The 2015 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

[DrNefario]

My month of reading only female authors has gone pretty well. I've read everything I originally intended to read, and started a quick Agatha Christie on Saturday to see the month out. The only problem was, it was a bit too quick and I finished it yesterday, meaning I need to start something else written by a woman today, and I'd rather it didn't take me too far into next month. I've got plenty of options, but it's trying to keep it short that's the tricky part.

[Rumpelteazer]

I've almost finished my 53rd book of the year. That means I'm one ahead of averaging two books a week. In total I've read 20641 pages, which means the average length of a book is 368 pages. In July and August I'm going to house sit for friends for three weeks, and I usually get a lot of reading done (the dog doesn't expect me to be very social )

I have several challenges this year. The first is to read at least four books of over 700 pages. I've read two so far, so I'm on track. I also wanted to keep the number of active series to a reasonable number. This I also managed to do (probably for the first time ever), I've got six series going at the moment and I want to add one more. I added the extra challenge of keeping my Kindle nice and organized by not buying/downloading every book I think I might like on it. I'm doing okay on that. I've got:
6 stand alone books
6 books in active series
1 book that is the latest in a series I was up to date with
1 book in a series I occasionally read
6 books that are the first in series I want to try

So far I've got three DNF books and I seem to have become pickier with series; I've abandoned one series after reading two books and decided not to go on after reading the first book of three series.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

My month of reading only female authors has gone pretty well.

I had a similar idea....not really a challenge and not over 1 month, but I just told myself I would try to read more female authors this year, and I've been doing that ever since February I think.
So this year I've read books by 13 distinct male authors and 5 female: Diana Rowland, Nnedi Okorafor, Elizabeth Bear, Naomi Novik, V.E. Schwab (all of them new authors to me). I liked them all very much except V. E. Schwab's A Darker Shade of Magic...which was kind of YAish and mediocre imo. The male to female ratio is still skewed but I choose books I know I will probably like. I'm not gonna read a female author just because she's a female, unless I'm really curious about her books.
Plus, I think there's way more male authors in fantasy genre.
Still it's nice to try and be more picky with books. I pretty much discovered a few authors I wanna read more from, and Uprooted by Naomi Novik is my favorite book so far this year.

[DrNefario]

Uprooted is very much on my radar. I enjoyed Novik's Temeraire series, especially the early books before it got a bit lost.

I had narrowed my choice down to four, yesterday:

The Death House - Sarah Pinborough
Tooth and Claw - Jo Walton
The Race - Nina Allan
The Red: First Light - Linda Nagata

I'd just about decided on The Death House, then my Kindle's critically ill battery intervened and ruled out the first three, leaving me with the Linda Nagata, which I am actually enjoying a lot so far. It's a bit of an odd one, since it was originally self-published, and was the first self-pub book to be shortlisted for a Nebula, but the self-pub version has since been pulled and is being reissued by Saga with the rest of the series. In fact, the first one seems to have been out in June, although I'm not sure it's available here in the UK.

Edit: It's actually out today, in paper, but not as an ebook.

[pdurrant]

Here we are, half way through the year.

On my challenge to read all my unread bought ebooks from 2005 and 2006 I'm well over half way.

On my spending challenge I'm also doing well - I'm considerably under budget.

It's only my TBR that I'm lagging on - only one down on the start of the year, despite having read 132 ebooks so far. The Lightspeed magazine kickstarter giving me 57 back issues of Fantasy Magazine are mostly responsible for that!

All in all, probably my best year for meeting challenges since I started keeping track of my reading in 2010.

[DrNefario]

Good work.

I'm doing very well on my TBR challenge. I haven't found prices very tempting on my wishlists lately, and without the influx of the Hugo packet, I'm actually making some gains.

[sun surfer]

I've completed all my January-June subchallenges, and only in the nick of time too. I won't post it all here but you can take a look at it through my first signature link if you're interested. I was ahead of things by the first of June, then had a slow and busy month and so played catch-up this last week. I was so busy at it I haven't even made my subchallenges for July-December yet, so I'll need to get on top of that.

[bfisher]

I was very behind for most of the winter and spring, but was finally able to get going in June, so I'm midway with my main challenge, and glad that I've been able to do some work on my TBR. However, I have not made much headway with my sub-challenges.

[Dngrsone]

I am a tad ahead of my goal, which is nice. Means I will have to set a higher goal next year, no?

[Stephjk]

Halfway through the year and I'm eight books behind on my goal - really must spend more time reading than looking at t'interweb!

[CRussel]

At the half way point, I'm well past where I should be for my base goal, and close to where I need to be if I'm going to make my stretch goal. Promising, given how overloaded I was this first half of the year.

On my tertiary goal of recording all purchases and amounts, I'm doing better by far than last year, but it's still a bit of a stretch. Recent changes in how I record books have improved my capability at least catch up when I miss recording, so there's hope. All in all, a good first half.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

Goodreads reports that I'm 3 books behind schedule! I need to complete 7 books by the end of June.

Ended up 3 books behind schedule for the 1st half of the year -- but 2700 pages ahead. So all-in-all I haven't been much of a slouch when it comes to reading.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

On my challenge to read all my unread bought ebooks from 2005 and 2006 I'm well over half way.

I've just checked this. of my 54 2005 and 2006 unread purchases that I started the year with, I only have 8 left! I knew I was doing well, but I didn't realise it was that well.

In fact, I'm going to up my challenge. Having read 46 of them in the first half of the year, I'm going to aim to also finish the first nine months of 2007's unread ebooks. That'll be a total of 35 including the 8 from 2005/6. I'm pretty confident that I'll manage this, as I think some of them are incorrectly marked as unread - I'll find out for sure when I start reading them!

[HomeInMyShoes]

Well, my reading pace has slowed to almost nothing, but I'm still in good shape.

I have the following left to read to finish up all my subchallenges:

TBR list: 1 title left
World: 3 titles left
Bookclubs: 1 title left

For a grand total of five books left. It should be doable, but I only read 1 book in June.

The usual statistics:

books read: 45
pages read: 12,755
authors: 35
new authors: 19
countries: 13
new countries: 3
money spent: $0.00
paper books: 34
electronic books: 11

[jbcohen]

I am at 80 books at the moment, I might have a shot at the original challenge a few years back - Read 100 books in a year - I might actually be able to do that this year.