Books 2020 Reading Challenge

[Aslan]

Sign me up! I've done reading challenges in the past w/ mixed results but hopefully this time will be a success? Gonna try to aim for 20 books for now. :D

 

[Ninetales]

Sign me up! As the owner of The Book Club, I must partake in this! My goal for the year is 40 books and I'm already 1 down, with about 100 pages or so of another left to go!

 

[Ivysaur]

So I finished the Splatoon Art Book, which admittedly has a lot of art on its pages but also includes lore and a few mangas so I guess it counts too.

Also Forges Inédito, a comic book featuring discarded and unpublished strips from one of the most legendary newspaper strip artists in Spain, who died two years ago. Currently reading 50 Años de Forges, a compilation of his best strips over the past half a century, and to end the comic mood, I'll probably read the second issue of the Splatoon manga once I'm done with this.

 

[Janp]

Count me in! I'll aim for... let's say 30 books for now.

But I have a question: Does professional literature or textbooks count towards the goal?

 

[professor plum]

I've updated the first post with the new readers!

But I have a question: Does professional literature or textbooks count towards the goal?

If you've completely finished reading them, sure!

 

[Uecil]

Read Junji Ito's Smashed: stories collection. I must sit, it was my first time reading his stories properly and I've always been so intrigued by the level of detail the drawings have. Some tons of very questionable moments in in, but very enjoyable.

Also, read Tove Jansson's Moomin on the rivera. So vibrant, but entertaining. ☆▽☆

 

[Megan]

"Gesund für immer" (Kurt Tepperwein)

translation: "healthy forever"

Have you ever read one of these health books? Have you ever read multiple of those books and felt like you've already read it before? Yeah, it's one of these books. I do, however, appreciate that he talks about the mind and attitudes towards yourself in the last third of the book. Even, though, he has his moments where he likes going nuts with his spiritualism and the likes. xD

You don't miss out on not reading this book, is what I want to say. Just pick up any other and you'll be fine.

Worst is: I still have another one of these books ahead of me.

[2/12]

 

[Ivysaur]

Currently reading 50 Años de Forges, a compilation of his best strips over the past half a century, and to end the comic mood, I'll probably read the second issue of the Splatoon manga once I'm done with this.

Finished those two, also Lying For Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal The Workings of Our World, by Dan Davies. It's a fun compilation of some of the weirdest, most massive frauds up there. Very useful for my phD.

Next up, Better Latté Than Never, a compilation of the It's Grim Up North London strips in Private Eye, and Cambiando muy poco, algo pasa de estar bien escrito a mal escroto, a wordplay humour book from Spanish comedian Luis Piedrahita.

7/35

 

[pkmin3033]

I...may have forgotten about this. Woops.

But I finished Magician by Raymond E. Feist a couple of days ago, the first of 25 books I plan on reading this year! It's a great high fantasy novel that sets itself apart from the rest of the crowd in many small ways. Maybe not something I'd recommend personally - it's nearly 700 pages and it plods a bit at times, especially at the beginning, and it borrows perhaps too liberally from standard high fantasy tropes that were old and tired a long time ago - but it's extremely well-written and a personal favourite of mine, which is why I decided to start the new year off with it.

Since an issue of a comic counts as a book (which is the only reason I have a target four times higher than I would otherwise!) I can add Batman #1 - 7 to my list as well, which makes up the first half of the Court of Owls storyline. I have read bits and pieces of the New 52, but never all of it, in order. Now seems like a good time to get it off my backlog of things to do...that's 50 books right there. But as reviled as the New 52 is by a lot of comic book fans, I actually love it - it's a great jumping-on point.

So I am currently at 8/100. I can devour comics on a good day so I will stop counting them once I've read 75 issues, because I want at least a quarter of what I read to be longer than 300 pages. So I will probably make a lot of progress quickly, then stall for a long time because I only read on the bus and in the evening before bed usually. At the end of the year I'll probably start adding comics again so I don't miss my target. xD;

 

[Janp]

Okay, I finished two Czech books. I'll state both the original and translated name for both books.

