I made it to my goal of reading 40 books in 2019 and just got to 42 before the year was up. Life sometimes got in the way but in the main I made steady progress through the year. Usual suspects in terms of style and types of reads (lots of SF & F with some non-fiction) with a few new authors too. My last book was 'Embers of War' a SF saga from Gareth L. Powell, which was a nice easy read. I am in danger of mixing all my SF reads up though with reading that so close to reading books from James A. Corey's 'Expanse' series and Stephen Donaldson's 'Gap' series. Reckon I'm going to have to refresh my head between each SF book by resetting with another style else my head will explode.









I have set my goal for 2020 for another 40 reads and I can but hope they are as good as last year's. Bring them on. I'm not going to plan what I'm reading in advance as I always seem to veer off and just go with the flow.

I haven't got a goodreads author page yet. Well, not exactly. If you click on some of the books there are links from my name to an author page for A.J. Walker, and there are five or six books which I am featured in, but it's not my author page. It appears to be an amalgam of at least three A.J. Walkers–I have not written a book on 'Retirement Strategies' or 'The Timeless Empire Series'.

I have emailed goodreads and hope that they can disentangle my books from the other A.J. Walkers out there.

In the meantime if you want to check out what I've been reading and what I've got lined up you can check out my (non-author) goodreads page at: www.goodreads.com/Zevonesque

Think it may be time I updated my photo on there, or maybe I should just go baby face shave again?

Just finished 'Crome Yellow' by Aldous Huxley. An enjoyable romp published in 1921, and not at all indicative of the Brave New World (1932) to come - though there was some postulation by Mr. Barbecue-Smith in one chapter which did include some thoughts in that direction.



Been an excellent selection of reads so far from some top authors and a few classics too. Can't fault the authors to date:

• Aldous Huxley
• J.M Barrie
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Terry Pratchett
• Cormac McCarthy
• Frank Herbert
• Edward Brook-Hitching
• William Dalrymple
• Jack Vance
• Frederik Pohl
• Ursula Le Guin
• Ben Aaronovitch
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Stephen King
• James Barr

Next up will probably be the Iain M. Banks 'The State of the Art'

I've picked up rather a few books lately from charity and second-hand bookshops, and I probably should swerve visiting any more for a while now - I am in no danger of being short of reading materials for the rest of the year; or probably the next one too. But it's hard not to go in and take a look, isn't it?

After submitting the edited version of the 'Don't Open the Door' short story I will get back on to writing my own book: The Wobbly Odyssey.

Not caught up on my reading target but hey, no-one died.



Eighteen books in and still going on. Next one may be quick (it's got lots of big pictures of maps in it).

Reading has included some cracking authors including;

• Arthur C Clarke,
• Bill Bryson,
• Terry Pratchett,
• Neil Gaiman,
• Anthony Burgess,
• CS Lewis,
• Colson Whitehead,
• Paul Beatty,
• Kurt Vonnegut, and
• Joseph Conrad.

Reading for next six months expected to include some more of the usual suspects including at the very least;

• Iain M. Banks,
• Margaret Atwood,
• Philip Pullman,
• Mervyn Peak, and
• George Orwell.

And, yes, I will leave some time for some writing.

Been a good year for reading for me (not yet for writing, but there's still time so watch this space). Picked up another couple of books during the week including the Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, which is one of the nine Discworld's I've yet to read.

This week I surpassed the forty books I'd set as a target for the year on GoodReads.

Somehow forty books in some ways doesn't sound that much to me, but it's a struggle to get the reading time in some weeks with our busy lives and so I've got to be pretty satisfied with getting close to a book a week. And it's mad when you look at the average number of books people read or the number of books the average person reads (which is quite different). Apparently the average number of books is around 10 to 12 or so, but the median number (i.e. the number that most people profess to have read in a year) is only 4; the average number being skewed so much by the heavier readers out there. Damn stats, hey. Data suggests that more intelligent - sorry I should say better educated - people read more books, women read more books than men, and incredibly around a quarter of people don't read any books at all (FFS).



These stats seem quite reasonable when I think about it. I've got mates that read no books at all and a few who read maybe five or so. I've had years in the past when I didn't read as much as I do now and I wish that wasn't true (that said I may have been strumming my guitar more some years and I feel guilty about not doing that as much as I used to now); basically there's only so much time.

Roughly 50% of the books I've read so far this year have been SF/Fantasy (so far so predictable) and 25% non-fiction and there have been a few classics thrown in there (The Tempest, Macbeth, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Titus Groan). All in all many very satisfying and fascinating reads. Some have made me think about my writing methods and style but mostly they have just given me fabulous escapism and provided me with worlds away from this hopeless dystopia we appear to be in at the moment.

All these hours of escapism are priceless and I wish more people would read more, but you can lead a horse to water etc. It would entertain, inform and de-stress many a bod I know if they would. If we all had a few hours away from the google-box and the news and those bloody adverts it would be a better place (imagine if Donald Trump sat back and read a history book or six, and maybe looked at an atlas rather than SNL, Fox and his Twitter feed. Ho hum.).



Anyway's for my next bit of escapism I am heading back to the Discworld to find out about the Fifth Elephant.


The Discworld on the back of the Great A'Tuin

During November there was little time for reading with all the hours required for the NaNoWriMo writing challenge, so it is good to get back to it again. At the start of the year I set a target on Goodreads to read 26 books, it seemed reasonable to aim for a book a fortnight. I've already achieved that and now I'm aiming to get to 40 - which will be my best reading year for some many a year.

I just finished a book with a great little background to it; To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. A time travel book with a Three Men in a Boat theme; what could be finer? It was a good read and my 37th book of the year.

And now I'm on to a big hardback which has been on my shelves untouched for a good few years now.: The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2003.



It's very much been a year of books this year, rather than a year of Kindle. I've been trying to read some of the many books I've got on my shelves that I've never got around to. For too long I've been buying books even though I've got plenty of reading to in the house. I've tried to avoid second hand bookshops a bit more this year, not completely successfully.