[Books] October 2020 Reads

 

October was a pretty good reading month for me and I've generally kept up the pace I established in September. If I stay on track, I'm very likely to hit my annual reading goal before November is over, which should free me up to read longer titles once I'm not as stressed over the overall timing.

I like the challenge an annual reading goal provides, but it can influence one's reading decisions to make sure to factor in reading efficiency apart from just reading what you want. It's all good fun though.

On to this month's numbers!

[Books] September 2020 Reads

September 2020 represents a bit of a turning point in my efforts to hit my end-of-year reading goal of 365 titles. I had fallen behind my goal ever since the lockdown began  (which sounds kind of ironic), and it was only last month that I finally got caught up again and got back on pace.

Admittedly, this means reading a lot more comic books instead of just focusing on novels because I really do go faster when it comes to comics. But I think I also made some smart choices in terms of what to read so that I didn't get overly bogged down by heavier or longer books. There'll be time enough for reading of that variety once I hit my goal or something.

[Spoiler Notes] Dune (2020) - First Trailer

I love Dune. 

From first playing Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, which pretty much kicked off the real-time strategy genre with a bang to eventually reading all of Frank Herbert's books and actually enjoying the 1984 David Lynch movie adaptation, this franchise has been such a big part of my life. 

I've tried to keep some degree of emotional distance from the movie because (1) I really want it to turn out well but (2) I'm also afraid that it won't and so (3) I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much in the interim. And it's difficult to get a truly good sense for a movie based on pre-release movie stills and teaser trailers. In the end, we're going to have to watch the actual movie to determine if it's worth its weight in water.

Tobie and I did a live reaction video when the first full trailer for the new movie came out as a Baduy Pride vlog and a lot of my raw thoughts are there. But I figured it might be fun (and helpful to my sanity) to create a spoiler notes post about it. I'm going to rattle off what I know from the trailer and what I'm feeling so expect book spoilers and book-related speculations and you know the whole drill.

[Books] August 2020 Reads

 August was a pretty good month for reading for me, even though I felt like I slowed down a bit right at the very end of the month. But hey, it was my birthday, so I had other activities to focus on apart from reading, so it's understandable, right?

My novel reading has generally been more productive thanks to my return to the BattleTech novels, but that segment of my library is mostly covered by now. At least I still have comics to fill in the gaps.

[Books] July 2020 Reads

 

July 2020 will stand out as one of the rare months this year where I actually read more novels than comics. I guess it helps that I got super excited about revisiting the BattleTech universe again, and I was determined to finally finish my internal project to read all of the Classic novels. Thus most of my leisure reading while catching up on Fitbit steps involved a BattleTech title somehow.

It was a pretty good month, but on the whole, I'm still way behind on my 365 book goal for the year. I gotta pick up the pace this August!