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Alert! The end of the year is approaching! Are you on track to meet all your reading goals?

My goals are going well, I didn't think I'd finish EVERY series I had ever started, but I made some good progress. Of course along the way I started some other ones, but couldn't be helped.

My GR 2020 Reading Challenge goal was met a while back, and the BINGO challenge has one last book to go.

Started reading 1984 by George Orwell after I finished The Magicians Nephew.

Goes along with the fact I also read Brave New World (because of the TV series) and re-read Fahrenheit 451 to start the year off. 1984 will almost wrap it up.

I'm reading Fate of the Fallen, which I am enjoying. I took the risk, even though the whole series hasn't been written, since I love her Kings Dark Tidings series.

I just finished Inda and I loved it. I am going to try Daughters of Nri next, see if I like that. If not, my TBR list is mountainous, so I'm sure I'll find something else I love soon!

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Completed:

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Authors:
Diane Cook, Hank Green, Grady Hendrix, Jordan Ifueko, Zeyn Joukhadar, Raven Leilani, Naomi Novik, Christopher Paolini, P.A. Tebbe, Aiden Thomas, David Heska Wanbli Weiden
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I finished Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen yesterday. I was a bit disappointed with that last volume of the Vorkosigan saga, I found it weaker than previous books. Between last night and this morning I read rapidly the novella Winterfair Gifts, which I enjoyed. So much, at this point, for the works of Lois McMaster Bujold; I may read more of her works later.

For a change I'll be starting The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. I had liked the Old Man's War series, so that I am fairly sure about my choice.

Andrea wrote: "Alert! The end of the year is approaching! Are you on track to meet all your reading goals?"

My year's goals are complete (I finished my reading goal, and finished off my BINGO card in August), and all that's left is writing up my year's highlights in 2020 on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. Like last year, I'll just highlight my 5-star picks and some selected 4-star ones with some mini-reviews.

But right now, I'm reading the best, or possibly second-best book I've read all year, Gideon the Ninth.

My goodreads goal I was successful with that. Getting closer to finishing series or caught up in them, nope another fail. I think I've started even more. But hey it's 2020 and that doesn't surprise me.

Here's hoping what I have planed for 2021 works out better then this years.

I finished Mission to Horatius, which I think is one of the better of the early Star Trek novels. It also fills the media tie-in slot in my Bingo card.

My reading challenge was finished some time ago, but I still have 6 slots on my Bingo, so I am unlikely to finish that before the end of the year, but I will certainly fill a few more slots.

Carrie wrote: "My goodreads goal I was successful with that. Getting closer to finishing series or caught up in them, nope another fail. I think I've started even more. But hey it's 2020 and that doesn't surprise..."

That's the problem with books, there are so many good ones it's hard to finish the series you already started when you can't wait to get to some other ones.

Especially if they come up for free in some way or another but with a time limit so you can't just put off till another year, for me 6 out of the 7 series I started this year were in that category

Since I know what I'm reading for the rest of the month, more or less, I can say I started 7 new series, made progress in 16, completed 15, and 2 I can't complete since I have to wait for more books to be written :) I'm happy with that.

I have started reading Marvel Ironman: The Gauntlet, a story about a young Tony Stark.

The Other Side of the Sky by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

My review of The Book of Malachi by T.C. Farren

/review/show...

The World of Mr. Mulliner by P.G. Wodehouse

I finished Marvel Ironman: The Gauntlet. A fun story that ties more closely to the MCU than it does to historic Marvel continuity. It also fills in the YA slot in my Bingo.

I followed that with the short story Immortal at Sea, the first story in the Immortal Chronicles. This also fills in the Immortality slot in my Bingo.

Next up, time to find out how Narnia ends (after the previous book where we find out how it starts) - The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

I'm reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson at the moment, along with Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by (obs) Sid Meier.
The goal is start Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson, since it's been more than five years since I read the first, and the fourth is out now. I need to catch up!

I finished The Collapsing Empire last night. As expected I enjoyed it, it is relatively light fare, which suits my current mood. I already started the next book, The Consuming Fire.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell

Narnia will be the last series I'll wrap up this year, for a total of 17, still have a couple more where I can make some progress.

