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[delphonso]

Stolen from Vector:

Purpose:
- Challenge ourselves or just keep track of our reads here on B12.
- Build a community of readers.
- Share books we liked, pick up new reads.

How to:
---> CHALLENGE MODE: Set a goal for yourself here in the thread and update regularly on your progress.
---> CHILLAX MODE: Just hang out and vibe, occasionally talk about books, it's all good man.

As far as myself - I'll be quite happy if I can finish 24 books this year.

[hector13]

I have time to read sometimes now. Just here to chill.

Might even read Dune after having bought it two years ago.

[Vector]

It is fucking hog-wild reading my impressions from last January. Holy shit. I wasn't sure I was going to participate in the challenges this year because I dropped off pretty quickly, but reading my comments from the 2023 thread clarifies how much I've changed. I think it's worth it to start for that establishment of a benchmark alone.

Spoiler: Challenge Statement from 2023 Vec (click to show/hide)

My goal this year is to continue my education. I stopped reading seriously in my early twenties because I could tell that I was going through the motions and nothing I could find to read related to my life or that of anyone I knew. Also, I read Jude the Obscure at just the wrong time and it really damaged me.

Last year was a watershed in many ways, I've been more successful finding interesting books, and I'm recommitting to working at it. If I have a chance at becoming a professor, which I do, I really want to be one that I can respect. I have a few mathematicians in particular in mind.

I am focused on quality over quantity, but I hope that by the end of the year I'll finish more than 52 books and other pieces of media that can help me on my way.

In the name of completely burning to the ground any chill I once possessed, I will also commit to 1. not reading a single article from the transphobic New York Times in the calendar year of 2023 and 2. looking for more obscure and bracing stuff than the usual pop psychology, soft romance, easy-goes-it politics that I get funneled toward me thru algorithms and well-meaning people.

Don't bother arguing with me about point 1, this isn't the venue and it isn't about the NYT specifically, it's about a commitment to my community and, having handed them way too many clicks over the past ten years, refusing to be their captive audience. I'm taking my eyeballs elsewhere.


Overall I want to be sure that out of the 52, I read books from the following areas:

- 8 or more by trans* authors
- 8 or more by Black authors
- 5 or more by indigenous authors
- 3 - 5 math books
- 5 - 8 books on education/teaching
- 5 or more books on labor and community organizing
- 8 - 13 books in languages other than English, not including comics

At least two of the below:
- Finish one of the Great Chinese Novels
- Read and watch a Shakespeare play I don't know yet (so not Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, or King Lear)
- Read Les Miserables or Count of Monte Cristo
- Read the Iliad or Odyssey

I don't have any hope of actually doing either this year but I don't want to forget that I think about this often:
- Read the rest of Steinbeck's books
- Finish reading the Aubrey-Maturin series

I also want to go back to watching movies in some of the categories I haven't seen for a long time.

- 10 movies from the Sinosphere
- 10 movies that are anti-fascist or pro-labor or give that Italian neorealist cinema vibe, e.g. Battle of Algiers, Z, Salt of the Earth, Killers of Sheep.


It's a lot and I don't really expect to succeed, but my life has crumbled over the past few years into samey-ness. The important thing is not the volume, it's not the success, it's heaving myself out of this fucked-up Nash equilibrium that I'm sitting in by whatever means are available to me. Let's give it a try ... I have to at least try ...

I have very thoroughly heaved myself out of the Nash Equilibrium referenced at the end almost by accident (see 2023 Behemoths Thread if you're curious for some reason). Anyway, I've sufficiently diversified my reading and viewing and the quota-system is over. The new plan is to just keep track of things as I finish them and write a blurb about particularly interesting entries here and there.

So far the only book I've finished in 2024 is... (drumroll)

Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg

[Travis Bickle]

My only real goal this year is to actually read The Lord of the Rings so that my frame of reference for a work that often comes up in even casual conversation isn't limited to the various film adaptations. I might try to cram some spiritual reading in with Passiontide on the horizon.

Unless I read something and simply forgot about it, the first book I read this year was We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets (trans. Emma Rault), which served as a reminder why I generally don't pick up random books from the public library or (with a handful of exceptions) read fiction from this century.

[Telgin]

It could be worse, and you could be like me and not even have seen the movies.  I mostly know things about Lord of the Rings because I have a coworker who's so into the setting that his wedding was themed around it.  I'm not sure why Bapko Boppins didn't just fly into Mordor.

