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Episode 8: Reading Challenges

Author:  Published Date: November 12, 2019 Comments: 1 Comment on Episode 8: Reading Challenges

As if reading wasn’t chaotic enough, this week we talk about reading challenges. What are they, which ones do we participate in, and what books are we planning to read for them?

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Reading Challenges Transcript:

Travis: Welcome to the Fantasy Inn podcast, where we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. Welcome to the Fantasy Inn.

Kop: Okay, welcome back to the Fantasy Inn podcast, where we still don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re trying anyway. I am Kopratic. And currently I’m reading The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts. It’s part of her Wars of Light and Shadow series, and I am very excited to read it. I am reading it for a reading challenge, for the /r/Fantasy Reddit Bingo. And that is our topic today, as well as in general reading challenges.

Travis: I’m Travis. And currently, I am reading The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan, book three in the Wheel of Time series. So it’s me finally picking this series back up after about a year of a break. I’m trying it in print form, this time, actually in e-book, and I’m enjoying it significantly more than in audiobook form. So we’ll see how that goes.

Tam: I’m Tam. I’m listening to Morning Star by–let me get the author right–Pierce Brown, I think. Book three in the Red Rising trilogy.

Jenia: Okay, I am Jenia. I am currently reading Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman. Actually, I’m also reading it for the book bingo challenge. It’s a book about a young woman who has been kind of abused by her family. Emotionally abused and physically abused, I’d say. She is living in a very patriarchal society. And basically she just wants to escape because at the moment, her life is really shit.

So I’m about 50% in and all I can say is that it’s really bleak. I think this is YA, Young Adult fantasy. But somehow, I guess I didn’t really think that Young Adult fantasy was just so depressing. So I’m really hoping that she finally escapes and that life turns up a little bit for her, she stops being an alcoholic and so on. I don’t know, it’s a very grim book. But I am reading it for the book bingo challenge because it has twins, and that’s one of the squares for the book bingo challenge. Yeah.

Kop: So speaking about this book being a challenge, let’s talk about reading challenges in general. So we were talking earlier and Jenia, you mentioned the 24 in 48 hour reading challenge. So can you talk a bit about what that is?

Jenia: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite reading challenges to do. So there is no set books list to read or some kind of reading challenges to read, the point is just to read 24 hours out of 48. So the challenge itself usually takes place twice a year, I think. Sometime in the summer and sometime in the winter, but I just do it whenever I have a weekend free basically.

So you have to just set a timer and you have to read… usually I read 12 hours on the Saturday and then 12 hours on a Sunday. And it’s a really nice way for me personally to knock out a few of the books that I am in the middle of and then abandoned. Because that’s what I do. I get to the middle and then switch to something else. [laughs] But finishing it over these 24 hours–or over these 48 hours–gives me like a real feeling of satisfaction. And also it means that you can’t be on your phone. You can’t be on Tumblr or Twitter or Reddit. So that’s one of my favorite reading challenges.

What about you guys? Do you follow any reading challenges? Or do you like reading challenges in general?

Tam: I don’t really do reading challenges, I just read whenever I can.

Jenia: Is it like the concept that you’re not into? Or is it just that you are mood reader?

Tam: I don’t know. I don’t know when they’re on, I don’t follow them enough.

Kop: For me, I like the idea. I like reading challenges whenever you get a really big heads up about them. And not just like, “Tomorrow is the biggest reading challenge of your life.” But whenever I have time to prepare. And also like the ones that are a bit more general. For example, there’s one on YouTube or BookTube, created by the channel Thoughts on Tomes, Sam, where the whole point is two weeks, and you focus on books that are 500 pages or more.

And so it’s specific enough to where it has a criteria. But it’s generally enough where I can just pick up any 500 page, huge book that I have just laying around that I have been intimidated to get to. At the same time, sometimes it’s just like I’m not in the mood for it. So, sometimes I like the idea of a reading challenge. But other times, it can just go down the drain, if I’m not feeling like reading during that week or during that weekend.

