justchris lacks imagination yet turns the pages

I'm excited to be here for a second year! I wasn't particularly active in this group last year and hope to do better this year. I did find setting up categories very helpful for myself. Thus I am planning the same set of categories to continue with my ongoing goal of getting through my ROOTs (I have a ticker in that group).

Category: Anthologies

My TBR possibilities:

Past Lives, Present Tense 1
Malice Domestic 7 2
Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind 3
Lauriat 26

I focused much of my reading energy on this category last year. I achieved the goal of reading all the hardcover/trade paperback (ie, oversized for my fiction shelves) anthologies. What remains are the handful of mass market paperbacks.

Category: Speculative Fiction, Favorite Authors

Sherri S. Tepper
Grass 4
Raising the Stones 5
Sideshow 6

Jo Clayton
Magic Wars
Wild Magic
Wildfire

Jennifer Roberson
Sword Bound
Sword Sworn

Judith Tarr
The Dagger and the Cross
Lord of the Two Lands

CJ Cherryh - Alternate Realities
Barbara Hambly - Dog Wizard*
Joan D. Vinge - Dreamfall
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt
Vonda N. McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun
Octavia Butler - Kindred/Fledgling/Collected Stories 18 (was new purchase)
Robin McKinley - Spindle's End 25
Ellen Kushner - Thomas the Rhymer 35

*Missing associated works, which complicates things.

Category: Speculative Fiction, Other Authors

Samuel R. Delaney
The Fall of the Towers
Triton

Tanith Lee
Biting the Sun
The Silver Metal Lover
Red Unicorn 30

Adrienne Martine-Barnes
The Crystal Sword 22
The Rainbow Sword 23
The Sea Sword 24

John Crowley - Little, Big
Tom Deitz - Windmaster's Bane*
Charles deLint - Spiritwalk
Joe Haldeman - Forever Free
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
Susan Schwarz - Shards of Empire
HG Wells - The Time Machine | The War of the Worlds**
Nalo Hopkinson - Sister Mine 16
Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death* 21
T. H. White - Mistress Masham's Repose 27
James White - Mind Changer 31
Alan Dean Foster - Midworld 44

*Missing associated works, which complicates things.
**Of course, I am familiar with these Wells stories and others, just never actual *read* any of them.

Category: Too Large for My Fiction Shelves

My TBR possibilities:

Home 8
The Bluest Eye 10
Beloved 11
Tiopa Ki Lakota 13
The City We Became 14
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms 15

Category: Classics & Literature

TBR Possibilities:

The Age of Innocence
Martin Chuzzlewit
Nicholas Nickleby
The Old Curiosity Shop
The Pickwick Papers
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Pudd'nhead Wilson
Black Boy
The Good Earth
Uncle Tom's Children
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Bleak House 17
Go Tell It on the Mountain 19
Night 34
The Color Purple 38

Category: Catch-All

The Milagro Beanfield War
The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita (in progress)
Maus I 32
Consolation for an Exile 33
Night 34
Tales from Watership Down 41
Beauvallet 47

Category: Paused Fiction

The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn 46

Category: Fiction Shelves

I'm expecting a major move in 2-4 years, so I need to start seriously considering what's worth hauling long distance. I think it's time to do a systemic reread of my collection and make decisions, especially recent acquisitions of books that made a big impression on me many years ago.

Category: Paused Nonfiction

Africa SF
The Ancient Wisdom of the Celts*
The Body Is Not an Apology
the life-changing magic of tidying up
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
Strange Matings
Full Catastrophe Living
Chi Running
The Green Witch
Gaian Tarot
make your place
BPMN Method and Style
Beading 101
Crucial Accountability
All Wired Up
A Festival of Violin and Fiddle Styles for Viola
Plant Spirit Medicine revised and expanded edition
Queer Magic
The Way of Energy
The Art of Breathing
T'ai Chi According to the I Ching
The Anxiety Workbook
The Hero with a Thousand Faces 12
do less 48
Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills 49

*Might not actually be nonfiction

Category: Nonfiction Shelves

I own a lot more nonfiction than fiction, much of which I haven't read yet. Time to work on that for the same reason as indicated above. I want to continue making forays into my collection, particularly related to book clubs and my own ongoing studies.

Tai Chi Secrets of the Yang Style 7
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way 9
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism 20
Atomic Habits 28
Honoring Your Ancestors 29
The White Racial Frame 36
Badass Ancestors 37
We Do This 'Til We Free Us 40
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander 42
Well, That Escalated Quickly 43
Unapologetic 45

Category: Group Challenges

I hope to be more active in the group this year, including participating various KITs, CATs, and DOGs. I expect to remain in the shallow end, just dipping my toes in here and there, but it's a start.

My strategy is to start with the small categories and knock them out, and in terms of speculative fiction, start with the Tepper books.

Great categories, and so many interesting books!

I read The Moon and the Sun by Vonda McIntyre as a young teenager and loved it. It‘s one of the few books from that time that is still on my shelves. I do wonder how I would like it today!

Lots of reading ahead. Hope it's good.

Good luck with your 2022 reading. I recognize some great reads in the classics cat.

Welcome back! I especially like your category of "too large for my fiction shelves" -- I'm constantly buying chunksters because I wouldn't be able to read them from the library, but never get around to reading them anyway ;)

Lots of good books in your lists. Enjoy your reading in 2022.

Have fun with your 2022 Challenges!

>14 MissBrangwen: Thank you for the comment, Mirjam! I love, love, love Dreamsnake and Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre, so I have hopes of equally enjoying The Moon and the Sun, although it sounds very different from those other works.

>15 dudes22: Thank you, Betty!

>16 Tess_W: Thank you, Tess! I received the classic literature mostly as cast-offs from friends who moved away. Others, I bought at deep discount. I hope to make inroads in this category this year!

>17 rabbitprincess: Thank you, rabbitprincess! I have that problem of not getting around to reading the chunksters too. I confess too large for my bookshelves mostly refers to book heights, as my fiction shelves fit dvds and mass market paperbacks, but not trade paperbacks or hardcovers.

>18 hailelib: Thank you, JM!

>19 DeltaQueen50: Thank you, Judith!

Hope you have a great year of reading!

Have a great time reading!

Good luck with your reading this year! There are some great selections in your lists. The Years of Rice and Salt is one that has been recommended to me recently by a good friend and I too am going to try to fit that into this year's reading.

>23 mathgirl40: Thank you, Paulina! I've heard lots of great things about The Years of Rice and Salt and really looking forward to it.

Woot! Almost done with another category! Progress!

>25 justchris: Hurray!

Woohoo! Two categories completed! Progress!

OK, I bought another anthology, so that kinda uncompletes one of the categories...

I read Who Fears Death so that I can gift it to someone, along with Delan the Mislaid (a long favorite of mine). A youthful reader who doesn't connect with mainstream speculative fiction but may connect with African speculative fiction.

The year is winding down. I have only a handful of days left, and I'm so close to achieving my goal of 50! Hard to say whether I'll make it.

>30 justchris: Good luck!

>31 christina_reads: Thank you! I have a selection of partially read books to choose from. Finished one today, and hope to finish one each of the remaining days of 2022.

>32 justchris: Good luck and have fun :-)