Anyway, I don't have any real reading goals this year, having failed to really keep up with the amount I was reading in 2022 and 2023.  My brother did lend me his copy of the second of the Codex Alera books so I've started that, but it's all I'm committing to.

Jim Butcher isn't my favorite author for a few reasons and I probably wouldn't have read the first Codex Alera book if my brother hadn't lent it to me, but I'll finish this one at least.

[ggamer]

This sounds like a lot of fun!

Hector Dune is sooooooooooo good holy shit. It can be a very dry read at times but it's a classic of the genre for a reason! I'm so happy to see it getting a lot of love with the movies coming out!

I'm literally in awe of your reading list Vector!!!!! I'm not surprised that it was hard to stick to that looks super intimidating! I'd love to hear about how your journey progresses into the rest of the year and if you find any good recs let us know!

Lord of the Rings is also a classic for a reason! And I've heard very good things about Codex Alera

For myself, I'm down to set a challenge! By the end of April, I will read Crime and Punishment! I've heard nothing but good things about Dostoyevsky, so I'm going to try and power through the dry prose to crack this egg!

[None]

Oh, Vec, you're back! It's good to see you, I was worried about your absence and well-being.

I don't think I'll be setting any reading goals this year (or at least, not currently), but I've gobbled down a couple books about how to read tarot (I seem to make a hobby of magical haberdashery when I'm in a state of flux), have The Drunkard's Walk - How Randomness Rules Our Lives to read as a nice counterpoint to the cards, and I'm once again taking little pokes at More Than Two to better understand polyamory and its particular facet of the queer sphere. If there's anything I learned from my ex, it's that I still don't know so much first-or-secondhand about the queer community and I really ought to change that.

I should peel the thrift store sticker off my new-to-me bookshelf. It's nice to see specifically my own books on display.

[Travis Bickle]

Well, it's November and I still haven't read The Lord of the Rings, but at least I read Smith of Wootton Major.

[hector13]

I have still not read Dune.

[Great Order]

Weirdly I've not really expanded my book repertoire too much in years. I mean, I got more Discworld books, but that's really it and I don't count that because it's expanding on something I'm already into. Last new book aside from them I got was All Quiet on the Western Front in 2021.

I finished a full re-read of the Red Mars trilogy a week or so ago, usually I give up halfway through Blue Mars because it feels like it's dragging on, but I managed to get all the way through no issues this time.

So now I'm re-reading Daemon and Freedom^TM, which for those who don't know is a techno-thriller. A rich, certified genius dies of cancer, and it turns out he'd set up a daemon triggered to start going off when he died. Two books follow various characters as they work with the daemon, fight against it, or otherwise wind up caught in its machinations.

I wouldn't say it's a great book, but it's definitely interesting conceptually. The writer worked in cybersecurity and it shows, even if it's a bit dated now (It *did* come out in 2006 after all)

[Telgin]

It could be worse, and you could be like me and not even have seen the movies.  I mostly know things about Lord of the Rings because I have a coworker who's so into the setting that his wedding was themed around it.  I'm not sure why Bapko Boppins didn't just fly into Mordor.

Anyway, I don't have any real reading goals this year, having failed to really keep up with the amount I was reading in 2022 and 2023.  My brother did lend me his copy of the second of the Codex Alera books so I've started that, but it's all I'm committing to.

Jim Butcher isn't my favorite author for a few reasons and I probably wouldn't have read the first Codex Alera book if my brother hadn't lent it to me, but I'll finish this one at least.

I ended up finishing the series over the year, and generally I ended up liking it a lot.  The first book was rough in some ways, with bad sexualization of some women and creepiness in a few places, but Jim seems to have learned his lesson and stopped doing that after that book.

Spoiler: Thoughts and Spoilers (click to show/hide)

I liked how the book played toward diplomacy that ended up uniting the various sapient species instead of resolving their problems strictly through war, but the sheer amount of combat in the later books did start to drag a little at times.

I'm also a bit mixed on the vord, and I wonder if Jim planned for them to be the main antagonists or not from the beginning.  I certainly wouldn't have expected what was essentially zerg to be the main antagonists when reading the first book.  I also don't know how I feel about the vord queen being mysteriously beautiful for Reasons.

Lastly, I'm a bit disappointed that it turned out to be pretty tropey with Tavi literally being a farm boy who's the long lost heir to the throne, and that he ended up not only getting "magic" after being presented as a unique weirdo without it, but was one of the most powerful furycrafters in the world.  It worked to the story's plot in the end, but it's not how I'd have written it I guess.