The 2012 Annual Reading Challenge - Discussion Thread!

[jbcohen]

Most likely I will not be able to make my goal either. I will note where I am at the end of 2012 and use that for the goal for 2013.

[OddCosine]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I'd done 16 of 50 at the end of March, so I'm looking okay.

I worry a bit that it's stopping me reading longer works, having this target. If I build up a bit of a buffer I'll be able to read something that might take longer.

That's why I decided to use word count instead of book count for my goal this year. Instead of 50 books, I decided to go for 5 million words; the equivalent of 50 100,000 word books. Now I don't feel guilty about short books, and I won't avoid the long ones.

I'm using the word count plug-in in Calibre for the count. I'll have to estimate words for any DTBs I read. I made a spreadsheet to track my total and calculate my progress against where I should be on any given date. Very motivating. I'm about 200,000 words ahead of schedule so far.

[jbcohen]

You are probably right going with page count or word count since sometimes I read real door stoppers they can take me quite a while to go through so your method would be a tad more acurate.

[CRussel]

I, on the other hand, much prefer counting by books. This isn't a contest of volume. It honestly doesn't matter what your final number is, or what your original goal is, but about what you get out of the process. For me, it's really not about a total number. I'll read what I read, and my time is limited at various points during the year. The reason for joining the challenge is to build a list and get an idea of WHAT I'm reading, and use the list to help manage the quality.

If things go as they have, I'll have NO difficulty reading 100 books this year, but that wasn't ever my goal. What I'd hoped to do was reduce my TBR a bit, and improve the overall quality. I'm making progress towards that, but it's not as far along as I'd like. But I never expected it to solve itself overnight -- it's a process, and there's a dialectic going on that I think will improve my reading over time. The list is part of that dialectic, and why I joined the challenge.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by OddCosine

I'm using the word count plug-in in Calibre for the count.

It didn't even occur to me that there might be such a thing. As an amateur writer, I am strangely obsessed with word-counts, so I'll get right on that even though I don't need it for my challenge.

According to the rules of fiftyfifty.me, I could count a book as two if it was more than 500 pages, but I'm not intending to do that, partly because ebooks are a bit hazy on page-count, and partly because it seems cowardly. (I'm also counting graphic novels separately, even though they are, physically, books.)

[Dazrin]

I use a page count as my goal because that way it doesn't matter if I have a long novel or a short story. I use the paperback (if available) page count to keep the approximate page size consistent and use ~19 locations/page (from last years data) to estimate a page count if there isn't a paperback available.

I found last year that if I tried to use a book goal I would skip the longer books rather than miss my goal and I didn't want to do that again. I know it is not about volume, but having a goal (that is attainable) seems to help keep me on track; if I had a goal I knew I couldn't hit I would get frustrated and would likely not read as much.

[sun surfer]

I switched to page count this year because of the variance in book length and I'm loving it. I actually am grouping page counts into "books" so that I can still count by books, but this time every "book" is exactly the same length.

It turned out to be a tad more work to keep track of and calculate than I had thought, but I still really like it.

As far as how often we update our lists here, I've been very naughty this year so far but I plan to get to it eventually. Last year I was much better about it, but last year I read less books in a year than this year I have in three months so far, so I suppose I had more time to update my list then.

[Nyssa]

I'm doing a page count as well, but I based it on my book count, so its 85 books and/or 21,250 pages ( which equals an avg. of 250 pgs per book).

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by OddCosine

I'm using the word count plug-in in Calibre for the count. I'll have to estimate words for any DTBs I read. I made a spreadsheet to track my total and calculate my progress against where I should be on any given date. Very motivating. I'm about 200,000 words ahead of schedule so far.

Does anyone know of another easy method for getting word counts? I use Calibre only for books that I don't get from Amazon, so most of mine aren't in it.

Another reason I use page counts is because page counts are easy. Amazon has them for most books, even if there isn't a hardcopy, if they don't have one goodreads does a lot of the time, and for anything else (maybe 5% of my library), I can estimate page count based on the average locations/page from everything else.

