The 2018 Reading Challenge

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The 2018 Reading Challenge

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

I'm going to do my usual of 96 books, at least 10% nonfiction, at most 25% rereads, and the Challenge.

ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Dec 30, 2017

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ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Last year I tried to post about every book I read here, and the upshot of that was that I ended up never posting because writing up notes for each book and then converting them into a format that was readable on SA was :effort:

. So this year I'm going to dial it back and just post about the challenges, and/or about books I felt particularly strongly about.

Or perhaps I will upgrade my book-journaling software to emit bbcode, and just copy-paste.

At the moment I -- very unusually -- have three books in flight; Njal's Saga for the BOTM thread (didn't finish it in time for the end of the month), The Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash for nonfiction (it's knowledge I will never use, but I've played a lot of games that used these techniques and it's neat to get an inside look), and Dragon Student by Bard Bloom for sorely needed comfort reading.

Notable books of the month: Binti: The Night Masquerade was a deft and satisfying conclusion to the Binti trilogy, and Tuf Voyaging was vastly more enjoyable than anything else GRRM has written.

pre:

 7 Get a recommendation from a friend or loved one. (bonus: Read literally the first in-person book recommendation you get in 2018)
     <> 2018-01-12 <> The Forge of God by Greg Bear
     <> 2018-01-19 <> The Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear

My girlfriend was visiting for the holidays and recommended me these before I even saw the challenge, so that worked out nicely -- especially as I'd had them on the shelves for about a decade but never got around to reading them.

The two books were very different, the first one being a sort of cross-section about how people deal with the end of the world, the second a look at a small group of people under extreme pressure to find an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and then decide whether to commit genocide for an extended period of time. Both enjoyable, although I'd have liked to see more of the Braids in Anvil.

pre:

 9 Read a book published in 2018 or the latter half of 2017. (bonus: Read something that wins an award in 2018, but only after it is announced)
     <> 2018-01-23 <> Into the Drowning Deep by Seanan McGuire

Didn't like this nearly as much as Newsflesh. The viewpoint isn't really tightly coupled to any one character, but this means it spends a lot of time drifting and expositing on the setting or on people's internal state -- it does a lot of telling rather than showing. Overall, a disappointment.

pre:

22 Read something about the future. (bonus: Read something about a future that takes place before the current year)
     <> 2018-01-12 <> Soonish by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith

This was a highly entertaining and informative read. Some of the stuff (space access) I was already well familiar with; others (bioprinting) I had heard of but knew nothing about. I also thought the overall tone was great; very "Dave Barry does pop-sci", and since I grew up reading Dave Barry this makes it both entertaining and nostalgic while still being new.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2018 13:50

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The 2018 Reading Challenge