Reading Challenges in 2015 and Goals for 2016

For the third year running, I kept track of the Australian-authored science fiction and horror I read throughout the year. Note I say kept track of, rather than challenged myself to read, since I wasn't particularly successful. I also participated in the Australian Women Writers Challenge for the fourth year. I've already written a detailed round-up for AWW, so in this post I will focus on my other two challenges.

On the science fiction front, I just scraped in at my goal. I read ten books and three new-to-me authors. Over the next year, I would like to exceed the bare minimum, although I'm not going to update my goal. In any case, finding three new-to-me Australian science fiction authors should be a bit of a challenge, increasingly as I read more authors.

The books read for my Australian Science Fiction Reading Challenge in 2015 are:

1. Between the Lives by Jessica Shirvington (review)
2. Space Dogs by Sophia Parsons Cope (review)
3. The Female Factory by Lisa Hannet and Angela Slatter (review)
4. Winning the King by Nicole Murphy (review)
5. Crash by Sean Williams (review)
6. Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (review)
7. Curses and Confetti by Jenny Schwartz (review)
8. Letters to Tiptree edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein (review)
9. Fall by Sean Williams (review)
10. Cold Comfort and Other Tales by David McDonald (review)

I did rather more poorly on the horror front. I planned to read five horror books by Australian authors, and basically managed one. I did read a couple more for Aurealis judging which I didn't review, but that still doesn't meet my target, alas. I'm not changing my goal for 2016, but hopefully I will actually meet it.

The one Aussie Horror book I read was:

• Cherry Crow Children by Deborah Kalin (review)

As well as the SF and Horror reading challenges, I will of course be participating the Australian Women Writers Challenge again. I will also still be writing the monthly round-ups for the AWW website. In the past I haven't set a specific number of books to read for AWW. This time I'm going to be slightly more explicit and say I want to read at least twenty-five, since I only managed twenty-two this year.

And finally, I want to do something about that list of books I haven't read but should've. I plan to cross off as many books from that list as I can, hopefully all of them (although it's not a short list...).

So those are my reading plans for the coming year. What are your goals and challenges, reading-wise, for 2016?

Challenge round-up: Aussie Science Fiction

This year I challenged myself to read at least ten science fiction books by Australian authors. I managed fourteen books by eight authors, which is pretty good. I suppose ideally I would have had at least ten different authors there, but on the other hand, reading multiple books by three of them is obviously a sign that I was enjoying what I was reading. Rather than go through in strict book order, I want to talk a bit about the books in author and subgenre groupings. The full list with review links and in my reading order is at the end.

Simon Haynes writes comedic science fiction which doesn't skimp on the science (compare with, for example, Douglas Adams, who made a lot of stuff up). Of his books I read the two most recent Hal Spacejock books (5 & 6 in the series, although they all stand alone) and laughed my way through both of them. I also read the third (and most recent) Hal Junior book, which is set in the same universe but for younger readers. In general, I've really wanted to know how the Hal Junior books tie in (chronologically) with the Hal Spacejock ones, and The Gyris Mission brought me a little closer to working it out, so that was exciting. I'm looking forward to reading more Hal books as they become available.

The next series I want to talk about is Andrea K Höst's Touchstone Trilogy. These weren't the first books of Höst's that I read but they sold me on reading everything else she writes although, with respect to this challenge, most of the rest of her books are fantasy. (I got my mum to read them too, and I think she's reread them twice now.) They're ultimately a bit more science fantasy than hard science fiction, it's hard to go wrong with psychic space ninjas.

The third author I read multiple books from is Patty Jansen, and this time they weren't all from the same series/universe. Also, there were two novellas. Charlotte's Army is set in the ISF/Allion universe, which I've read stories/novels from before. The other two, Trader's Honour and The Shattered World Within were, very distantly, set in the same universe. I enjoy both universes of Jansen's books, but I was particularly grabbed by the latter two and I look forward to reading more books in that world.

The remaining five books can be loosely broken up into YA and, er, Other. The YAs are Rayessa and the Space Pirates by Donna Maree Hanson, a not-too-serious novella, When the World Was Flat (And We Were in Love) by Ingrid Jonach, and These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meaghan Spooner, the former author being the Australian one. Honestly, aside from their target audience, these three have very little in common and I would recommend them for very different reasons/moods. (Also, if you're reading this on 27/12 in Australia, then the review link for These Broken Stars won't be live until tomorrow, although I did already post it to GR and LT.) I'm interested to see what all of these authors put out next.

And finally, we come to Other. On the one hand there's The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson, a verse novel set in the near future, which I read primarily because it was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. It was sort of stealth-SF, in that I wouldn't expect the author to ever admit that she wrote science fiction (y'know, like Margaret Atwood). I also don't particularly expect her to do it again, so I don't know that I'll be reading any of her other works in the future. On the other hand, there's Simon Petrie whose novella Flight 404 was also my first exposure to his work. It was thoughtful, hard SF and I'll definitely be reading more of his work in the future. (In fact, I've already purchased a short story collection, now I just have to get around to it...)

