With exactly one week to go in my year of reading, and 1,037 pages to get to the ultimate goal. I must remind myself to.
Take a deep breath.
Remain focus
And, most of all, DO NOT FUCK IT UP.
With this motivational speech, I’m bound to get pass the magic number. But you might ask, What are you reading to get pass this monumental milestone?
Well, let me show you.
I’m about 100 pages into the first story, chronologically speaking, of the now known as Star Wars Legends, in Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void, we follow the steps of the ancient padawans in their quest to become adepts of the Force.
To help along and motivate this final week, I went out and got some pretty interesting graphic novels.
This just fits perfectly with the 14 hours, of the 62 left for the month of May. I’ll push the envelope to get pass this year quota before the weekend.
So, this is it, at least for the present year of reading, the final 15 days to get, what I started a day after my 40th birthday, done.
Knowing quite well how my mind start acting when this type of deadlines come knocking at my door, I get what can be describe as the restless jitters of do everything else but read. So I have device some tasks to help me get rid of my nervous energy, and get some reading in between.
First and foremost, there’s the tiny task of reaching the first 500,000 pages.
Seeing the bigger picture, I have 302 days left until my desired end date of the first half of this project, that’s March 20, 2023. In those terms, there’s a minimal of 262 daily pages from today up until March of next year, taking in account that my global average is 83 pages per day, there´s some stepping up to do. The thing that gives me some hope is that for the last three years, (Y-12), (Y-13), and (Y-14), my daily average has gone up exponentially, from 107 in (Y-13) to 179 in (Y-14).
The task is to finish my reading for the month of May, the goal were 62 hours , there’s still 29 hours left, and 9 days to get it done, this is a great complement to get my ass reading, and progressing in a much faster pace.
The third and final task, is a possible extension of my Star Wars Marathon. This, with the crazy idea to get thru every single novel in the Legends subset of the now non-canon stories that made me get into the Universe even more deeply.
I have read quite a bit of novels from the New Republic era, set 5 to 25 years after the Battle of Yavin, or the end of Episode IV: A New Hope. Now my focus is to fill in the blanks of the story, but get this, in chronological manner, if this isn’t the most OG shit you read today, don’t no what I’m doing wrong.
To start off, I´ll go back 25,793 years before the heroics of Luke Skywalker, to the world of the Pre-Republic Dawn of the Jedi: Into Void written by Tim Lebbon, and following, a bit more modern story, only 5,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, with collection of short stories by John Jackson Miller Lost Tribe of the Sith, in which he explores the misadventures of the Sith mining ship Omen.
Now that I have things mapped out, let´s go do them.
Right about now it’s a good time to take a deep breath, and remind myself to not let up the pace, the goal is within reach.
With only 24 days left on my reading, there’s some 4,312 pesky page between me and the very ambitious goal of 64,492 pages.
Consequently this is the first, hopefully not the last, year that my total has surpassed not only the 50,000-page mark, but also the next level, with a total of 60,630 pages, and more on the way.
To keep things rolling, I’m still deeply immersed in my Star Wars readathon, slated to finish on May 25. I suspect that there’s going to be a continuation of this marathon to start off year number 15.
I’ll look into acquiring the next volumes of the now non-canon series Legacy of the Force, from which, I’m reading the first entry, Betrayal.
The first pages registered in a few days, this was starting to see as an exercise in futility.
As I posted yesterday, my afternoon , the little free time squeeze in between my father duties and class, was spent in a galaxy far, far away, about 36,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, following the adventures in exile in the prison planet Bogan of Xesh the Force Hunter, the once known Expanded Universe is full really good material, it seems like a wasted opportunity.
For today I have already the really short story from the Wizards anthology, Billy and the Wizard by Terry Bisson, it would be a good idea to close out the day with the next story, The Magikkers by Terry Dowling.
For the rest of the day my focus will be trying to finish Lejanos guerreros, currently on page of 47 of 116.
Yesterday was the last day of my three week long Star Wars readathon, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
I had the intention to write earlier the outcome of the readathon, but yesterday I was fortunate enough to finally receive my one dose Covid-19 vaccine, and with it came some mild side effects, mainly sleepiness, so today I had a bit of a slow start.
