2023 Reading Goals

I used to read voraciously. As I got busier with work and family, I often wanted something less demanding to veg to in my evening free time for a couple of hours. Thus began one of my worst habits; frittering away time on the internet watching silly YouTube videos or arguing nonsense with stupid people on forums, messageboards, and other hobby (or other) communication hubs. Hence my years-long dalliance with toxic, useless places like ENWorld—which, admittedly, used to be much less toxic years ago, back when EN actually ran ENworld instead of giving it or selling it or whatever he did to Morrus, the gamma-bitch in chief who runs the place now with his cadre of gamma pedant SJW moderators.

My daughter and her fiancé both had set goals, which may seem kind of frivolous, and it kind of is, but also kind of fun, in terms of how many books they would read in 2022. For some time now, I've been thinking that I want to read more again and fritter away less time on stupid things. I actually do still read a fair bit, but I have no idea how much I read, so I decided to set a goal for 2023 and track my progress. My bare minimum would be 12-books, one a month, but realistically I should be able to beat that by a fair amount. My "real" goal is 20 books; a little under one every two weeks, with a "stretch goal" of 30. And just in case, I created lines on my spreadsheet for 40 and 50, but I doubt I'll read that many.

I'll count both novels, novel-length collections, and full-sized RPG supplements, but not shorter materials. So, while I'm also still attempting to read the adventure paths, those aren't long enough to count as a "real" book. Shackled City, Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Kingmaker have all been released as omnibus books, and while those are quite long; probably twice as long as most of the other RPG supplements I'll likely read, I still think its' reasonable to count an adventure path as a single book, even if I actually read it as magazine articles from my old Dungeon Magazines. The Enemy Within "director's cut" campaign setting for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, on the other hand, consists of ten real, hardcover full-sized books, so it'll count as ten books if I read them all this year.

I'll make a quick note when I finish a book here on the blog that I've done so, although I doubt I'll offer real "reviews" because that's too time consuming, and most of the books are really old anyway. In fact, many of them are books that I've read before, but had a hankering to do so again because it had been way too long. 

Also, because it's mid-December, I'm counting one that I just finished, since I just made the goal. I know, I know, it's early and I'm giving myself a head-start. That's OK. This is my hobby goal for myself; I don't have to treat it like a campaign promise. The book that I've been reading for... oh, about a week or so now, was The Pirates Guide to Freeport, a 2006 RPG supplement that I bought at GenCon when it was brand spanking new, and which I've read a couple of times before since then. I'll refrain from talking about it too much here; this post is more about me journaling to myself about this goal, but I'll probably talk about it a bit more when I finish the next book on my docket, which is the d20 Five Fingers: Port of Deceit book for the Iron Kingdoms setting. I don't recall if this book came out before Warmachine or not (probably not) but it is a legacy of Privateer Press's early work when they were a third party D&D publisher, not a competitor with Games Workshop in the fantasy miniatures wargames space. If you don't already know or remember this, the Iron Kingdoms used to have a significantly different tone and feel when it was a D&D company as opposed to its own thing; much darker, gritter, grounded and borderline horror—right up my alley. The Five Fingers sourcebook is also a great companion to reading Freeport, since it is also a pirate-themed city sourcebook. That said, I've always noted significant differences between the approach the two books took, so I'll do a little bit of compare/contrast once I've finished it, hopefully before the year's over if I don't get too busy.