2020 Reading Challenge – A Little Bit More

Even before I finished the challenge I started thinking: what will I do for the rest of the year? The most simple solution would be to just increase the number to 4 or maybe 5 books a week and keep on the same path. I wanted to do things a little differently, and I really hope this will work out because it is something I have never successfully done before.

I started wondering, what books would I like to have finished before the year is out? Immediately dozens of books spoke out; series I still have to finish, books I bought recently, or maybe a little less recently. From those I have compiled a list of 52 (yes, that number is everywhere) books that I want to see finished by December 31, divided into three categories: series, tree books, and ebooks.

My selected Tree Books, which should all be read before the clock strikes New Year.

I have a much better track record starting series than rounding them up, so I want to set that straight by finishing some series I started this year or long ago. Additionally, I wanted to add a lot of the Tree books I have been buying this year, read them before they get the chance to become a ROOT. Finally, same goes for ebooks that I bought on Amazon. I try to immediately read these, but some I bought during sales have slipped through.

I hear you think ‘There is five months left and it is only 52 books’ – and I would have to agree. But I will be spicing these books still with whatever holds my fancy at that time. I am not good at set reading, my mind wanders quickly to all the books that didn’t make it on the list so there is a lot of space for free reading still.

Personally, I don’t think it will be particularly easy to finish this list – but as we like to say in my online book club ‘There is no challenge if it isn’t a challenge.’, and I really want to complete it. Also, by sharing it with you it will be much more difficult for me to come back on this challenge.

Without further ado:

Series

  1. The Emperor of Nihon-Ja (Ranger’s Apprentice #10) – John Flanagan
  2. The Lost Stories (Ranger’s Apprentice #11) – John Flanagan
  3. The Royal Ranger: A New Beginning (Ranger’s Apprentice #12) – John Flanagan
  4. Hidden Bodies (You #2) – Caroline Kepnes
  5. Last of the Wilds (Age of the Five #2) – Trudi Canavan
  6. Voice of the Gods (Age of the Five #3) – Trudi Canavan
  7. The Spirit Eater (The Legend of Eli Monpress #3) – Rachel Aaron
  8. The Spirit War (The Legend of Eli Monpress #4) – Rachel Aaron
  9. Spirit’s End (The Legend of Eli Monpress #5) – Rachel Aaron
  10. The Boy on the Bridge (The Girl With All the Gifts #2) – M.R. Carey
  11. The Survival of Molly Southbourne (Molly Southbourne #2) – Tade Thompson
  12. Dark Age (Red Rising #5) – Pierce Brown
  13. Dead Wicked (Calladine & Bayliss #10) – Helen H. Durrant
  14. Low Action (Vinyl Detective #5) – Andrew Cartmel
  15. The Fey and The Furious (Rivers of London Graphic Novels #8) – Ben Aaronovitch
  16. False Value (Rivers of London #8) – Ben Aaronovitch
  17. Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) – Martha Wells
  18. Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) – Martha Wells
  19. Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries #5) – Martha Wells
  20. The Time of Contempt (The Witcher #2) – Andrejz Sapkowski
  21. Switchback (Nightshades #2) – Melissa F. Olson
  22. Outbreak (Nightshades #3) – Melissa F. Olson
  23. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently #2) – Douglas Adams
  24. The Salmon of Doubt (Dirk Gently #3) – Douglas Adams
  25. As Black as Ebony (Lumikki Andersson #3) – Salla Simukka

Tree books

  1. Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name #1) РAndr̩ Aciman
  2. My Year of Rest and Relexation – Ottessa Moshfegh
  3. The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker
  4. The Five – Hally Rubenhold
  5. The Future of Another Timeline – Annalee Newitz
  6. Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy
  7. Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo
  8. The Birds and Other Plays – Aristophanes
  9. Lysistrata and Other Plays – Aristophanes
  10. Afterparty – Daryl Gregory
  11. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell

Ebooks

  1. Djinn City – Saad Z. Hossain
  2. Doing Time (The Time Police #1) – Jodi Taylor
  3. Chosen Ones (The Chosen Ones #1) – Veronica Roth
  4. Silver in the Wood (The Greenhollow Duology #1) – Emily Tesh
  5. The Fist Girl Child – Amy Harmon
  6. Prosper’s Demon – K.J. Parker
  7. The Border Keeper – Kerstin Hall
  8. Desdemona and the Deep (Dark Breakers #3) – C.S.E. Cooney
  9. Jade City (The Green Bone Saga #1) – Fonda Lee
  10. Velocity Weapon (The Protectorate #1) – Megan E. O’Keefe
  11. Miracle Creek – Angie Kim
  12. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
  13. The Sudden Appearance of Hope – Claire North
  14. Inspector Hobbs and the Blood (Unhuman #1) – Wilkie Martin
  15. Inspector Hobbs and the Curse (Unhuman #2) – Wilkie Martin
  16. Inspector Hobbs and the Gold Diggers (Unhuman #3) – Wilkie Martin

I will be posting regular updates on this challenge, to see if I am still going strong. This page will also be updated to include links to the reviews of these books.

