Challenge: 50 Books discussion

#1 Inheritance by Christopher Paolini (meh) 8/28/12
#2 Colorado Kid by Stephen King (short, quick read. enjoyed the story, disliked the ending) 8/29/12
#3 IQ84 by Haruki Murakami (long, but enjoyable) 9/24/12

#4 American Gods by Neil Gaiman (fun) 10/4/12

#5 The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson #1) by Rick Riordan 10/6/12

#6 The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson #2) by Rick Riordan 10/9/12
I'll finish out the series, but it's not doing much for me besides acting as a springboard for wikipedia loops on the Greek gods.

#7 The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson #4) by Rick Riordan 10/11/12

#8 The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson #5) by Rick Riordan 10/19/12
I'm glad I finished the series. The final two books were much, much better than the first three,in my opinion.

#9 The Lost Hero (Heroes of Olympus #1) by Rick Riordan 11/6/12
I wasn't that impressed by the first series, but I still seem to find myself reading the second. New cast of characters in this book and the writing is a little more "clean", less repetitious.

#10 The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus #2) by Rick Riordan 11/9/12

#11 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 12/22/12

#12 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 12/28/12

#13 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 12/29/12

#14 Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

#15 Xenocide by Orson Scott Card 1/9/13

How are you finding the Ender books, Chris? I've got them on my to-read list!

The first story was great and the second was very good. They seem to have tapered off a little bit for me as they get into a more philosophical style writing. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the shadow stories (a side storyline from a different perspective), but I've enjoyed the main series for the most part.

The Shadow Saga is worth reading. There is a gap of a few years between Children of the Mind and Orson Scott Card writing Ender's Shadow. The Shadow Saga didn't seem as philosophical to me.

I'm going to take a little break from the series, but I'm sure I'll pick up the Shadow Saga at some point... thanks for the info.

#16 Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
I was kinda ready to be done with this series and it I felt like it finished on a pretty good note. Loved the first two books, but I lost touch a bit with three and four.

#17 Fortress of Solitude by Jonathon Letham
First part was great and then it slowly went downhill...

#18 The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx 1/31/13

So, I've decided been trying to figure out what to do about comic book trade paperbacks and my 50 book count. Goodreads qualifies each TPB, cover to cover, as being one book. I kinda feel like this is cheating. They are time-consuming, however, and I do get in kicks where that's all I read for a while. I've decided to make a compromise and count 1 book for every 3 TPB's. Time-wise, thats about equivalent to a short book.

#19 Knights of the Old Republic Vol. 1-3 by John Jackson Miller

#20 Knights of the Old Republic Vol. 4-6 by John Jackson Miller

#21 Knights of the Old Republic Vol. 7-10 by John Jackson Miller

My completed review of this series can be found here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...