Travis: See, that’s kind of how I am on reading challenges as well. I struggle for the really intense ones with a really short time frame. I do much better with ones that are over the course of a month or over the course of the entire year. So pretty much the only challenge that I actually follow is /r/Fantasy’s book bingo challenge. Because that gives me 25 different categories that I can fit anything I want into those and I have an entire year to get around to those books. So that tends to work better for me.

Jenia: Yeah, I really like the longer ones as well. So the only short one I do is the 24 in 48. That’s the only one that I can be bothered with. The ones for a month and so on, that’s just too much for me to keep track of. I think that it’s kind of nice to have a reading challenge like the /r/Fantasy book bingo.

Especially if you’re starting out on a new genre, because then you are kind of limited in your options. But it’s also quite free because it’s 25 or 40 or however many squares there are. So actually when I first got back into reading, I got back into reading with the /r/Fantasy book bingo two years ago. Because I thought that that was quite a nice way to find new books.

And then the year after, I decided to start reading more literary fiction as well, and I tried to make a book bingo for that, but then I didn’t [laughs] I failed at it. But still, it was kind of a nice way to narrow things down a little bit.

Kop: So I know in a lot of reading challenges–and I’m including readathons in this, as well–there’s different prompts, I guess, mini reading challenges in them. For example: read a book with red on the cover, or read a book about dragons, like other fantasy bingo has them. And in a lot of them, you can combine reading challenges. For example, if you find one book that fits four reading challenges, then that’s considered completing four reading challenges. However, for the /r/Fantasy book bingo challenge, you cannot combine any squares. So what are your thoughts on that?

Jenia: I don’t like it when you can combine squares, personally. There’s too much choice. Like, should I combine challenge one and two? Should I combine challenge two and three? And then I get stuck. You know, the Paradox of Choice, where it’s like it’s too much, but it’s also too little. [laughs] Yeah. So I prefer it when it’s just read one book this, read one book that.

Travis: I think part of it also depends on what the goal of the reading challenge is in the first place, right? So at least when I think of a challenge, the whole point is kind of to get you to read outside your comfort zone or read something that you might not have read in the first place. So depending on the goal of the challenge if you’re just trying to complete it and it’s kind of like a fun competition, I’m fine with combining all kinds of different categories into one, checking them off the list. But if the goal is to actually dig into each of those categories and experience them, then I think it’s probably better to keep them separate.

Tam: I don’t really have anything to add after what’s already been said, so…

Travis: Well, I guess even more broadly, something we were discussing before was, rather than just official reading challenges, what about self-imposed reading challenges where we try to read more of X type of book or only read books by authors from this country or something like that? What do you guys think about those?

Jenia: I guess, I don’t really put that in the same category. Like I try to read more authors of color or I try to read more queer authors, but that isn’t a challenge, for me. I mean, it’s challenging sometimes to find the books it’s on but I don’t put them in the same category, I think, in my head.

Kop: That’s understandable. I’d say, I’m the same way. But I have done self imposed reading challenges before. For example, usually, they’re just like, I’m going to read seven books this month, or every day this month I’m going to read for an hour. So it’s just really small reading challenges that I’ll do. And with the book bingo this year, there’s a lot of talk about how it’s a more challenging card. And some people in the subreddit are not happy with it. So what are y’alls thoughts about this year’s card? And we can talk more specifics for the squares.

Travis: Well, I guess, to begin with, should we give people more information on what this bingo challenge is?

Kop: Yeah, okay. So the /r/Fantasy book bingo is a competition with yourself through the subreddit www.reddit.com/r/fantasy. And it is a reading challenge to encourage people to diversify and expand their reading through fantasy and sci fi and speculative fiction in general. It is 25 squares, runs from April 1 through March 31 of the following year, and there are a variety of squares.

For example, sub genres, things that you find inside the book, as well as when the book was published. Or maybe one year there’s a square epic fantasy written by a woman author. And this year there’s squares such as second chance, so giving a book or a format or an author a second chance. And a personal recommendation from /r/Fantasy.