How is your challenge coming along? Have you read some of the books on my list, if so what did you think? – Let me know in the comments!

28 thoughts on “2020 Reading Challenge – A Little Bit More”

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  1. That’s an excellent project and I wish you the best of luck for it.
    I notice that you have some Aristophanes in your stack of tree books (I love that term) – Are you looking to read all of them? I also am planning on moving to Aristophanes soon. My copies of his plays arrived last week – different editions, tho.

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    1. Thank you!
      I read The Frogs earlier this year as part of the Little Black Classics I’ve been reading. and was actually very pleasantly surprised by the modern feel of it and why do we only know of old Greek tragedy?
      So, I bought these two collections at the National Theatre book store on my last pre-Corona London trip.

      Maybe we can buddy up for some plays?

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      1. Sounds great. I had the Penguin (black classics) edition of The Frogs but I bought it second-hand over the Internet and the seller’s understanding of “good conditions” differs vastly from mine. It was so bad that I ended up binning the book. I have then sourced the Oxford World Classics edition which has The Frogs, Clouds, and Women at the Thesmophoria.

        Btw, I recently read Aeschylus The Persians and The Oresteia and I was also vvvery surprised how fresh these read. Not the “dusty” old “classics” I expected at all.

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      2. That’s too bad. I can understand people might have maybe slightly different definitions of what is good – but this clearly was not that. On the plus side, this one was only 2 pound new I think. (I have today finished my last of 127 LBC and am preparing some posts looking back at them – one of the things I recall is how I once bought fifty of them while in London and put them all in my suitcase: it fit 😉 )

        My books contain The Knights/Peace/The Birds/The Assemblywomen/Wealth in one and The Acharnians/The Clouds/Lysistrata in the other. So you can choose which one you want to read and when. I am flexible on that account.

        Good to know Aeschylus is nice as well. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I never read any of his plays even though I did quite some Greek in high school. I will look into those as well.

        Liked by 1 person

      7. I am on vacation from work from the end of this week, so I have all of the weekends plus all of next week without any scheduled commitments. But really, any weekend would work for me, too.
        Just name the date! 😀

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  2. Just be aware that the last 2 Ranger’s Apprentice books would have been better to not have been written. The series ended well with Emperor of Nihon-ja as far as I was concerned.

    I see you have O’Keefe’s Velocity Weapon on the list. Have you read her Scorched Continent trilogy? Once the Velocity Weapon trilogy is done I think I’m going to add the Scorched trilogy and this one and have a go at it all.

    And best of luck!

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    1. Thanks for the heads up! I am a bit of a completionist and feel I have to finish the series. I think I mainly liked about the series how much my sister liked it (she doesn’t read a lot).

      No, I haven’t read O’Keefe yet, I got velocity weapon in an end of year Tor.com sale, so I was easily tempted and got it. I hope it is nice though.

      Thanks!

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  3. Good luck! I think finishing the series we start is the bane of a lot of readers existence, for some reason. (There’re so many books I want to read myself in this list I can’t stare at it for long or it’s going to mess with my already long list of series I should finish before starting new ones). The concept of Tree book sounds interesting!

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    1. I completely agree. Now I am constantly thinking ‘Oh and this and that book – that didn’t make it to the selection.’ So, I have already started drafting for next year, but I also told myself that I will try to read all these, but my books should not exclusively come from the list.

      I think why we start a lot of series and have trouble finishing them might have multiple reasons. When they aren’t finished yet – it might take a while and one forgets about it. In my case – I am not very great at reading a complete series back to back so I often hop from series to series and sometimes I forget to hop back 😉

      I have been struggling with the naming. I used to call them real books, but that was off, because an eBook is not less real despite the different format. So, I settled for books made from trees or Tree Books for short. In my challenge though, the part named Series contains book Tree and e-Books.

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