Reading Challenge 2021

As I'm hosting an SFF female author month for a group on LibraryThing I picked up an omnibus edition of the Patternist series by Octavia E. Butler called Seed to Harvest. It contains 4 stories with the first two being interconnected as a couple of the main protagonists feature in both despite the time span numbering hundreds of years. You're then thrown a curveball with a total shift away from everything in the third story before the last brings them all together again. It's an excellent collection with that third story being only slightly weaker than the others but overall very enjoyable.
 
I've not posted on here for a while. I've not lost interest, is just that I've started The Stand by Stephen King. It's a long book, and I'm only a third through it.

I plough through that as an audiobook when I'm running. (I'm training for the Manchester Marathon, so there's plenty of running at the moment). I've another book I'm reading concurrently, which I'll report back on in due course.
 
Mobilism is good for books if you are into that sort of thing.
DC++ is great for ebooks, audiobooks and music. The concept is that you join groups of interest to you, then directly connect (DC) with other group members to share content. You download their shares, they upload yours. Full search capabilities.
 
1. The Willows in Winter - William Horwood.
2. The Willows and Beyond - William Horwood.
3. A Brief History of the Cold War - John Hughes-Wilson.
4. Prophecy* - S. J. Parris.
5. The Long Night* - Ernst Israel Bornstein.
6. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne.
7. SAS Great Escapes - Damien Lewis.
8. Dominion** - C. J. Sansom.
9. The Lies of Locke Lamora** - Scott Lynch.
10. The Remains of the Day* - Kazuo Ishiguro.
11. SAS: Rogue Heroes - Ben MacIntyre.
12. The Colditz Story - P. R. Reid.
13. The Stand* - Stephen King.

Really good book, but again I was confused over it's length. My MP3 player told me I was about 50% through the book. I was wondering where it could possibly go next, after a particularly large scale event, and then all of a sudden it finished. I realised at that point that indeed, all loose ends had been tied down, and it was a very appropriate time to conclude.

I'm kind of glad I've finished it, and I'm looking forward to moving on to something else. It was a long book, and there were occasions when I was racking my brains to place a character from an earlier part of the book. But the story line moved forward at it's own pace, and developed into something quite compelling.

All the characters, good or bad, were interesting and engaging in their own right. I had empathy with many of them, and I felt real emotion on a number of occasions as I read.

I've starred it above as one of my favorite books of the year, but for me, it didn't entertain me quite as much as The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Charles Dickens is still my favorite author. I must revisit one of his books again soon.
 
Just finished 3rd degree by James Patterson which was ok. Starting Step by Step by Simon Reeve online and got Total Blackout being delivered today as well
 
Just finished 3rd degree by James Patterson which was ok. Starting Step by Step by Simon Reeve online and got Total Blackout being delivered today as well
Simon Reeve’s book is excellent. I was genuinely surprised and shocked by some of the stuff that he recounts from his early life.
 
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This thread seems to have been derailed. I can confirm that some parts of Berkshire are quite nice, but living in Reading would really be a challenge.
 

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