Word counts are not as easy, and the ones I do get tend to be order of magnitude only (100,000 words exactly? I think not.) which are not as easy to estimate with.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Assuming that you continue at your same reading rate, do you think that you will meet your goal? I won't I am going to slowly to reach that by the end of the year.

I think that I probably will. I tend to start off slowly at the beginning of the year, but I've picked up my pace lately and I've got audiobooks going again, too.

[jbcohen]

If you are picking up the pace Xanthe you are also increading the price. Here is a resource, try baenebooks.com their monthly bundles. I bought a few bundles but have gotten side tracked lately.

[MrsJoseph]

I just signed up for netgalley for some strange reason, lol.

As if I don't have enough to read!

[jbcohen]

I am going back to the sci-fi author that started the whole interest in sci-fi to begin with. I think that I need to finish the books that David Weber wrote before I push on to something else. So far I have read all of the Honor Harringtion series and I am now starting on some of the other Honorverse books before I start in on John Ringo and others. Troubble is that some time ago I picked up a copy of Shadows of Sagnami without realizing that it is the second in a series of books, fortuantely I picked up a copy of the first of the series Crown of Slaves last night with out much dificulty and so far its going really good. However, I need to say that I will probably read all of the John Ringo books as well. I love that anticpation of the new additions to the books and it looks like there will be an addition to the YA books, volume two - Fire Season. Book one was great and book two will no doubt be equally as good. I will need to go looking for what David Weber has in store for us in the next year or two, as I will be awaiting each one. I do not quite understand how he can manage to put together these stories this fast, although I am not complaining.

Fantastic fiction web site from the UK has a lot of the forthcoming information included on their site as well as fictfact. However Fictfact does nto appear to be on top of the latest information.

[DrNefario]

I thought Crown of Slaves was a separate spin-off series?

Check the wikipedia page on the Honorverse. Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom are one series; and Shadow of Saganami and Storm from the Shadows are another.

Me, I've just about reached the point in the main sequence where both spin-offs start (War of Honor), and I've slowed way down because I don't want to reach the end too soon.

[jbcohen]

Depends on whose list you are using to make your judgement, I am using David Weber's own list on his web site at davidweber.net/books. On that site look at the section labeled Honorverse and the series I am referring to is at the top of the list, thus I am referring to this as the honorverse series and Crown of Slaves is at the begining of the series next comes Shadow of Sagami. I typically preferr to use the author's own lists in order to follow the series through the whole of them. I have read probably 20% of Shadow of Sagami and its quite good, although Weber seems to be going off on a tangent at the point I left off. At that point I took a look at David Weber's lists and found that I had started the series with the second book in the series and not the first so I went back and got a copy of the first in the series.

Perhaps someone more familiar with the honorverse novels then I am can tell me if these books depend on each other or are they really independent of each other? Let me clarifiy what I mean by this, a book series that is dependent on one another is the Hornor Harringtion series, book two will assume that you have read book one and will referr to the events in that book. I have come across some series in my travels where the books are not dependent on one another and instead will not talk about the events in the other books. I believe the anthologies are like this.

I wish other publishers would follow Baen's model of giving away the first book in a series then charging for the rest. Doing this allows me to get a sense for the author's writting style and if I like their writting before I need to go ahead and pay the dollars. At a bare minimum I require at least a free page and typically amazon will give me one page free. I know that one should never expect anything for free however I think as a reader I can expect a free sample to see if I like the writting.

I will go back to John Ringo when I get done with David Weber, but I would like to read everything that he has written that I care to read before I push on with other authors. Fortunately for me baen is willing to give me for $0 the first in some series so that I can get my feet wet before charging me for the remainder. I know that's another example of a loss leader but I don't mind that if I can see what the publisher is doing in adavnce and I see that loud and clear in this case.

NetGalley looks like an excellent resource. While I am not a professional reader, this seems liek a great way to see what is forthcoming from different authors that do not typically post this sort of information on web sites like fantasticfiction. I might not request a sample there but its a way to get an idea of what is comming. So I would not be so hard on yourself for singing up.