However, I think they would be fine with just a personal recommendation in real life as well. So 25 books can be a lot. However, we have one year to do it. And it’s been going on for about three or four years now, I think. And it’s a staple and a very popular event, I would say, in the subreddit.

Travis: And I guess, one thing to note too, is you don’t actually have to read all 25 books. It’s kind of portrayed as a bingo card, that’s a grid of five by five categories. And if you read any five in a row, like with bingo, you’re eligible to win prizes or say you’ve done Bingo.

Jenia: But you don’t get the flair. So you get a little tag if you complete all 25 and that’s the only thing that everybody cares about.

Travis: That’s true [laughs]

Kop: So let’s talk about our experience with bingo. Have you done it, have you gotten a blackout before, etc. So Tam, have you done bingo before?

Tam: I didn’t do it last year but I did the year before. I’ve no idea what’s on the card now, but the main issue I had with it was it meant that I had 25 books that I hadn’t read the sequel for. Which I’m now trying to catch up on and finish all those series that I started for it.

Jenia: Yeah. [laughs] For every square, you have to read a different author. So that’s why Tam couldn’t continue.

Kop: So Jenia, have you done bingo? Are you a reading champion?

Jenia: Uh, yeah! Like I said, I did bingo twice already. And the first year I did it and completed all 25. Whereas the first time I did it, I actually did a second bingo card from the year before, just for fun. But I didn’t get an extra flair for that. So some people go really nuts. They do like four cards or something or they do cards only with self published books and so on. But I usually just do one card. And that’s my plan for this year as well, to just do one.

And like I said, I find it really nice to get out of my comfort zone and to start reading something that maybe I wouldn’t look at usually. But I do agree that this card is harder than the ones before because there happened to be three squares which are sci fi. So there is a cyberpunk square, afrofuturism, and a novel featuring an AI character. And because I do not like sci fi, I do agree that this particular card is a little challenging. What about you, Travis?

Travis: I’m trying to think. So this is year five of the bingo challenge. And I think I first participated in 2016. So I missed the first year. But probably my best experience was my second time around doing it, I decided to do two cards. And one of them I gave myself the challenge of all books written by women. And it was actually not as difficult as I thought it would be.

There’s tons of books out there that I kind of just hadn’t heard of before. I found that I was mostly reading like 80 to 90% books written by men. And so I just wanted to kind of expand what I was reading. And I found a ton of great series that way.

One series I really loved was The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan. First book is A Natural History of Dragons. And it was just really different from what I’d read before. I hadn’t read any Victorian era fantasy or fantasy that was more scientific focused than, like hack and slash and farm boy saves the world kind of thing. So that was a really good experience. I’ve also been able to rope some people I know in real life into doing the bingo challenge with me. So that’s been a lot of fun.

Jenia: Oh cool!

Travis: Actually, the year I did the female authored card, I also did bingo with my wife. So we really enjoyed trying to plan out all 25 books we were going to read and see which books we were reading together at the same time. So that was a lot of fun.

Jenia: That’s really cute [laughs]

Kop: I think I started in 2016, but not really, it was more I had seen the square. I think I found out about it in March of 2016 when they posted the thread to turn in your cards. And I realized I had already almost gotten a blackout. And so I read about three books in the last week to get a blackout.

Jenia: Nice.

Kop: So I think nice my actual trying was in 2017, where I completed, I think three cards. But just because I happened to have read a lot that year. And then in 2018, I just did one card. And I’m only planning on doing one card this year as well. For me, I admittedly do take the style of read whatever and fit into a square later.

However, I do think there’s something to be said about having to plan out the books. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that this card, you have to do more planning and you can’t just read whatever. Kind of the point is to diversify. And you can do that in different ways. If all these squares are things you’ve already read or you read normally, you can put another challenge on there. For example, all women authors, all POC authors, all self-published authors, etc.

So, what tack do y’all take? Do you plan out your reading? Or do you just read whatever throughout the year and hope it fits later?

Travis: So I take the really dedicated approach of painstakingly planning out everything and then completely ignoring that plan.

[everyone laughs]

Jenia: High five!

