The collection is finally complete

After a few years on searching, and of course saving for these beauties don’t come cheap, I finally tracked down the two remaining volumes of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, in its Absolute Edition, a leather bound book inside a slipcase with this legendary reprinted and enhanced.

The first four volumes and The Absolute Death have been on my book shelves for quite a while, I bought them between 2006 and 2009 when they were originally published.

For the last 8 months, I have been searching for volume 5, originally published on November 2011, and the last volume, Sandman: Overture, originally published on July 2018, and finally hit the jackpot with Volume 5, and a couple of months later with Overture.

Here are some pictures to exemplify why I love this edition so much.

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Volume 5 contains the story Dream Hunters, illustrated by the legendary Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, and the art for Overture is by one of my favourite illustrators, J.H. Williams III.

I am more than happy to have this beauties on my shelf, this means some reading sessions with a good glass of wine, and the Dream Lord guiding my footsteps

Off to read.

azr.

(Y-11) To the Dreaming for awhile.

For me the world of The Endless will always feel like home.

Doesn’t matter how many times I read it always offers something new.

Now, let’s start with Dream’s older sister.

azr

(Y-11) taking it slow.

I will be focused on my reading for the next two weeks.

The plan is to close the gap in my reading schedule, which is right now 20 days behind.

The goal, to cut this in half.

My total of pages for this year sits at 12,864 pages.

To start off, I’ll read a few issues of The Dreaming, series that ran from 1996 to 2001, spinning off the monumental series Sandman by Neil Gaiman.

The first issue follows baby gargoyle Goldie.

See you in two weeks.

Off to reading

azr.

(Y-11) The epic 100 and the 3,000 pages

Last year I set out to have some epic years of reading, that is to read all of those fantasy novels I was so eager to go through but haven’t got around to doing so.

So, I compiled a list of 100 novels that I was just burning to read.

As you would see in the list below, there are a few series that are true classics, and if you love fantasy you most definitely must read, but there is also some of the new breeds of fantasy writers that are taking this beloved genre by storm.

The red text represents books I have already read.

The blue text represents the book I am currently reading.

Book	Total Pages
The Hobbit	288
Lord of the Rings	1112
Legend of Huma	384
Dragons of a Fallen Sun	627
Dragons of a Lost Star	550
Dragons of a Vanished	610
The Legend of Drizzt Book IV: The Crystal Shard	344
The Legend of Drizzt Book V: Streams of Silver	377
The Legend of Drizzt Book VI: The Halfling’s Gem	378
The Legend of Drizzt Book VII: The Legacy	341
The Legend of Drizzt Book VIII: Starless Night	369
The Legend of Drizzt Book IX: Siege of Darkness	378
The Legend of Drizzt Book X: Passage to Dawn	375
The Legend of Drizzt Book XI:  The Silent Blade	408
The Legend of Drizzt Book XII: The Spine of the World	406
The Legend of Drizzt Book XIII: Sea of Swords	407
The Legend of Drizzt Book XIV: Servant of the Shard	348
The Legend of Drizzt Book XV: Promise of the Witch King	345
The Legend of Drizzt Book XVI: Road of the Patriarch	375
The Legend of Drizzt Book XVII:  The Thousand Orcs	367
The Legend of Drizzt Book XVIII:  The Lone Drow	370
The Legend of Drizzt Book XIX: The Two Swords	376
The Legend of Drizzt Book XX: The Orc King	398
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXI: The Pirate King	396
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXII: The Ghost King	375
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXIII: Gauntlgrym	389
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXIV: Neverwinter	363
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXV: Charon’s Claw	442
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXVI: The Last Threshold	434
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXVII: The Companions	441
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXVIII: Night of the Hunter	352
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXIX: Rise of the King	352
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXX: Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf	352
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXXI: Archmage	352
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXXII: Maestro	352
The Legend of Drizzt Book XXXIII: Hero	352
Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen I)	635
Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen II)	699
Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen III)	925
House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen IV)	1044
Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen V)	960
The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen VI)	1232
Reaper’s Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen VII)	1280
Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen VIII)	1280
Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen IX)	1276
The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen X)	1200
The Chronicles of the Black Company	704
The Books of the South	672
The Return of the Black Company	672
The Many Deaths of the Black Company	788
The Vorrh	500
The Erstwhile	462
Beren and Lúthien	289
Night of Knives: A Novel of the Malazan Empire	336
Dancer`s Lament	418
Deadhouse Landing	387
Dragons of Autumn Twilight	452
Dragons of Winter Night	404
Dragons of Spring Dawning	388
Time of the Twins	421
War of the Twins	412
Test of the Twins	348
Dragons of the Dwarven Depths	594
Dragons of the Highlord Skies	597
Dragons of Hourglass Mage	335
The Second Generation	440
Dragons of Summer Flame	612
Amber and Ashes	362
Amber and Iron	373
Amber and Blood	318
Return of the Crimson Guard	732
The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, Vol.1	319
Stonewielder	638
Orb Sceptre Throne	609
The Way of Kings	1005
Words of Radiance	1088
Oathbringer	1241
The Name of the Wind	662
The Wise’s Man Fear	1000
The Slow Regard of Silent Things	159
The Legend of Drizzt Anthology	370
Neverwhere (Illustrated by Chris Riddell)	435
Coraline (Illustrated by Chris Riddell)	192
The Graveyard Book (Illustrated by Chris Riddell)	289
Fortunately, The Milk… (Illustrated by Chris Riddell)	144
The Godborn: The Sundering Book II	352
The Adversary: The Sundering Book III	528
The Reaver: The Sundering Book IV	352
The Sentinel: The Sundering Book V	352
The Herald: The Sundering Book VI	352
The First King of Shannara	538
The Sword of Shannara	670
The Elfstones of Shannara	619
The Wishsong of Shannara	572
Prince of Thorns	373
King of Thorns	609
Emperor of Thorns	449
Forge of Darkness	687
Fall of Light	861
Blood and Bone	850