As for the coming year, I have every intention of continuing to read as much Aussie SF as I can manage. Although I'll be aiming for at least ten again, I've decided not to set an official number... in large part because I'm sick of having to remember to update my sliders. ;-p But I'll definitely be keeping track of the Aussie SF I read.

How about you? Will you be taking up the challenge to read more Australian-authored science fiction?

~

1. Hal Spacejock: Baker's Dough by Simon Haynes (review)
2. Rayessa and the Space Pirates by Donna Maree Hanson (review)
3. The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson (review)
4. Flight 404 by Simon Petrie (review)
5. Stray by Andrea K Höst (review)
6. Lab Rat One by Andrea K Höst (review)
7. Caszandra by Andrea K Höst (review)
8. Charlotte's Army by Patty Jansen (review)
9. Trader's honour by Patty Jansen (review)
10. When the World Was Flat (And We Were in Love) by Ingrid Jonach (review)
11. Hal Spacejock: Safe Art by Simon Haynes (review)
12. Hal Junior: The Gyris Mission by Simon Haynes (review)
13. The Shattered World Within by Patty Jansen (review)
14. These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meaghan Spooner (review)

Reading Challenges for 2013

Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed that I've been participating in the Australian Women Writers Challenge this year. If you were paying particularly close attention, you might have realised that the reviewing component of the AWW2012 is what tricked me into led to me becoming a book blogger.

In 2012 I aimed to complete two separate AWW challenges: read and review 10 science fiction books by Australian Women — a tall order, given the paucity of science fiction by Australian authors generally — and to read as many (OK, originally I think I said 10, but I always knew it would end up being more than that) fantasy/other books by AWW as I could. And I did. I sourced some rather obscure SF books, used the challenge as an excuse to buy even more fantasy books and off I went.

But the fantasy part wasn't exactly a challenge. In almost all cases they were books I would have read anyway. I did discover some new authors through interacting with others doing the challenge, which I might not have heard about otherwise (or not as much), but mostly I read books I expected to read. I probably would not have gotten a Twelve Planets subscription if not for the challenge, but by the time the ebook subscription became available, I was already sold on the series. The main thing I can conclusively say is that without the challenge, I almost certainly would not have become a book blogger and probably would not have read as many books as I did this year.

In 2013, I'll definitely be continuing to post AWW reviews — I am in fact one of the curators, now, for the challenge's review archives for speculative fiction — but I feel like setting a specific goal for number of AWW books read generally is superfluous. 44% of ALL the books I read in 2012 were by AWW (and, if you're interested, 85% were by women generally).

Instead, I want to set two separate challenges for myself in 2013:

• Read 5 horror books by Australian authors
• Read 10 SF books by Australian authors

(Note that I've said Australian authors without specifying genders.)

The SF part should be obvious: I like SF and I want to promote what little of it comes out of Australia. I already have some books to start with since I didn't get around to reading all the books I sourced for 2012, finding instead some unexpected new releases to make up the numbers.

Allow me to explain the horror part further. When I was compiling my statistics about gender in Australian spec fic publishing (post 1, post 2), I saw that the overwhelming majority of spec fic published in Australia/written by Australians is fantasy. I have already addressed the lack of science fiction, but it is the lack of horror that is most stark. In 2011 only eleven horror books written by Australians were published (according to the Ditmar eligibility list). So few were published that there wasn't even an Aurealis Award given out in the horror category. Looking at the Australian Horror Writers Association's page for the Australian Shadows Award, no award was given out in the novel category for 2011 either. They have a reading list of eligible books for the 2012 award and there are only 7 novels on it so far (incidentally, I've read two of them already: Slights and The Price of Fame and one more is near the top of my TBR).

I don't read much horror, but I'm not against it, it's just not much of it crosses my path. So I want to branch out a bit and read more of it. I already have another two Kaaron Warren books lined up, the aforementioned near the top of my TBR pile book Walking the Shadows by Narrell M Harris (yeah, it just got pushed back into 2013, although I didn't think it was actually "horror" but we'll see), an anthology from Morrigan, Scenes from the Second Storey, assuming I remember to grab it when I'm back home, and we'll see what else the year brings. Five books is a modest goal, and I hope I exceed it, but given it's roughly half the yearly novel output of Australian horror writers, it seems reasonable.

I've made some banners for the purpose, too. If you want to use one or both of them on your blog, feel free, just please link back to here.

I'll be adding them to my side bar with counters once 2013 rolls around.

What reading challenges are you setting yourself for 2013? Will you be participating in the AWW2013? Do you want to join in on one or both of my SF and horror challenges? Let me know in the comments!