Month 10

Month 10 of 260 (3.85 percent)

Size of list: 81,149 pages (4.3 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 5,832 (7.19 percent)

H-list: 1,828/22,674 (8.06 percent)

N-list: 1,864/35,009 (5.32 percent)

O-list: 2,140/23,466 (9.12 percent)

Finished: The Great Hunt, A Trip to the Stars

Reading: Speaker for the Dead, The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft

I had read The Great Hunt, the second volume of The Wheel of Time, before. I found this time that I remembered almost none of what I had read the first time; I remembered the invasion of the Seanchan and the damane, and that was it. In the end, it felt like that was the only part that moved the story forward, but now I'm looking forward to seeing if something happens with Selene in the later books.

A Trip to the Stars is one of my wife's favorite books, and I liked it quite a lot. It's firmly in the camp of magical realism, narrated alternately by two characters who are separated early in the book but whose contacts overlap as the author draws out their webs. Mala spends some time on Perdido Street, so I'm going to put Perdido Street Station on my list for next year.

I also made progress in Lovecraft, reading one long story, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. It was about 50 percent longer than it needed to be; the ending was interesting, but had nothing to do with the middle. But, it's the early stuff, and he gets better. It is fun to read the stories about the things in the Mythos card game, which I played a decade ago.