Pedagogická psychologie (Educational psychology) is book by highly acclaimed psychologists that is... so boring and barely talks about what is it supposed to talk. It was recommended for one of my classes and I figure out I would read it since the teacher of this class was pretty awful and didn't really taught us anything about Educational psychology. Guess Educational psychology is something I'll never learn about.

Dítě, škola a matematika (Child, school and math) is book by the best current math educators and reformers and unlike the books above, this one hits the mark. It discusses various situations taken right from the classes, presents reader with different takes on introducing new concepts to students, talks about psychology behind child's brain and talks about what is constructivism and how to apply it.

 

[Megan]

Finished "Moby Dick; or, The Whale" (Herman Melville)

The end was a little more than I bargained for. Probably time to take a break and think about it.

[3/12] so far

 

[TheeWizard]

End of January update:

So this month I've only really been reading short stories, and some of them are so very short. I don't know how you guys feel but personally I think at most they should count as half a book.
Anyway, I'm just going to list what I've read below.

The Beast In The Cave
The Alchemist
The Tomb
Dagon
A reminiscence of Dr. Sameul Johnson
Polaris
Beyond the wall of sleep.
Memory
Old Bugs
The Transition of Juan Romero

 

[Cherrim]

Oops forgot to come back and update...

Current Progress: 2/20

Book #1: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

I read this on erik destler's recommendation. It was good! I thought the ending was a bit... out there? Unsatisfying, maybe? But I'm not really sure if it's because I was listening in audiobook format, which meant maybe not focusing as much on what I'd read rather than being in the moment. It worked really well as a format for the rest of the book, because it kept me in the moment in a way similar to the character as he suffered through time loop shenanigans, but I don't think it was a great format for picking up on the sort of minute details you'd expect from a Victorian murder mystery, so the ending just felt a bit out of nowhere even as they explained it. Oh well! Still good! I love time loop stuff and this was a great one. But I won't talk about any more details because murder mysteries are best left a mystery. ;)​

Book #2: The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

I really liked this author's previous book, a rather personal account of her temporary psychosis brought on by brain inflammation. In her case, it was caught quickly enough that she fully recovered and got back to normal, but it made her appreciate how lucky and privileged she was to be in a position where it could be caught and that had her exploring how easily similar cases end up with people in the system forever because of mental health issues. This leads to her exploring the famous study of a psychologist and several others who went undercover at various mental health institutions in the US in the 60s with vague, fake symptoms—and all got admitted. Except you start to find out, as the author researches more and more, that it may have all been made up or heavily exaggerated, which is wild since so much of diagnosis, even today, was informed by that study. It was a very interesting read, but it did feel a little... personal and sensationalized? The writing style is the same as her previous book, but it worked there because it was a personal account. This continues as a personal account, but narrates us through meeting and talking with so many people close to the professor who did the original study, and it just feels a bit off. Still an interesting read, but I wished I was reading something more serious/academic on the matter.​

My third book is Good Omens and I have to finish it before my library ebook expires in 5 days so hopefully I'll have another update then. (bc otherwise I have to put it on hold again and wait a few more weeks, rip.)

 

[Ivysaur]

Next up, Better Latté Than Never, a compilation of the It's Grim Up North London strips in Private Eye, and Cambiando muy poco, algo pasa de estar bien escrito a mal escroto, a wordplay humour book from Spanish comedian Luis Piedrahita.

Got those, and also Death on the Nile, an Agatha Christie novel. Fun enough, not the most exciting Poirot I've read and the 'Nile' part itself can be easily replaced by "Death on a boat" but anyway. I guessed the murderer early! But then I was convinced it wasn't them. How does she do that. Wouldn't have guessed how it happened exactly, though.

Next up, How to be a Dictator, by Frank Dikötter, a book I've been looking forward to fot a while but also putting back. Also, Capcom vs Konami, a 170 page analysis of the rivalry between these two companies during the 80s and 90s, and their best games during that time (and since). Bonus, a pretty long novel a friend of mine sent me. It doesn't qualify as a 'book', I guess, but it may very well be a hundred pages long on my Kindle.

