My New Year Challenge

As 2020 comes to end I find myself thinking about the books I've read over the last twelve months and the books I'd like to read next year. There are so many good books I would love to be able to experience. But I always end up telling myself - the best thing to do is simply choose the ones you know you will have a more than better chance of liking. Life's too short to plough diligently through something you hate (although I've broken that personal rule a few times to be completely honest).

Therefore, in 2021, I've set myself a New Year's Challenge. Over the course of the year I will be reading a series of books across four well-known genre 'universes'. But to ensure I have a pretty good chance of getting through them all, I have picked from series that I know I'm going to like - at least from personal experience in the past that is. As you clearly can see from this post's main picture I have selected from Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond and Musashi.

All of the books are currently available in eBook format. I haven't read any of them before but they have been on my radar for a while. I tried to keep the books within the 20th Century, but had to make a few exceptions. I don't want the challenge to disrupt my blogging completely so I am restricting the challenge to a total of 19 books. Seeing as I get through roughly 50 per year, I believe this will still allow me the time to dip in and out of the challenge and still keep Digital Bibliophilia a location for a varied review site of genre fiction.

1. STAR WARS

First up we have the Coruscant Nights trilogy from the Star Wars expanded universe. This book is now considered Legends by Disney, but in a rather neat quirk the eBooks still have have the original covers without the new ugly banner across them. This is the only series of the challenge that was published in its entirety after 1999. I made a conscious choice to allow this exception to my normal pattern because I've heard that the storyline is a noir take on Star Wars and almost detective fiction in plotting, using the planet of Coruscant as a stand-in for 1950's Los Angeles or New York.

Star Wars: Coruscant Nights I - Jedi Twilight (2008)

Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II - Street of Shadows (2008)

Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III - Patterns of Force (2009)

2. MUSASHI

Okay, I admit this might be a bit of a cheat seeing as it could technically be described as a single volume, but a) I've wanted to read this for so long, and b) my wife bought me the individual set of paperbacks from before we were married and I've kept them all this time. So it's time to unearth them from the bottom of the bookshelf and finally get to read the story of Miyamoto Musashi in ancient Japan. The copies I have are all from the 1990's, but they were originally published in serialized form by Eiji Yoshikawa in Japan between 1935 and 1939. 

Musashi I: The Way of the Warrior (1935)

Musashi II: The Art of War (1936)

Musashi III: The Way of the Sword (1937)

Musashi IV: The Bushido Code (1938)

Musashi V: The Way of Life and Death (1939)

3. STAR TREK

This is a bit more demanding as its twice the length of Coruscant Nights. Star Trek New Earth consists of six novels originally published in very short order from late 1999 to the summer of the following year. Again I relaxed my personal limitation on only reading genre fiction from before the 21st Century in order to include them here. I couldn't find a sequence of books in the Star Trek universe from before 2000 that featured the original crew of Kirk, Spock, McCoy etc. all the way through.

Star Trek: New Earth I - Wagon Train to the Stars (1999)

Star Trek: New Earth II - Belle Terre (2000)

Star Trek: New Earth III - Rough Trails (2000

Star Trek: New Earth IV - The Flaming Arrow (2000)

Star Trek: New Earth V - Thin Air (2000)

Star Trek: New Earth VI - Challenger (2000)

    

4. JAMES BOND

What could be better in 2021 than to celebrate the 40th anniversary of John Gardner's relaunch of the James Bond fictional franchise. The final section is the first tranche of Gardner's efforts from the 1980's. I decided to read just the first five as I'm aware these were originally released in hardback using dust covers designed to mirror those made famous by Richard Chopping. I have no idea if these have any common thread or plot device to them, but am looking forward to finding out. The covers below are the reissued/eBook versions - but expect to see them change in 2021 for the anniversary.

Licence Renewed (1981)

For Special Services (1982)

Icebreaker (1983)

Role of Honour (1984)

Nobody Lives for Ever (1986)

And that's it. What a challenge to have. I'm really keyed up for it and hope my reviews prove entertaining or insightful to readers. Have a great Christmas period!