2018 Reading Goals: Q2 check-in

[owlmoose]

Let's do a mid-year reading goals check-in!

• As of July 1st, I have read 24 books, almost exactly on pace to read 50 this year. Of these, several were novellas and one was a short story collection.


• I've read eight books by authors of color, of whom five (JY Yang, Helen Oyeyemi, Tobias Buckell, Jasmine Guillory, and Jacqueline Koyanagi) were new to me. That's on pace for new authors but a little bit behind on authors of color. Partly I attribute this to my recent focus on Hugo reading (a fair amount of which doesn't "count" for my tracking purposes here -- including short fiction by several authors of color), so I hope it will even out a bit once I'm able to tackle other things in my to-read pile.


• Speaking of the to-read pile... I have done much worse here, up to two, only one of which I reviewed for Tales from the TBR. I'd like to say that I'll get back to this soon, but at the moment I'm eagerly eyeing all the new titles from 2018 that have been piling up since I switched over to all-Hugos, all the time. I'm not sure that I like the ways in which being a Hugo voter controls my reading schedule; I'll need to think about that when I check back in with these goals, and whatever goals I decide on for 2019. Anyway, at this point I'll be happy if I get halfway to this goal with 5; we'll see what happens.


• Still have yet to read a graphic novel. I actually punted on this category for the Hugos because most of the nominees were later titles in series that I've fallen behind on (and also I'm a little impatient with the Hugo voters for honoring the same five-six series every single year). I ought to declare some week with a lot of downtime my graphic novel reading week and just devour them all.

A few favorites:

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty: A wonderfully tense locked-room mystery, where the mystery comes as much from the characters as the situation.

Head On by John Scazli: This series continues to be my favorite Scazli, with a second book every bit as interesting and fun as the first.

The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang: My favorite novella read this year so far (I read the first Murderbot book in 2017). I love the worldbuilding, and the story of siblings separated by politics. I also enjoyed the second story in the series and eagerly await the third.

Comments

[zahraa]

Head On was really great, and Six Wakes was just outstanding!

[owlmoose]

I would say that Six Wakes would be an easy first-place Hugo vote, but now I'm reading Provenance and loving it about as much, although in a very different way. I'll have to see how it ends.