(Y-10) This is the curtain call.

I am hours away from finish/starting another year of reading.

This was a fantastic year for my crazy little project.

I can enlist the many things this year of reading brought me, so lets now make a quick recap of things:

Total pages for (Y-10): 32,072 pages, which makes it my second best year of reading, begin only to the inaugural year which had a total of 47,705 pages.
Total of pages read in the last three years (Y-8, Y-9 & Y-10): 65,806 pages, my goal was to read 130,500 pages over those three years, this total gives me about 50% of that goal, not bad, not great either but there is room for improvement.
Total of things read this year: 220, which can be broken down as followed: 26 books, 126 single issue comic books, 63 graphic novels, 3 mangas, and 2 Novellas.
Longest Book: The Lord of Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien with a whopping 1,112 pages.
Shortest Book: The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss with 159 pages of pure delight.

But the most fulfilling things is watching this blog steadily grow.

I could have never imagined that my words would reach so many countries and different cultures, I am deeply honor and grateful to share this journey with all of you that take the time to read my ramblings.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now for the plans for (Y-11), to start off the idea of keep on reading fantasy books comes as a natural follow-up of last year theme, and besides, I have a lot of pending books on my to-read pile, and consequently, they are mostly fantasy novels, so let’s keep the theme rolling.

This year total goal is 53,000 pages and as for the last three years, the total combined for (Y-11), (Y-12) & (Y-13), must be at least 130,500 pages.

Why aim low when you can aim high.

The first book on my reading list is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the 200th anniversary illustrated edition, last year was the first year that I did not read some version of Mrs. Shelley’s book in over 6 years, it is nice to get back to one of my favorite traditions.

But to kick off the new year’s festivities, I will have the help of one of the best creative teams ever assembled, I am talking about Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., and the now legendary comic book Kick-Ass.

Fortunately, the first three volumes arrived today, after almost a month and a half of waiting for them, but the important part is that the misadventures of David Lizewski are in my bookshelf ready to be devoured.

So, at the stroke of midnight, I’ll start my new journey to another year filled with all the drama that books and real life can give.

Will you please join me on this journey to read my ass off.

Onward then, to the unknown.

azr.

13 October, 2018 2

(Y-10) 1 day…To the sound of rain.

Tomorrow is the last day of this year of reading.

It has been a blast and hopefully I will reach one last milestone to close out the year in style.

Right now, we are hole up in the house because what is left from hurricane Sergio is pouring some rain in our fair city, according to expert by tomorrow morning there is the probability of a couple of inches of total rain.

You might think that amount of rain is insignificant, but for our desert it’s a shit load.

I will take this time to finish reading my last graphic novels and making the final count of my pages.

By tomorrow night I’ll post my final numbers, toast this amazing year goodbye and get ready for what’s next.

Now back to reading.

azr.

12 October, 2018 0

(Y-10) 2 days…closer and closer.

I finish The Legend of Zelda: The Oracle of Ages early this morning, and with that, I have only 490 pages to reach 32,000 pages for this year

I’ll start with the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and hopefully be done with it by Saturday and achieve my coveted goal.

Also, some single issues of Project Superpowers to round up my numbers.

Because on Sunday the eleventh year starts and with it 53,000 pages to read.

I think to start this new year some Frankenstein will do the trick beautifully and the 200th year edition even better.

Now back to it.

azr.

11 October, 2018 0

(Y-10) 4 days…go with the flow.

I am past the half-way point of The Legend of Zelda: The Oracle of Seasons and the cruel reality of me not achieving my next goal is peaking its ugly head.

I was hoping to finish this year with 32,000 pages, as of now there are 893 pages standing on my way.

I’ll focus on finishing the current Zelda Manga I am reading and hopefully in the few remaining days I can squeeze in some single issues of Project Superpowers and the next volume of Link’s adventure, Majora’s Mask.

And thus reach my coveted total.

Back to reading.

azr.

9 October, 2018 0

(Y-10) 6 days…one challenge completed

At the beginning of the year, I challenge myself, thru the reading challenge feature in Goodreads, to read 100 books.

Well, let me tell you that, CHALLENGE COMPLETED.

