Books 2022 Reading Challenge

44.2 Spirou 4398-4400
44.4 Giant Days 5
44.6 Giant Days: Extra Credits: a What-if compilation from different artists. Eeeehhhhhh...
45.6 Gaston Lagaffe Integral Edition 3: Franquin was a comedic genius.

46.6 Private Eye: The First 60 Years: A best-of to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the best current affairs magazine in the UK.

Two Agatha Christie novels
47.6 At Bertram Hotel
48.6 Hickory Dickory Dock
These two are weird. Two novels from the time in which she started writing out her own detectives from novels that supposedly featured them. And yet they just show up a couple of times to give the police a few clues and little else. Miss Marple is barely there at all. The Bertram murder feels shoehorned (past the 75% mark!) to push the police to investigate the real crimes happening there. It's so weird. Definitely not her best.

49.6 Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t - Tom Phillips: A fun compilation of fraudsters and hoaxes accross the ages, from Mesopotamia to Wikipedia. Featuring Benjamin Franklin. Heavily so. He adored lying.
 
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When I posted last update here, I was finishing up the second book in Vikings saga and slowly moved to the Fire & Blood, with a goal of finishing it before The House of Dragon airs. It didn't went that well. Fire & Blood, being a boring book of history, was in fact pretty boring and chore to read. So it took way too long to get through it. In the meantime, I've also started another series - The Blackstone Chronicles.

Lodbrogsønnernes ran (The raid of the Lodbrog sons) by Lasse Holm
Spoiler:


An Eye for an Eye: The Doll by John Saul
Spoiler:


Fire & Blood by George R. R. Martin
Spoiler:


[16/14]

And with that, I've finished my goal, but barely touched my unread library. So, I'll continue with it and see where I can get.
 
50: Spirou 4401-2
50.2: La Mort de Spirou - Abitan, Guerrive & Schwartz. A massive cliffhanger, the next entry in the series won't come out until next year... and it might not even be the same series... what the hell have they done.

51.2: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
52.2: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? - Pierre Bayard. These two are very interesting. The former is a masterpiece of the detective genre, and one of Christie's finest pieces of art, which is saying something. The latter is a 150-page essay from a guy who didn't agree with the proposed solution and decided to write a book revealing who was the real murderer. And it makes sense!

53.2: What If? 2 (Various). A book of alternate histories, written by experts on the field, going back to some of the key moments in history (a battle when Socrates was close to getting killed before meeting Plato, Napoleon III doesn't go to war with Prussia and prevents the German Empire that launched WWI and WWII from getting created, Germany doesn't let Lenin travel to Russia to launch his soviet revolution, Lyndon Johnson loses his primary for Texas Senator that he won by 70 -probably illegal- votes) and try to speculate what could have happened to the world instead. I love that stuff.
 
Finished reading "A Libertarian Walks into a Bear"

A small (and nonfictional) account of what happens when libertarians try to colonize an American city (plus a bit of US history and some other things).
Very compelling read, would recommend.

Ivysaur said:
53.2: What If? 2 (Various)
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Ooh, what's the author's name? This seems like a very interesting book but the name's kinda hard to Google.
 
I've finished reading the 17 volumes of JoJo Part 6 (Stone Ocean) and the 24 of JoJo Part 7 (Steel Ball Run)

I've liked Stone Ocean even if I found the end a bit disappointing, specially considering this was the first (and only) JoJo with a female protagonist.

Steel Ball Run is probably the best JoJo so far in my opinion though? Like, it was the first JoJo that made me go "This is truly a bizarre adventure" but I think the shift to seinen and monthly and the new art style really helped Araki.

Like always though, Araki has to go and not stick the landing. The manga could have ended 4 chapters before the actual end and it would have been better, in my opinion.

576 / 500

Edit:

I finished "What If" by Randall Munroe of xkcd fame. It was a fun read.

577 / 500
 
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Finished Volume 4 of Pokémon Adventures DPPt. Its still good, but I've reached the legendary-catching stage of both Shining Pearl (well, Palkia and Lake Guardians), and Sword (Got to the Max Lair) so I've been doing a lot of second-screening with series - harder to hold a Switch and a book at the same time). I've at least finally got into Shining Pearl, as at one point it was only the nostalgia hit from the manga making me even consider playing.

Now I have a desk job I definitely need to up the pace - and most likely will, given I get breaks now! - of my reading, if nothing else to just give my eyes a slightly less intense task
 
53.6: Spirou 4407-8
53.8: Les cœurs de Ferraille - Béka & José Luis Munuera: What if, the US south during slavery, but with robots? A weirdly touching story about loyalty and catfishing drawn by one of my favourite comic authors, who sadly had to go to Belgium to develop his career. Although, considering that the Spanish comic industry during the second half of the 20th century was developed around the concept of imitating French-Belgian comics, it's somewhat fitting.
54: Misión por España - Ibáñez: The latest entry in the longest-running Spanish comic series. This one is quite interesting, as the publisher sacked his long-time inker (maybe because he started going on far-right rants on Facebook) and his replacement kept Ibáñez's orginal drawings almost intact, showing that the poor man is struggling to keep his style (not surprising, considering he's over 80). The story itself is much of the same - a series of clumsy hijinx with plenty of slapstick.

