[Books] February 2020 Reads

Despite the relative brevity of February, I actually covered more titles this month versus the last, probably because for part of the time I was out of the country for work and that resulted in more reading time while I was physically apart from Tobie.

I read a total of 32 titles, only 1 of which was an actual novel, while 25 were comics and 6 were audiobooks. I actually did a lot of re-reading this month including titles like Warren Ellis' Global Frequency. But I suppose the title of focus was Locke & Key, since I ended up wanting to review the series after watching the first season of the Netflix adaptation. It remains to be one of my favorite comic book reads and coincidentally was one of my first purchases on comiXology.

Re-reading the books helped me appreciate what aspects of the comics were translated beautifully in the show but also stressed just how much had been changed and moved around in terms of the story. They remain two distinct pieces of fiction and I can't necessarily argue that one is better or worse than the other. The real challenge will be in terms of the ending of the series (should we ever get there) and whether they opt to go as dark as the comic did or try to find a more palatable ending for their wider audience.

[Books] January 2020 Reads

I wanted to start 2020 right, and thus I tried to balance "smarter" reading choices so I wouldn't feel so pressured at the end of the year to read for quantity instead of just enjoyment. That meant making sure to cover a good mix of quick titles amid the more complex ones in order to set a good pace for the year.

I finished the month with 28 titles, just short of 31 titles had I covered a full book a day. It's not terrible, considering this broke down into 2 Star Wars novels, 14 comic book volumes and a whopping 12 audiobooks.

My efforts to finish up my Legends period books with the 9 different Fate of the Jedi titles took up the bulk of my book-based efforts, so the title I really wanted to highlight for this month is MIND MGMT, which I finally covered in a fairly speedy amount of time. It's an amazing series about psychic espionage agents with amazing abilities. There are so many different layers to this story (both in terms of the narrative and its imagery) that I know that I'll need to re-read this series a few times to fully understand all the possible nuances to this tale. This is a serious must-read and we'd all be better for it.

On the audiobook front, I covered a mix of self-help books on finance and leadership along with fluffier Classic Doctor Who audio dramas. I hope your reading for the year is off to a great start as well.

[Books] December 2019 Reads

In December my reading efforts weren't all that substantial since I was determined NOT to miss my annual reading target of at least 365 titles. That resulted in my blitzing through a total of 38 titles, 27 of which were the equivalent of comic book trade paperbacks versus a measly 3 novels. I also augmented my reading numbers with the help of the fact that many of the older Big Finish Doctor Who audiobooks are available on Spotify.

If anything, the most notable comic that I read during this period was The Immortal Hulk, which added a sense of mysticism to Bruce Banner's story by bringing him back from the dead again and making this a key aspect of what the Hulk is. It could have come out pretty cheesy to claim that all gamma-irradiated heroes and villains were all tied to some mystical green door connected to another dimension, but the way it was carried out worked out quite well. Good job, Al Ewing.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I did hit my annual reading target. You can ready my reviews of the books I read at my Goodreads account.

[Books] November 2019 Reads

As of the time of this blog post, I'm still 7 books behind target in order to achieve my reading goal of 365 books for the year. November has been a sort of slow month in terms of completion and no single franchise really defined my reading activities for the period. It's a slow crawl to catch up, but I remain optimistic that I'll get there eventually.

Here are last month's numbers:

[Books] October 2019 Reads

Sorry for the long absence folks, but I've been doing a lot of thinking trying to figure out how to approach content for this blog moving forward. And while I don't have a solid plan for things just yet, one of the things that I want to start writing is monthly overviews of my reading. Given my reading goal for the year is to cover at least a book a day (yes, 365 titles covered in a year), it's hard to keep up with all the titles given my former one book review a week schedule.

So instead I'll try covering things in more general with special highlights for key books of interests.

So here are the numbers...