Kop: You’re a true book blogger.

Travis: But I mean, it ends up being a little bit of both, right? I have a lot of fun planning everything out. And I try to say, “Oh, this is a book I’ve been meaning to read for five years now and I’ve never gotten around to it. How can I work it in?” Or “This is a book that I know my co bloggers have been talking about, and they won’t shut off about it. So how can I work that in?” And so I’ll typically hit some of those on my list. But a lot I end up just reading on my own.

Kop: What about you, Tam?

Tam: I sort of half plan and then throw it out the window. My plans are very vague. If I know there are authors going to a convention that I’m going to be at, then I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll try and read this author before I go.” And then half the time, I won’t succeed, but I try. [laughs]

Sometimes I just forget, sometimes I get distracted by other things. But generally, that’s about as much planning as I put into it. That, or new releases coming out. I’ll try and read that when it comes out so we can review it. Although most of the time it doesn’t matter, because we’ve already reviewed it once. It’s kind of just however I feel at the time.

Jenia: Yeah, I also love doing the whole planning thing. And you sit there and you think about it, and then you don’t read half the books that you planned out, but I do love the actual planning. And I’ve also since last year decided that I should start with the harder squares for me. So I also plan out approximately when I’ll read these books. Because if I really dislike that square, then often I leave it until the last week of March. And then that’s also not great. [laughs]

That happened to me last year with one of the squares. And so I have already read one of the squares which I knew I would have difficulty with, the AI character. I read Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. I did not really like the book, but it was definitely an interesting read. And I’m glad that I actually got around to it. Yeah, so I think it’s really fun to plan these things, even if you don’t end up doing them in the end.

Kop: Agreed.

Travis: And if you’re like me, you like planning non-traditional cards as well. Like not just a different category or some kind of different filter you’re limiting yourself with, but… not books. [laughs] So, this year, I’m actually going to try… Well, I want to do the regular card with 25 books. But I also want to try to complete a full card with audio dramas. I’ve already kind of planned out everything and listened to like two or three. So I’m having a great time with that. And it’s also kind of my next step in my mission to actually get other people I know to listen to audio dramas.

Jenia: [laughs] And speaking of non-traditional cards, I decided to plan out a retelling themed bingo card, because one of the squares is retelling. And I really, really love retellings. And actually, everything is going pretty well. The only book that I cannot seem to think of how to put in is the final book of a series. Because retellings are usually one book long. And I guess a standalone is both the first and the last book, but that wouldn’t count. So I don’t know if you guys have any suggestions for a retelling themed series, then I would be interested in hearing that.

Kop: You can pretend that the The Song of Achilles and Circe are a series.

Jenia: See, I already have Circe in for the square Any /r/Fantasy Book Club Book of the Month.

Travis: You can read another book club book [laughs]

Kop: Yeah.

Jenia: Well, are there any other retellings for a book club?

Kop: You can pretend that Twilight is a retelling of Dracula?

Jenia: [laughs] Yeah. Okay. Dracula is a retelling of the original Romanian myth.

Travis: So does Uprooted count as a retelling or is that just kind of its own thing?

Jenia: No.

Travis: Okay.

Jenia: Yeah. But Spinning Silver does. Spinning Silver is a retelling of Goldilocks, both by Naomi Novik.

Travis: Yeah, gotcha. In my head. I assume anything that’s a retelling is a fairy tale. So I kind of get the two mixed up.

Jenia: Yeah. I mean, there’s some interesting retellings of… what’s it called? Sherlock Holmes. That’s really popular. [laughs] Yeah. And also Shakespeare stuff.

Kop: Oh wait!

Jenia: Hmm?

Kop: For final book in a series, there’s the Cinder series which is by Marissa Meyer.

Jenia: True. I’d have to read the whole Cinder series though. [laughs] I guess I could just read the last one, take a page out of Kop’s book.

Kop: I mean that’s what I’m doing for mine. So before we talk about that, I think for the last thing, let’s talk about our most challenging squares and also any squares that we have a recommendation for. So let’s say most challenging square and a square that we have a book ready. So Jenia, you mentioned the AI square, you read autonomous by… who?

