Well, I didn’t read all the books I’d hoped to in 2008, but I think I did fairly well. I got through all but five, plus lots of newly purchased selections, for a grand total of 24 books completed during the year. Two of the remaining “lost titles” have been put aside for the library; I gave them a shot, but they just weren’t for me. And I’m carrying over the last 3 as challenge books for 2009. I’ve already started on “The Kingdom of the Grail”, which seemed like a good segue from “The Other Boleyn Girl” (good, but ungodly long). And we’ll see what happens from there. Carrie Vaughn has two new novels due out this year that I’m excited about, and I’m looking forward to the next succubus novel by Richelle Mead. I’ll keep following Kim Harrison’s Hallows series, and I’ll probably give Steven Brust’s latest Vlad novel a try, along with a few more of Jim Butcher’s Dresden books. And hopefully there will be new discoveries along the way as well. A new year and new books… what more could you want?
Addendum, 1/2/09: I realized that I didn’t actually assign myself a challenge number. Last year I didn’t have an overall goal since I was attempting to read a lot of neglected (and often long) titles. The year before that, I did 30 new books, which seems to be the most I can manage. I’m tempted to go with a number somewhere in between, but I’m going to give myself a break and aim simply to match the 24 new reads of 2008. There’s some old books I’ve been longing to revisit, and I want to give myself room to do that and still meet my goal.
I recommend the Dresden books. Or at least, my husband does. I haven’t read them, but he flew through all the ones published so far, and he very much liked them. They’re on my list for this year, so hopefully I’ll get to them in a few months.
In the meantime, I’m trying to read things I promised my sister I would read, plus books that are going to be movies soon. That should keep me busy for a while 😉
I really liked the first Dresden book but wasn’t quite as happy with the next two… not that they weren’t interesting, but there were some flaws that bothered me. So I’m debating a bit, though I suspect I’ll try at least one more. 🙂