Now, my final page count sits at 4,285 not quite the 5,000 pages of my original goal, but to average over 1,400 pages each week it is an amazing achievement.
But my favorite part was that I could read one book for each week of the challenge, the first two weeks were devoted to stories from The Old Republic, and the third week to a story during The Clone Wars.
Alongside these three amazing books, I also took a trip all along the timeline, this thru 12 graphic novels and 15 comic books.
This was a great booster to close out this reading year on a high note, and these 11 days left are going to be completely epic.
To continue with my Star Wars readathon, a very productive day with 192 total pages for the day so far, I’ll delve into a story-arc of the origin of the mythical Jedi Order.
Although this story, written by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, is no longer part of the current canon, it has always eluded me, and now that I found a Spanish reprint, the opportunity to read it coincided perfectly with this joyous marathon.
Now to face the snowy mountains of Ando Prime, and the calling of the Force in its raw form.
To be completely honest, I wasn’t expecting such an amazing result in both the quality and the quantity of my reading for this readathon.
I love Star Wars, but the last three movie were a bit off from the essence of what made me keep going back to this universe, these being said, the printed part is just simply amazing.
Either the Canon part or the now dubbed Legends series, each and every story is at the least fun.
My biggest surprise so far has been the book Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, I was expecting an action pack Clone Wars story, but much to my delight, there are some really moving parts involving the 900 year old Jedi Master.
One of the series that was on my radar was the second series of Darth Vader, here in Mexico it was printed alongside other miniseries like Captain Phasma and Mace Windu, written by Charles Soule, it delves into his rise to the Dark Side, the first particular story-arc follows his quest to obtain his mythical crimson bladed lightsaber.
Today, I’ll continue my journey thru the Dark Side, and hopefully, my day will be as productive as yesterday, I had a total of 534 pages and reached 3,538 of the 5,000 goal of total pages for this readathon.
To star off the morning, let’s go back to the Old Republic era and see the ancient Sith try to establish their iron fist rule over the galaxy, all of this with some coffee and cookies.
I am about to close-out the second week , and start off the last week of my extremely fun Star Wars readathon.
And they have been really productive, I have read so far 2 books, both in the Old Republic era, 8 graphic novels, these all over the timeline, and thanks to this, I have a total of 2,681 pages.
And to make this final week even more special, I received the shipping confirmation of the massive purchase I made on May the 4th, which include 20 single issues and 2 graphic, all Star Wars stories of course, apparently it will arrive on Friday, just in perfect time to close-out this all ready successful readathon with a bang.
In the meantime, I’ll try to finish the current book on deck, Yoda-Dark Rendezvous, and the two remaining Old Republic graphic novels, Blood of the Empire and The Lost Suns.
I’ll keep on pushing for those 5,000 total pages for these readathon, which has now became officially part of the recurrent events for my reading project.
I have started this Monday morning with a lot of energy, must be the five coffee cups racing around my bloodstream, the point is that I’ll take advantage of this jittery energy and get some reading done.
As I checked my goal for May, 6,300 pages, on Bookly I tough that it is doable.
Maybe is the caffeine talking, but 3,577 pages in 14 days seems like the type of challenge for me.
So, to start off this week’s reading, I’ll continue on a galaxy far, far away, with a story of Master Yoda and the raging Clone Wars.
I am about to close out the first week of anything and everything Star Wars.
And I must say that the results are quite satisfactory, 1 book and 3 graphic novels finished , 1,363 total pages, and a massive order of single issues Darth Vader comic books on the way, this can only get better.
In the meantime, I’ll continue working on a couple of things already on my digital library, on the Book front, I’ll continue in the Old Republic with Paul S. Kemp’s Deceived.
On the graphic novel front, I fast forward to the days before the beginning of the prequel trilogy with The Rise of the Sith, following the adventures of Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, with some appearances of members of the Jedi Council, and whispers of a phantom menace.
Now to get 5,000 pages in these readathon to finish this year on a high note.
Lost In A Million Pages 