One thing I didn't realize was that (view spoiler)[ Narnia is Amber! Yes, read the last book, the Narnia in all the other books, as well as the England are but Shadows of the real Narnia and England. :D (hide spoiler)]

Now I had two more books I planned to read before the end of the year and three weeks to read them in. That meant I could squeeze in one more, and since it's been a while since I've read something non-fiction, went with Cosmos by Carl Sagan

If I've ever seen the TV series it would have been a long time ago and I don't remember it but I've been watching a lot of other astronomy documentaries lately so just seemed a good time to tackle this book.

Well, I’ve finished 140 books since January 1.
My goal was 100.

Susan wrote: "Well, I’ve finished 140 books since January 1.
My goal was 100."

I actually got over 200 but over 70 of them were manga so I feel those shouldn't count, or at least need to group them in sets of 10 to count as 1 book :) And then with another 15 about Oz, and 7 about Narnia, a lot of "quick" reads helped to reach that goal.

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

Finished the Cowardly Lion in Oz. I actually have one more book, Grandpa in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson before I started having trouble finding free versions of them, so I'll try to wrap this one up for the end of the year and stop where I got stuck anyway :) Not that these things need to be read in order really but I'm missing the next 5 before I could find The Yellow Knight of Oz on Project Gutenberg.

I met my reading goal. I planned to read 24 and will end up reading 28.
Finished reading No One's Home by D.M. Pulley and On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser. I am reading Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson. I plan to read Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan next.

From All False Doctrine by Alice Degan

I finished Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker, and now I am reading The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, my very first Sanderson work.

I finished The Consuming Fire. Curiously, the entries about that book and the previous one (The Collapsing Empire) have disappeared in my lists of currently reading, respectively read books. I'll start later today the last book in the Interdependency series, The Last Emperox.

Finished Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I particularly liked the bits about ancient scientist and how they went about with simple tools to discover/prove things about the world around them, this after watching a news segment about some flat earth guy who won't believe the earth is round till he can build his own rocket to see for himself, while some dude back in ancient Greece used a couple sticks, a very long walk between two cities (which he paid someone else to do) and the angle of the sun's shadow not just to prove the earth is round but also came extremely close to calculating it's exact size. Or that Columbus had to fudge the numbers otherwise no one would have let him try since no boat could be provisioned enough to survive a trip from Europe to India if there wasn't a giant continent blocking the way.

Of course we've learned a lot since the book was written, black holes were mostly theoretical, now we have a sorta picture of one. Also the planet search around other stars had just started, but no one really doubted they were there.

Now back to the realms of fantasy with The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien. Ever since the Peter Jackson movies that came out around end Dec/early Jan I've been reading a Tolkien book every December.

Andrea wrote: "some dude back in ancient Greece used a couple sticks, a very long walk between two cities (which he paid someone else to do) and the angle of the sun's shadow not just to prove the earth is round but also came extremely close to calculating its exact size."

It always reminds me of this scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bugs proved it with a simple tool, too! 🤣

The Fate of Earth by Jeramey Kraatz

Finished reading Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King, something I started about a couple months ago because the first story in it ties very explicitly to the world of the Dark Tower. The rest of the stories were Vietnam related and while some more interesting than others, one had the classic "drags on forever" touch, heh. Also since I borrowed it from OpenLibrary and had to read it on my computer, I never read more than the one-hour-borrow feature they had, after all hard to read those scans on a glowing screen. But the ending had a kind of neat way of wrapping up all the stories back to the first one so kinda glad I plowed my way though.

Guess there are a couple other books still to be read in relation to the Dark Tower, there's Insomnia and....can't recall the other, maybe starts with at T...Talisman? One of which sounds like we can learn more about the Crimson King of which we learn almost nothing in the actual series. But not this year, time to wrap up the few I have left on my to-read pile sitting on my floor.

Wow, only 11.5 days left of the year!

I have finished Neverwhere. I liked the TV series when it came out many years ago but kept putting off reading this novel. I read it now to fill the Fantasy in Modern slot in my Bingo and I quite enjoyed it.

I had been planning to start on A Modern Utopia (Unabridged): A Speculative Novel from the English futurist, historian, socialist, author ... to fill the Utopia slot in my Bingo, but the Rogues anthology contains a short story about one of the main characters in the book, so I think I will read that first.

Tony wrote: "I had been planning to start on A Modern Utopia (Unabridged): A Speculative Novel from the English futurist, historian, socialist, author ... to fill the Utopia slot in my Bingo, but the Rogues anthology contains a short story about one of the main characters in the book, so I think I will read that first..."