So far I have read 26 of 100 books, and my total of pages is 11,048 of the 53,459 pages all of these books sum up.

For the Christmas break I have big plans, first is to read a couple of books from The Malazan Book of the Fallen and to finish Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire series.

In other news, yesterday I reached another milestone of this year of reading, a total of 3,000 pages.

As I planned for yesterday, I read a couple of issues from the newly published Sandman Universe spin-off series, on this journey I was in good company, firstly by great magician Tim Hunter and secondly by the prince of Darkness himself, the morning star, Lucifer.

These are two great books, and you should check them out, but for my taste, I was more intrigued by the Lucifer series.

I am still a little behind schedule with my reading but giving the circumstances I have achieved more than expected.

For today, I plan to work on The Gardens of the Moon for a little bit, and also to read a graphic novel I purchased a while back, Un samurái ve el amanecer en Acapulco, by Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue and Spanish illustrator Sonia Pulido.

Well now, back to reading.

azr.

(Y-11)Breathing a little easier

Just finishing with my work for the semester at my Master’s Degree and I can breathe a little bit easier.

I’ll take a few days to unwind and read a little bit.

I have plans to reach 3,000 pages by tomorrow.

So now let’s see how my numbers are.

• Total pages for (Y-11) : 2,664 pages.
• Pages to go to achieve first milestone (10,000 pages): 7,336 pages.
• Pages to go to achieve the main goal of the year (53,000 pages): 50,336 pages.
• Pages to go to be the second-best year of reading (32,001 pages): 29,337 pages.
• Pages to go to be the best year of reading (47,705 pages): 45,041 pages.

I have some work to do, but in order to achieve this, I have some things line up.

Firstly, I will try to finish the first volume of the graphic adaption of my favorite novel, American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Secondly, the seventh issue of the fantastic series Batman: White Knight by writer/artist Sean Murphy.

And finally, the first issues of the expanded Sandman Universe series, this time is the turn of The Books of Magic and Lucifer, it is always exciting to dive into this massive universe that made me fall in love with comic books.

And in between all of this, I’ll try to make some headway with The Gardens of the Moon, got to keep the epicness blowing.

I know, lots of reading, but finally a little time to read.

Back to it.

azr.

(Y-10) 59 days… back to The Dreaming

In the little off time that I had this week, I read the return of The Sandman, creation of the multi-talented and my all time favourite Author Neil Gaiman.

He leaves his creation in really able hands, and I am hopeful that this is going to be a great new run of this mesmerizing world that I discovered almost 20 years ago.

Give yourself to explore this and all of the previous chapters of one of The greatest stories ever told.

Now, I’ll take advantage of being wide awake and do some more reading.

azr.