10/35

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

Honestly, I haven't even STARTED my reading challenge. I keep putting it off due to routine. ;w; I am getting a new book today called "To All the Boys I've Loved Before", so maybe I'll be able to read that for a while. :3

 

[Cherrim]

Current Progress: 4/20 (nice)

Book #3: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

This was great, which I knew it would be, but... honestly? The TV adaptation on Amazon is so good I feel like I didn't need to read the book. It didn't add much and I actually liked the stuff they added in the show, so while this was a very good read, I think I ended up preferring the adaptation? Weird. I feel dirty about it but oh well. Maybe if I'd gone a couple years before reading this I might feel a bit different, but it took me about 6 months to be able to get my hands on the book and make time to read it and I would have thought that was enough to not have the show in my head the whole time. At the very least, I definitely want to read more by Terry Pratchett because I have a feeling I'm going to adore his writing style in other things.​

Book #4: Tajiri Satoshi: The Man who Created Pokémon by Tanaka Akira

This was a manga for kids so it was a really quick read, but omg, it was excellent. I've read a lot of articles and interviews over the years about the creation of the series, but this manga was probably the single most informative piece of media I've read. It explains just how Satoshi Tajiri got the idea for Pokémon and how Gamefreak's unique outlook on the industry ultimately made the series the success it still is today. I knew the generals of all of it, but some of the specific anecdotes were very interesting. I really have a newfound appreciation for Gamefreak and I already loved them plenty before. My favourite parts were seeing Tajiri figuring out what it takes to make good games, Masuda stepping up to do programming when all the programmers quit midway into the development of Red/Blue, and having to tell Sugimori to "please make some cute Pokémon too, not just cool/scary ones", ahaha. I hope they bring this out in English some day because I'd love for more people to be able to read it.​

I'm kinda eyeing my Cardcaptor Sakura manga so I may binge that over the next couple weeks and bump up my reading goal a bit, because manga is so much quicker to read than anything else. But I might try to finish up the book about a blind cat my dad got me for Christmas first.

 

[Megan]

Finished "Die 7 Revolutionen der Medizin" (trans: the 7 revolution of medicine) by Uwe Karstädt, as well as "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne.

With that I finally got that stupid second medicine book down as well as got to read another of Jules Vernes stories. I may stick with the latter for a little while longer. After all, I still have quite the collection to go through.

[5/12] so far

 

[Janp]

I should update here too. Now that new semester started I once again spend huge chunks of time travelling. Which means I can read in the train. So in last two weeks I read:

Blackout and Zero by Marc Elsberg. Blackout is about the power outage and Zero about (lack of) privacy on internet and in real life. I think I enjoyed Zero more, since its theme is exactly what I specialize when it comes to IT.

So that's 4/30 books. I'm currently reading Outsider by Stephen King and should finish it next week. Then I plan on reading Knife (Kniv in original) by Jo Nesbø and 2nd and 3rd book of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, which will take some time.

 

[gloomgoblin1313]

This seems highly interesting for me, and it could give me a chance to read more of my stuff and maybe invade my dad's personal library. However, since probably by the end of this month I'll be moving to a temporary home until my house is built, which could take another 6 months to a year, I might make my goal at 10 books. I'll have to pack up most, if not all, of my books soon, and it might be a while until I unpack them. Even then, I probably won't have a lot of free time, but this could help keep my mind busy. Also, I have a question: One of my books is actually a collection of all of Edgar A. Poe's stuff. Should I avoid using it towards my goal, or try to somehow make it work? Either way, I have plenty of options, especially when I consider the stuff my dad has.

 

[Ivysaur]

Update! Read the story a friend sent me, which was about the size of a small novel so I'm counting it, it's always nice to check what friends can do as well.

I also finished the Capcom Vs Konami and How to be a Dictator books I listed, plus Running Against the Devil, a preview of the 2020 US election and how the Democrats can win it.

Next up, uhh... probably Pyongyang, a comic set in the North Korean capital (based on a true story).

14/35