Jenia: Annalee Newitz. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to pronounce her their name. Nowitz? Newitz? Yeah so all three squares: afrouturism, cyberpunk, and AI are challenging for me. Probably the most challenging. But I do have plans [laughs] for them all.

So for afrofuturism, I think Rosewater by Tade Thompson is one of the books that has been going around and is supposed to be very good. Hiu really likes it. And for cyberpunk, I’ve also heard good things about Cory Doctorow, who releases some of his books for free. Without DRM and so on, legally. So if anybody’s not sure what to do for the cyberpunk square, or they want to try cyberpunk in general, even without this challenge you might want to look into his stuff.

And for my recommendations. Oh, I have so many retellings recommendations. [laughs] Yeah, maybe we should do a retellings podcast episode one day. [laughs] Okay. Just sticking to on. Everyone should read Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner. It’s an amazing book. It’s very lyrical, and it’s about a Scottish harpist who gets taken away to Fairyland, and it’s based on a Scottish ballad. Everyone should read it. What about you, Travis?

Travis: Okay, so [laughs] probably my most challenging square is the retelling square.

Jenia: [laughs] Well…

Travis: Mostly because for me, a lot of times, like I said, I associate retellings with fairy tales. And for me, part of the whole fairy tale idea is it’s very atmospheric, and the atmosphere is achieved in part by distancing yourself from the characters. And you kind of have like an external point of view to the actual character, you don’t get inside their head a lot. And that makes it difficult for me to connect with the book. But I will say the one I have marked down on my list that I meticulously planned out and will probably ignore, is The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley.

Jenia: Oh my god, it’s so good.

Travis: You’re actually the reason why I have it on my list. So I’m excited about that. I’ve heard it’s like a suburban retelling of Beowulf, which sounds amazing already.

Jenia: It is! [laughs]

Travis: So hopefully that clicks with me. I’m looking forward to that. And then in terms of squares, I guess I kind of already did have that one planned, but other ones I have planned out… So this is also another challenging one for me: second chance. So a book series that you gave up on and you’re returning to or a book you did not finish and you’re trying to pick up again. So right now I have that planned for The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts.

Kop: Hey…

Travis: So the reason why I have it planned is because I actually was really enjoying the book when I was reading it back in January. But I made it about halfway through and it took me a month and a half, two months to get halfway through. Part of that was I started reading it over the holidays last year and you know, life got in the way. So I want to return to that, because I think there’s a lot of promise in this series.

And I love Janny Wurts as a writer. She just does some amazing things with her books. And since this is probably my only opportunity to talk about it, I actually have my entire audio drama list planned out for the bingo card.

Jenia: [laughs]

Travis: So far, I’ve only listened to two. So I’ve covered the #OwnVoices category. I listened to an audio drama called Gay Future. And I think some of you might have heard me talking about this before. But really, it’s incredibly difficult to describe. I’m just going to pull up the two sentence summary and read it because it’s ridiculous. All right: The year is 2062 and everyone is gay. A totalitarian government rules over what’s left of North America to spread its insidious gay agenda.

Jenia: [laughs]

Travis: Humanity’s only hope for rebellion rests on the shoulders of our precocious teenage boy who harbors a dark secret: He’s straight. A new podcast adaptation of a recently discovered, never-released Young Adult novel by Mike Pence.

Jenia: [laughs]

Travis: So it sounds really out there and it is, but it’s phenomenal. The story is just incredibly tight, really well written, really creative. And the sound design is amazing. All of the music is originally written for the show. It’s very immersive, and it’s hilarious [laughs] So it’s actually written by people who also identify as gay, at least two out of the three creators, I think. So they’re definitely approaching this from a place of love. They’re not like hating on gays or the gay community or anything like that. And it’s poking fun at certain political figures as well.

Jenia: So does Mike Pence appear as a character there? Or is it all within the fake book?

