Day -63: The N-List

The second list of books I will tackle is Appendix E, "Inspirational Reading," from the Dungeons & Dragons 5e Player's Handbook. I'm calling it Appendix N, though, because it's an expansion and update of Appendix N from the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide. The new appendix is superior for my purposes; not only does it add books that have come out in the last four decades, but it specifies particular works where Gary Gygax's original in some cases named only authors.
(I got this idea in part from a bunch of other bloggers who have already done this for Appendix N, such as Black Gate.)
The appendix, in many cases, mentions whole series, e.g. "The Sword of Shannara and the rest of the Shannara novels." For my list, I'm including only the first volume of a series; if I like it enough, I'll add the second volume when I finish the first. There are two exceptions: I'm throwing the entire Wheel of Time on the list right off, all 14 volumes, all 11,523 pages. And for the Discworld series, I'm putting the first volume of each subseries on the list (except the Watch subseries, because I read the first one this year, so it's the second), so four volumes on the list for now, with a potential 28 total.
I also, rather arbitrarily, discarded anything on the list that was a short story (such as A. Merritt's works) but left on short story collections (such as The Best of Leigh Brackett). I may change my mind later, but it won't affect the page count much.
And, of course, I'm leaving off anything I've already read, which will bite me when George R.R. Martin puts out The Winds of Winter, because I plan to reread A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons when that comes out.
The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring (the remaining sequels to A Game of Thrones) and The Thousand and One (sequel to Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed) are the only as-yet-unpublished works that I have put on the list to start with.
Here's the list to start with. Note I am not, unlike the Hugos list, including works I've already read.

Day -67: The H-List

The list of Hugo Award Winners for Best Novel is not the largest list in my reading plan; I suspect by the end of 2035 it will be the smallest, as it will grow only one book a year for 20 years, give or take. (A few years ago, two books won as a single work; and a different few years ago, the 14-volume Wheel of Time was nominated but did not win, but showed that the list could get really big.)

The Hugo winners list is where this idea for a 20-year reading plan came from. When I heard of Puppygate in mid-2015, one lesson I took from it was that there was this rich literature of current books worth arguing about, and I had no idea. I eventually watched the livestream of the Hugo Awards ceremony, skipping the sportsball game my team was playing.

For the purposes of my plan, I have divided the Hugo winners into three periods. The early period starts at the beginning. The middle period begins in 1984, with Startide Rising. I chose this for purely self-serving reasons: beginning in 1984, there is a five-year chunk where all the books are either books I've read or sequels to books I've read. In contrast, the winner in 1983, Foundation's Edge, was book four in a series I've read none of. The late period begins in 2013, which was the year Redshirts won; I had at that point read the first and last Hugo winners, and that amuses me, so that's where I drew that line.

It will not be enough to read one book per year from each list. I'm starting with two from the early period, and one each from the later periods; the early books are shorter, as you can see in this graph I made.

Also, I will read The Dispossessed in 2016, because Katie told me to.

Day -70: What I'm doing.

I decided in July, in the wake of Puppygate, that I should read all the Hugo best novel winners. And since I am 42 years old, and I drive in cars and get sick, that I should make sure I do it before I die. So I gave myself 20 years.

Then I decided to add all the books (or at least the first book in each series) in the "inspirational reading" list in the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. 

Then I decided to add a few other things, major books like Ulysses and Cryptonomicon. 

Then I decided it was silly to be arbitrary to only put some books on the list when I knew I would read other books. I was keeping Ulysses on and Star Wars off, but where would I put Hornby and Coupland and Murakami? So I added most books that I own and plan to read sort-of-soon.

So I now have a list of 179 books, totaling more than 75,000 pages, which will grow because they'll keep giving out Hugos and in many cases I'll continue the series, and because I'll keep adding books that I feel like reading.

I'm not, historically, a big book reader, but when I'm 65 I'll care more about what I've read than what sitcoms I watched. So now I have a spreadsheet and a target. And now I have a blog, because while I'm mainly active on Facebook and Twitter, those are terrible for looking back at things, and I like to look back.

My spreadsheet includes a snapshot of how many pages are on it, because I am also interested in how it will grow. My guess right now is that by the end of the 20 years, it will be 150,000 pages, which is 7,500 pages a year, which is huge.

But this year, I made a one-year reading plan. And it's working. And it includes Capital in the 21st Century, which was hard, and Infinite Jest, which is hard. And the plan is more than 4,000 pages, and when I throw in other stuff I've read it'll be 7,000 pages, but I'll make it. So I think a huge pile of mainly sci-fi and fantasy is doable. I can do it.

In the next few posts I'll talk about my three lists, what's on and off, and about my weird definitions of "book" and "month."