55: Frases de Fútbol - Miguel Gutiérrez: A collection of legendary quotes of some of the most important people from football in the 20th century, from the accidental life philosophy to the outright silly. An amusing read.
56: About Time: A History of Civilisation in Twelve Clocks - David Rooney: A weird suggestion I stumbled upon whilst reading The Economist. Turns out that the history of the world has been heavily influenced by time and our many ways to track it. A seemingly random factor (who decides when it is exactly 12:00.00?) that was used to express (and exert) power and is now keeping the fabric of the modern world in check.
57: Elogio de lo cutre - Alberto Olmos: A untranslatable Spanish word that could be described as "when a penny-pincher chooses to buy something for much cheaper than he could afford to because he'd rather have the poorer-quality product than the high-level one despite having the money for it". And how that kind of goods ("the second-most cheap option on the shelf") became a mark of Spain's transition from a poor country to a moderately rich one.
58: Escape - Marie le Conte: Remember when the internet was new and we were all trying to figure out how to use it? And created blogs and wrote fanfics and joined internet forums to talk about our nerd hobbies? And how one day everyone joined our 'closed garden' to sell ads and young kids were born right into it and Facebook and Twitter and Discord and TikTok ate everything alive? Yeah, as a 31-yo writing this on a pokémon forum, I can completely relate to this. It ends on a negative note, but it's not a wrong one, when I'm currently writing about Elon Musk's crazy attempted takeover of Twitter.

Currently reading: Some more Holmes and the biggest (and most brazen) theft in the history of Portugal. And Dragon Maid 1.

Shooting Star said:
Finished reading "A Libertarian Walks into a Bear"

A small (and nonfictional) account of what happens when libertarians try to colonize an American city (plus a bit of US history and some other things).
Very compelling read, would recommend.
Click to expand...

Got this on my to-read list!
 
Okay so um sorry (to myself) I haven't updated this in two months, going to put a small draft of everything and I'll probably complete and do the maths tomorrow...

- Dragon Maid 1, 2 & 3
- Giant Days 6
- Nightlights, a 3-book saga (so far) written by a friend who happens to have a PC account too (and it's pretty damn long and high-quality so it counts).
- El poder del palco
- The Hound of the Baskervilles
- The Thursday Murder Club (1)
- Pokémon y feminismo
- That's Bollocks
- Spirou Chez les fous
- Spirou 4408-17

I think that makes 69? I'm afraid I'm not hitting my target of 80 but, anyway, nice.
 
I think it's time to wrap my challenge up. I've read 16 books in total, which is nice number. I could probably read more books, but I was focusing on my research and thus reading quite a few research papers in the past 3 months. Which is something I've said I won't be counting towards my total.

I hope this challenge continues to the next year.
 
Oh! Managed to squeeze one more in: The Shortest History of China, by Linda Jaivin. Ending with a round but not-as-nice 70.
 
Well, I failed - miserably!

I have Vol 6 of Pokémon Adventures DPPt half-finished on my desk right now, never even considered picking up Monte Cristo. I've just had so much fun playing games and watching tv! I'll definitely finish the chapter though, I am really enjoying it when I pick it up. Ironically, despite the new games being out, playing Shining Pearl so much is probably the main reason I haven't read anything in about 3 weeks - so many legendaries to sr and capture!

If this continues next year, I'll probably re-up my goals (but maybe another old fave instead of the commitment that is basically the 19th century equivalent of a box set, given it was serialised).
 
i hope this starts back for 2023!
 
Spoiler:

Thank you everyone that took part in 2022, It was great seeing everyone's progress throughout the year!

All totals in the first post should be updated... if there are any mistakes just let me know 😊


As for my own total, I read enough comics to complete it, but lost track along the way, so my counter shall remain on the zero of shame.

I also read zero fiction books that I can recall last year, so that is another thing I need to change!


boyblunder said:
i hope this starts back for 2023!
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Watch this space ;)
 
If entries are still allowed, I'd love to participate too!

Last year, I'd intended to finish 20 books but was only able to read 6.

This time I'd like to aim for a more realistic goal of 10 books
Here is my Goodreads

Right now I am reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. A while back in 2022 I had read A Wild Sheep Chase that sparked my interest in his writing style.

I like the way he subtly makes the mundane seem interesting. The way the characters are living their complex yet often straightforward lives in the quaint setting of early 1980s...
 
Soaring Sid said:
If entries are still allowed, I'd love to participate too!

Last year, I'd intended to finish 20 books but was only able to read 6.

This time I'd like to aim for a more realistic goal of 10 books
Here is my Goodreads

Right now I am reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. A while back in 2022 I had read A Wild Sheep Chase that sparked my interest in his writing style.

I like the way he subtly makes the mundane seem interesting. The way the characters are living their complex yet often straightforward lives in the quaint setting of early 1980s...
Click to expand...

Deeply sorry about that, I've been away for the last couple of months. I will get this year's reading challenge up and running very soon! 😊
 
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