Travis: It’s all within the fake book. However…. So one complaint you sometimes see with fantasy and science fiction books is that it’s written to be a little bit wish fulfillment and a self insert of the author. So in this case that’s kind of poked fun at a lot.

Jenia: Mhmm.

Travis: The main character’s name is very creatively, Mikey Pence.

[Kop and Jenia laugh]

Travis: And you can tell just the subtext of how the scenes are written that [Pence] really has no idea what it means to be gay at all. And [he] has a lot of misconceptions about it. And so through the story, it’s kind of explained as he’s straight and he’s trying to pretend like he’s gay to fit into the society, but it’s really great. I highly recommend it to pretty much everyone.

Kop: What about you, Tam?

Tam: I’m just looking at the bingo card now because I had not done so previously.

Jenia: Are you planning to do it?

Tam: No.

Jenia: Okay.

Tam: So very good choice for this podcast episode.

Jenia: [laughs]

Tam: I’m looking at it now. And I’ll probably just go with some recommendations. For a novel featuring a character with a disability, one of my personal favorite books, City of Lies, one of the main characters has chronic illnesses, including asthma and autoimmune disorders. And I highly, highly recommend City of Lies. It’s a fantastic book.

And yeah, the other one, I’ll give a recommendation for is LitRPG, because I know a lot of people haven’t read much for that gene or even know much about the genre. So for those who don’t know about it, it’s kind of game-style writing, like a D&D story or an online game, that sort of thing. And some really good books. In the LitRPG genre are the Threadbare series by Andrew Seiple (if I’m spelling his name right) told from the perspective of a teddy bear. Which, as you can imagine, is quite a different read to what you’d normally find. A lot of fun, that book. Yeah, mostly just a lot of fun.

And the other one is Dungeon Born by Dakota Krout, which is told from the perspective of a dungeon you see inside a video game. And the dungeon is trying to do what a dungeon does best, and that is murder absolutely everything that comes inside. And it’s a very interesting perspective as this dungeon sets up new monsters and traps and tries to bring new people in to kill and eat so it can grow bigger and become a nastier dungeon. And it’s one of the most comedic ways I’ve seen a lot of people get murdered.

Jenia: [laughs]

Travis: And just a second, so who wrote the City of Lies book you mentioned?

Tam: Uh, Sam Hawke.

Travis: Okay.

Jenia: For LitRPG, have you read Rachel Aaron’s book?

Tam: Yes. Forever Fantasy Online?

Jenia: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Tam: It’s about a game where… One of those ones you put the headset on and you’re immersed in virtual reality fully. And someone bought the characters properly into the game and they’re stuck in this fantasy world trying not to die because who knows what happens? Then they could be dead for real.

And the NPCs are very–non player characters, for those who don’t know–are very interesting because they are acting like actual people that have been stuck in a game, repeating the same quest sequences over and over again. Like there’s an NPC that talks about–I think it’s his sister?–who dies again and again, every day for these quests for the players. And there’s this interesting clash between players and NPCs because the NPCs are sick of being forced to do the same thing every day.

Jenia: Yeah, that’s the one I was planning to read for the square. So I’m happy that you seem to like it.

Tam: It was really good.

Kop: So, for most challenging squares, I would agree with Travis that the second chance square is a bit challenging. I’m the one who suggested that square, so…

Jenia: [laughs]

Travis: So we have you to blame for that.

Kop: It’s my fault that we have that square. But obviously, it’s my suggestion, I do like the intent of the square. And I like how they’ve made it open to where if you’ve tried audio dramas in general, and you didn’t like that one, then you can try a completely different audio drama. Or if you listened to an audio book and you weren’t a fan of it, then you can try another audio book. Or even by the same narrator. There’s different ways to interpret it. But I don’t know how I want to go about that square. So that’s pretty challenging to me.

Another one, I’m looking at the card right now, is probably slice of life fantasy. And this is just because I haven’t planned out the cord yet. So these are just squares where I can’t immediately think of a book, which is why they’re pretty challenging. For recommendations on squares that we haven’t talked about yet, an SFF novel that has a title of four or more words, get ready for this. My recommendation is going to be pretty much any book in the Fairyland series by Catherynne M Valente.

