2024 Projects: Competitive Reading Edition

I'm not saying it's a contest, I'm just saying I won

170 books. Yeah, it’s easy with audio, but I break my ass in half at work for 12 hours a day, so the difficulty is outsourced elsewhere.

This year I’ve got a couple of big projects to tackle, and these will largely be done for my own personal enrichment. However, since this was also a big year on the YouTube channel, I’ve been brainstorming what to use as video inspiration, so there’s going to be an overlap between what I’m reading and what I’m covering every week.

First: More Indie Stuff

I’ve got a decent-sized backlog of titles that I play through Speechify, since they’re ebooks written by indie authors with no budget for audio. At times these can be harder to get through because robots suck at narrating, but it is what it is. I’ve got a book called SUNSET SOVEREIGN that I’ve been meaning to get to for way too long, amongst others. I really want to keep focusing on indie promotion as long as the indies I’m reading are good. If I’m not stoked on them, I’m not going to worry about it.

Second: Finish Animorphs

Since my son is starting out with these books, I figure I should finish them. I stopped following the series around age 15 or 16 when “driving a car” and “making out with girls” became actual viable options for me. I plan on doing simple recap videos for each one, like little five-minute affairs on the channel, since they’re simple books. I’ve reread a few of them in the last month and I remember why I loved the series so much.

Third: Knock Out Reacher

The library has this whole series, and they feel unique for the military thriller genre. I think the second one was an improvement over the first (which was also good, but graphic). I’m interested in where it goes.

Fourth: The Silmarillion, Broken Down

I mentioned this on the livestream, but my plan is to do five-minute summaries of each Silmarillion chapter. Mostly for my own understanding and entertainment, but also to help other LOTR fans who struggle with what is essentially the Old Testament for Middle-Earth.

We will redpill the masses on true LOTR stories. Amazon overpaid and underdelivered on Rings of Power in a flagrant piece of cultural vandalism, and I have it as my object to arm people with a pure knowledge of the lore to combat this evil. Let Prime Video levy a tax on viewers all they like, in the form of ads and increased streaming costs. It mattereth not. Forth Eorlingas.

Fifth: Kaiju Books

I mean this in the sense that they are huge and Japanese. Clavell’s SHOGUN and Yoshikawa’s MUSASHI are both on the docket, and the audiobooks cap off at around 50+ hours each. There will be no hardcore blitz of these books, I want to understand and absorb them slowly. With the number of short books that I listen to, I need to keep myself acclimated to longer, more substantial works as well.

Sixth: Amplify Print Reading

Steam, the gaming platform, likes to snitch on me by tracking the number of hours I’ve played certain strategy games. I think I broke 1200 hours this year (all-time, not 2023 alone) on Kane’s Wrath and I’m rapidly approaching 50 hours on Age of Empires 3. These games are palate-cleansers for me after a long day but I can’t allow them to consume too much time, which I have been doing. If I have time to play strategy games, I have time to walk around in my shop and read more print books. 16 out of 170 (with 10 of them being graphic novels) is unacceptable.

Right now I have 22 on the list. Some are graphic novels, some are art instruction books, and some are freaking huge nonfictions (like the DSF biography of Robert E. Lee, or the Irving bio of George Washington.)

Reading isn’t just a leisure activity or a chore, it can be both, depending on the type of book. And I’ve got both types on the list.

Onward and upward. If next year is like this year, I might hit 2000 books read on Goodreads.

Goodreads sucks btw, but I’m going to do it anyhow.

All right, get back to work. Happy New Year.