I registered some books that were tallied in my personal files but not on my Goodreads profile, so with that, I have now officially read 101 books in 2018.

So, I have three more months to add to this already fantastic result, let us see how much more can I read.

And on that note, let’s see how my number are with less than a week to go in this the tenth year of reading.

Total pages for (Y-10) : 31,107 pages.
Pages to go to achieve the primary goal of this year (read more than the two last years combined): 2,627 pages.
And lastly, Pages to go to reach my ultimate milestone (best year ever of reading): 16,598 pages.

There is a very long shot to getting those 2,627 pages done, but as I said on the other posts, I aim to get as close to that number as humanly possible.

To start or finish the weekend, I’ll get into the second volume of The Legend of Zelda, The Oracle of Seasons.

The first volume was great fun, let’s see what kind of shenanigans young Link get into this time.

I’ll keep posting my progress thru this last few days, and hopefully, next Saturday, I’ll be toasting away this great year and welcoming the next one, that will probably proof really challenging, but I’ll get into that later.

Happy Readings!!!

azr.

7 October, 2018 0

(Y-10) 8 days…Lead the way, Mr. Gaiman

Just about to enter the final week of this spectacular tenth year of reading.

This week I broke a little my rule of no more books and read a couple of Novellas from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.

Spinning off his monumental work, American Gods, we get to spend a little more time with the enigmatic Shadow Moon, The Monarch of Glen and Black God are beautifully weird little snippets into the eternal quest of Shadow thru a land filled with ancient gods and creatures.

I am going to close out the day with the second volume of Spawn: Endgame, the glorious return of Todd McFarlane to his most famous creation.

Now then, lets us talk number

Total pages for (Y-10) : 30,941 pages.
Pages to go to achieve the primary goal of this year (read more than the two last years combined): 2,793 pages.
And lastly, Pages to go to reach my ultimate milestone (best year ever of reading): 16,764 pages.

Those 2,793 are burning a hole in my mind, but my focus is now in chipping away as much as possible.

I have a couple of graphic novels line up for this week, and hopefully, I can reduce that number close to 2,000 pages.

For now, I will go and find a suitable bottle of wine to toast the ending year and say welcome to the eleventh year of reading.

Cheers!!!

azr.

5 October, 2018 0

(Y-10) 13 days…one final breath before the plunge

This is the final call for year number ten.

I finished The Slow Regard of Silent Things, and it will mark the final book of this year of reading.

For the next 13 days, I’ll focus on comics and graphic novels and try to get as close as possible to my primary goal, which was, if you can remember, read more than the past two years combined.

But getting back to Mr. Rothfuss’ book, what a beautiful and haunting piece of work, I already loved Auri and with this novella that only grew exponentially.

This was a perfect book to finish the year.

To start off this intense period of reading, I’ll go back to reading one of the characters that got me into comic books, Spawn.

The anti-hero creation of Todd McFarlane is way past its 200 issues, but I’ll get into one of the recent storylines, Endgame, which start on issue 185.

So, let us talk now about numbers, the come as follow:

Total pages for (Y-10) : 30,551 pages.
Pages to reach 30,000: COMPLETED
Pages to go to achieve the primary goal of this year (read more than the two last years combined): 3,183 pages.
And lastly, Pages to go to reach my ultimate milestone (best year ever of reading): 17,154 pages.

I know that 3,000 pages are a lot, but I aim to get as close as possible.

Onward then, to read.

azr.

30 September, 2018 2

(Y-10) 15 days… the final leg

The final leg of my trips are upon me.

The most immediate one is our journey back home from Morelia.

This is where I have spent my last few days wandering around and watching my beautiful wife achieve another amazing goal.

This time was getting her PhD in architecture, I could not be prouder of her, she is simply amazing.

The other journey that is entering its final stage is my tenth year of reading.

On that note, I am happy to inform that The Wise Man’s Fear is finally on the read column.

Tomorrow I plan to update my list and post my total pages for this year.

There is no time to waste, I’ll dive right into the next book in my list, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, from the magnificent mind of Patrick Rothfuss, following one of his most enigmatic characters in The Kingkiller Chronicle, Auri.