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Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I mostly agree that, as a plan to read in 6 months, the list Lex provides is reasonable, if a bit snobby.

It's the "do each one in a 7 day period" that is silly (I say, having read 13 books in December and ~45 last year)

I dunno, when doing roadmap planning at work we often simplify to make the planning easier, micro adjustments don't add that much value. A book a week is a simple plan to steer towards.

"A book a week" is more or less my annual goal (that I meet sometimes and don't meet sometimes). The issue isn't that. That's a good goal. The issue is regimenting it and saying "we start the new book on Sunday and finish by the following Saturday" (which is more or less what Lex says). That part is weird and ruins the whole thing, because you can no longer take advantage of averages and assume things will mostly work out. It seems that he's relaxed that in the blog post now, but that's what he started out saying (https://archive.is/MxKIt), and it was stupid.

Fair enough, you're right he did originally tweet "Start on Monday, done by Sunday". But to be fair, in the very same tweet he wrote "I'll keep adjusting the list".

Besides all that, any good reads queued up for Jan?

My queue for the month is

    1. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (which I'm about 15% of the way through)
    2. The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
    3. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (last year's Booker prize winner)
    4. The Trees by Percival Everett (a Booker prize shortlistee)

And then I'll try to finish up the Earthsea cycle (I have Tales and The Other Wind left). After that, I'm not sure, and who knows how far beyond January that will take.

Oh I freaking LOVED the farseer trilogy. It gets better and better until a big wow. I did a lot of the booker+booker internationals in previous years but found them too hit and miss (mostly miss) for my tastes and decidedly switched to classics. Curious how they end up for you, I havent read this. I'm a big fan of Le Guin though, have you read her masterpiece short story "The ones who walk away from Omelas'"?

Omelas is fantastic. If you enjoy it, I'd recommend NK Jemisin's broken earth if you've somehow avoided it.

And yeah Booker and Pulitzers are hit or miss, I choose carefully and don't try to do the entire shortlist.

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