I had considered that one myself, and good to know that Rogues has a short story based on it, I usually do the other way around, read the original first, so now I'll know when I tackle that anthology I'll need to tackle Wells first :) I've never actually read anything by Wells, I have so many holes in my classics still to fill in

Andrea wrote: "I had considered that one myself, and good to know that Rogues has a short story based on it, I usually do the other way around, read the original first, so now I'll know when I tackle that anthology I'll need to tackle Wells first :)"

Ah, I wasn't clear. The short story in Rogues is by Neil Gaiman and is a follow on to Neverwhere. No H.G Wells stories in it. Personally, I find Wells more readable than Verne, although Verne is the more scientifically plausible (at least for the time). I would recommend starting with some of the better known, such as War of the Worlds or The Invisible Man.

I've read a couple Verne, even reading them in French and found that even for a second language it was surprising easy to read, I've read a lot of more difficult French books in school than Verne. I know one was Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I actually have War of the Worlds, Invisible Man and The Time Machine in Folio Society editions, they were one of those "join us and get these free" kind of thing so that is where I intend to start once I get around to them.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

A xenobiologist comes across an alien life form during a survey mission, and her life - and humanity's future - is changed forever.

4 stars

My review: /review/show...

The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy & the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia & Han China by Raoul McLaughlin

I discovered that Jim Butcher was doing a bunch of microfictions on his blog, so in preparation for Peace Talks (next on my list for this year) I thought I'd go through them, including one that takes place on Christmas Eve, just had to read it today :)

The Wizard's Butler by Nathan Lowell

I read an ARC of Stranger Danger and Genesis Girl and The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Etched in Bone, plus two kids' books, The Grave Robber's Apprentice and Penelope March Is Melting.

I also started The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but I probably won't finish it by the end of the month.

I started A Modern Utopia (Unabridged): A Speculative Novel from the English futurist, historian, socialist, author .... After around a dozen pages I put it aside - it is very different from any other H.G. Wells I have read - he seems to have written it more in essay style than novel style, and I realised I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. I will return to it at a later date.

I have now started The Nano Flower. This is listed as the third Greg Mandel book, but I don't think not having read the first two will be a problem - they seem to be standalone stories about the same character. So far it is very cyberpunk in style, which surprised me a little from this author.

Finished Grampa in Oz, since I have a big gap in missing books before the next one, I'll switch to something else. I didn't know what, so I just dug into my ereader to see what's been sitting there for a long time. I had loaded it up with Baen Free Library books years ago so I randomly picked A Logic Named Joe by Murray Leinster

I also finished The Fall of Gondolin. Rather than jumping right into the next Dresden book (I can easily read 100 pages a day of that series so I still have time) I started on a graphic novel I got for Christmas - The Veligent by Melody Peña. I've been collecting Windstone for years, but with the Canadian dollar so low, it's very expensive these days, but the book made for a good gift. Already about half way through and enjoying it a lot, it's a bit goofy and a lot of fun.

I also decided to start another graphic novel/comic book since I had started the volume 1 around this time last year - The Stinz Collection: Volume Two: Volume 2 by Donna Barr. I haven't been able to find a definitive list of all the Stinz stories so not sure if reading this will complete the series or not :)

I finished The Last Emperox by John Scalzi. I just downloaded to my tablet All Systems Red by Martha Wells and I will start reading it this evening.

Veligent, being a graphic novel, was a quick read so I've officially gone and picked up the last book off my to-read pile (actually have an empty spot on my floor!) and started on Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

As an aside...the Stinz comics have gotten...should I say weird? The first one was a standard "what if", what if there was a valley in Germany where half-horses existed and you drafted one for the war effort, however beyond that one premise everything was treated as if it were our normal world. But the second one, there was some "metaphysical death ray" thing that they misused and suddenly everyone is now growing claws and tails and merging with animals in seriously freaky ways? I guess it's more fun for the author/artist but makes it less believable for the reader :)

All Systems Red being a rather short novella, and since I spent more time reading than usual, I already finished it. Now I want to continue that series of books, so that the next one, Artificial Condition is already downloaded and ready to be started.

Pierre wrote: "All Systems Red being a rather short novella, and since I spent more time reading than usual, I already finished it. Now I want to continue that series of books, so that the next on..."

Loved both of those. 💖

I'm about 150 pages into Words of Radiance and it hasn't clicked with me yet. Luckily, it has 850 pages to win me over...

Words of Radiance is the best!

I am reading Semiosis.

The Dark Archive by Genevieve Cogman