{"id":796,"date":"2015-01-03T00:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T00:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/?p=796"},"modified":"2015-01-03T00:46:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T00:46:29","slug":"2014-reading-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/2014-reading-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Reading Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just like in 2013<\/a>\u00a0I challenged myself to read a set number of books in 2014.\u00a0This time the magic number was 45. And just like in 2013, I hit the target exactly, although it was much less close run than last year (when I frantically raced to finish my last book on New Year’s Eve). This time I actually finished with about a week to spare.<\/p>\n

Here’s the list of what I read<\/a>. Mostly\u00a0the usual mix of classic sci-fi and fantasy, programming, random non-fiction.<\/p>\n

Favourite\u00a0fiction?\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>. Somehow our class managed to not read this in school, so I thought it was time to catch up on\u00a0a classic that seemingly everyone else had read, and it didn’t disappoint. A real page-turner, but with true heart.<\/p>\n

Favourite\u00a0non-fiction? This was much tougher to choose, but probably\u00a0Our Pet Queen: A New Perspective on Monarchy<\/a><\/em>. Short, incisive, fascinating and often funny.<\/p>\n

The two biggest chunks of reading were A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> books 3-5 and Orson Scott Card’s Ender Quartet books 2-4. Both series did start to flag a bit as they went on. Ender more so; it would always have been hard to keep up to the standard of the amazing\u00a0Speaker for the Dead<\/em>, but\u00a0Children of the Mind<\/em>‘s plot\u00a0really did descend into\u00a0the ridiculous. Not sure if I’ll return to Card’s\u00a0series, I’ve heard the Shadow books are good but after the bad taste Children of the Mind<\/em>\u00a0left there’s plenty of other books I want to check out first.<\/p>\n

As for ASoIaF<\/em>, while\u00a0A Feast for Crows<\/em> was a bit of a slog, I’ll join the massed ranks of people waiting eagerly for\u00a0George R R Martin to hurry up and\u00a0resolve some of these unanswered questions and cliffhangers!<\/p>\n

For 2015 I pondered dropping the challenge entirely. It’s been rewarding,\u00a0but\u00a0I want to focus a bit less on reading: it’s absolutely still something I want to make\u00a0time for, but\u00a0there are plenty\u00a0of other things I want to do more of\u00a0as well (writing, coding, photography, maybe picking up guitar again).\u00a0There’s also some intimidatingly\u00a0long books on my “to read” list (Pillars of the Earth<\/a> – <\/em>I’m looking at you here!) which I found myself putting off at least partially because they would make it harder to hit my target. In the end I’ve decided to scale my goal back\u00a0to 40 books again this year. Whether I make it is anyone’s guess, but at least it gives me something to blog about same time next year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just like in 2013\u00a0I challenged myself to read a set number of books in 2014.\u00a0This time the magic number was 45. And just like in 2013, I hit the target exactly, although it was much less close run than last year (when I frantically raced to finish my last book on New Year’s Eve). This … Continue reading 2014 Reading Challenge<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moononastick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}