Reading Plans for 2021 (and Beyond) – Half Year Update

 

Has it REALLY been 6 months already? Yup! How times flies during a slow motion Apocalypse…. I think it’s about time I surveyed how my 2021 Reading Plans were doing. Well, it’s one way I can keep myself on track – or at least TRY too! [lol]

Following The Labels

My Plan to follow the country/region labels is going reasonably well. I’ve read & reviewed the bunch of books for both France and Germany (with an additional China bonus triple), so (ancient) Greece is up next – presently sitting in the ‘to be scheduled soon’ pile – and I expect to complete both the India and Ireland batch this year.

Dipping in the Knowledge Streams

Dipping is, I think, the word here. I’ve been nibbling around the edges of ‘Britain Alone’, ‘World War to Cold War’ and ‘USA:WTF’ but will become more focused going into the 2^nd half of the year. I’m actually about to start the official foundation of my ‘Britain Alone’ set of books with the 1938 Munich Crisis, so that’ll be showing up for review in about 5-6 weeks. The foundation for the ‘World War to Cold War’, which is a review of Occupied Europe prior to D-Day will follow later (but well before year’s end). As the topic of ‘USA:WTF’ is rather more amorphous it’ll be a little more hit and miss as I’m really not sure what would count as a foundation for that subject!   

Wild Cards

I think the ‘Wild Cards’ are working well and the increased number of them will be showing up from around now and going forward into next year. I’m expecting, with them being ‘wild’ and all, that they should produce some real surprises – and not only for my hard-core readers.

Finishing/Progressing Series

I’m approaching the end of the ‘Sharpe’ series of books – just in time for Cornwell to drop another one! – which should be complete early next year. I’ve also recently (and finally!) finished the ‘Divergent’ series of books. Coming up, by the end of the year anyway, will be the final book in the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy that I still haven’t read. I’m yet to start either the ‘Foundation’ or ‘Dune’ series of books, in advance of the Foundation TV series or the Dune movie but hope to do so this year (although the reviews might drop in 2022). Naturally, being me, I have started several more long running series – notably ‘The Expanse’ – which will take some time to complete.

Bigger Books & Reducing the Review Pile

The review pile presently stands as 11 which is somewhat better than the 14 of six months ago. I am endeavouring to read longer books to push that down to around 8 (which seems reasonable) but its slow going. Presently my average read is 330pp (which is at least 20pp more than six months ago!) with the aim to get that above 350pp and keep it there. The largest book reviewed since records began (on Oct 22^nd 2020) is 561pp but that record will fall in a few weeks.

Awards

My plan to read more Award Winning books is, I think, going well. MANY more to come including some interesting surprises.

 Continuing as Usual

On top of all of that I’m, naturally, progressing with all of my background reading plans. The last of the (extended) ‘Man Vs Machine’ reading pile has entered my (enlarged) ‘read next’ stack sitting on my sofa, so the next stack of WW1 based novels will start being scheduled soon(ish). The rest of the reading Cosmic Background you can probably already guess at. The only notable addition going forward will be a number of Ancestry related books both on the deeper genetic aspects of the Brits (and Irish of course) as well as some more focused reading on the Caribbean and the pre-revolution American colonies.