it (end result: 72 books, 26.899 pages)
▪️Series: going to try to focus on 5 priority series again, but with more of a mix in genres, not all chunky fantasy series. Also I’d like to try to read series books a bit closer together so I hopefully remember everything better. ➡️ progress on 4/5 series (and partial book for the fifth). Reading closer together only worked for the ToG readalong. Finished 5 series overall. Buddyreads help a lot!
▪️Challenges: abandon all pre-2023 challenges. No starting intense new ones. Small ones for fun are okay. ➡️ Dare to DNF was a great success. Didn’t do many others, some Storygraph ones I didn’t really keep up with.
▪️Diversity: again increase %POC authors and %non-binary authors vs previous year's %. ➡️ decrease on both. Not good.
▪️Physical tbr:
- goals per haul-year: 2023 13 to 6, 2022 17 to 10, 2021 5 to 2, 2020-and-earlier 20 to 14. ➡️ 2023: 9, 2022: 13, 2021: 4, 2020 and earlier: 9. Very good progress even if I didn’t quite make most of the goals. First half of the year went great. Second half of the year was weird readingwise due to life stuff. Oldies progress was the best, this was mostly due to Dare to DNF challenge.
- read 33% of my 2024 hauls within 2024 ➡️ 2/17: not even close.
- the current TBR shelves are the maximum TBR space ➡️ success.
▪️Rereading: reread more books than I did in 2023 (only 5!). ➡️ same amount this year, just 5.
▪️Numbers of books at once: 4 is the absolute maximum. 2 or 3 is better… ➡️ up and down. Don’t look at the paused stack…
▪️Work books: at least one a month. ➡️ made it on average but most were in the first half of the year. Again, life stuff.
▪️ARCs: maximum one per publication month, and no requesting new ones if I have an outstanding request for that publication month. ➡️ stopped with netgalley, I don’t need the added stress of deadlines.
2025 goals brainstormThings to possibly make goals for:
▪️Number of books/pages: 75 books, 25.000 pages
▪️Series: another attempt to try to focus on 5 priority series? Or find a new way. Priority series hasn’t worked that well. Maybe 1or 2 priority at a time until finished?
▪️Buddy reads: Buddy reads or readalongs are great motivation. Participate in more readalongs (if it’s books I actually want to read) and initiate more Buddy reads (especially for those series books if possible)
▪️Diversity: increase %POC authors and %non-binary authors vs 2024 %.
▪️Physical tbr: goals per haul-year work well, continuing that. Plus 33% for 2025 hauls. And keep the 2 TBR shelves as a maximum space (room for approx. 50 books).
▪️Unhaul: get those unhauls actually out of the house, into mini free libraries or charity shops etc.
▪️Rereading: reread more books than I did in 2024.
▪️Numbers of books at once: 4 is the absolute maximum. 2 or 3 is better…
▪️Work books: at least one a month. Find a place on my shelves for That Big Stack. Unhaul what I'm never gonna read.
▪️ARCs: no more Netgalley. Write those last remaining reviews.
▪️Review: Actually do quarterly reviews of my goals this time.
Welcome visitors or random passers-by! Feel free to say hi below. I hope you'll have a good reading year in 2024!
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
De plot (other topics)De wraak van Balthasar (other topics)
The Christmas Appeal (other topics)
Gardens of the Moon (other topics)
Mexican Gothic (other topics)
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