The first book is called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Which, if I’m counting correctly, has a lot more than four words in it. It’s a conglomeration of different classic fairy tale tropes. For example, the portal fantasy trope, there’s things from Peter Pan and Wizard of Oz, finding yourself in a new world.

What kind of sets of this one apart is that the author, Cat Valente, has said she purposely made it to where the main character, September, meets this Green Wind, and she voluntarily goes with him to the strange world called Fairyland. And essentially the series is about her having adventures there and the problems that arise there, showing that she said yes. So it was her decision to go. She was not swept away by a tornado. She wasn’t dragged there, she didn’t mysteriously find herself there, like in Narnia.

And I’m not saying these books or these stories are bad, but with this series, the Fairyland series, the main character September says yes. So it really stands out. And it’s a middle grade novel as well. So these books would fit the middle grade SFF novel square, as well. And it’s not as intense of a style as her other books. But it still has those small quirks that Valente’s writing style has.

Another square that I can recommend would be an SFF novel featuring twins. And for this one, I would say Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, which I recently, maybe about a few weeks ago, finished. And holy crap, it’s so good, it’s like a top novel of the year for me. It’s about these twins who discovered that they live on opposite sides of the country. They were both adopted. And they one day discovered that they can telepathically communicate. And they were created, but they don’t know that. And their creator is trying to groom them to become these people who can find the impossible city where he can essentially be a god. And so the whole book is them discovering that and finding their own voices, I guesss.

So one last thing, sorry, that I want to say. I just looked at the square: An SFF novel by local author to you. So that’s another challenging one for me, because I don’t know any Mongolian fantasy authors. The only fantasy author from Louisiana that I know of is Anne Rice. And I’m not particularly interested, to be honest. So yeah, that’s it. Any last thoughts or comments?

Jenia: I just wanted to give a shout out to a reading challenge that starts next month. It’s not SFF-related. It’s the May Asian reading challenge, I think it’s called. And the idea there is that you have five reading challenges and you can combine them in any way, but if you read more than one book to do all five reading challenges, which you probably will, then the author has to be of a different ethnicity.

So you cannot read two books by Japanese authors, you have to read a book by a Japanese author and a Chinese author, for example, or Chinese American. And I thought this was a really fun challenge. I guess we’ll give a link to it in the description. And I think it’s the first year that they’re doing it. So if anybody’s interested in expanding their reading in terms of Asian authors, then I highly recommend it.

Kop: Is that one by the BookTuber, Read with Cindy?

Jenia: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And she seems to be a lot of fun on BookTube. And this seems like a fun challenge. I don’t know if this podcast will go out before May. So I guess if it… Or in May, even. Because if it doesn’t, then I guess maybe you can join it next year!

Kop: [laughs] Or do it on your own.

Jenia: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Kop: Travis?

Travis: In general, I’m not that familiar with reading challenges. I do like the idea of them to kind of focus on a specific type of book or read something you haven’t read before or wouldn’t pick up on your own. And so I’m definitely open, I’ll probably look into more reading challenges in the future. Maybe I’ll try to join the May reading challenge that you mentioned, Jen. But for people listening in, this probably will not be coming out in May. So for next year, 2020, you can also try this challenge.

Jenia: [laughs]

Kop: And Tam, any last words?

Tam: I like the idea of them, but I much prefer to just do my own thing and read whatever I want whenever I feel like it. So they don’t really work for me, but they are a nice idea.

Kop: So we will leave off with a question to all of our hopeful listeners. What are your thoughts on reading challenges and have you participated in them before? How do you go about them, and do you plan on participating in the Reddit book fantasy Bingo? And we will leave links to all of the books mentioned before in this podcast episode. We will also leave links to the reading challenges that we mentioned before, including the bingo card. So if you want to see the different squares, then you can do that. So until next time… goodbye.

Author: The Fantasy Inn

Welcome to the Fantasy Inn, we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. We hope to share stories we love, promote an inclusive community, and lift up voices that might not otherwise be heard.

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