Well, 2024 is half gone. My reading this year has been unusual — lots of novels — but quite enjoyable, with a lot of five-star titles. Trying to create my top ten list for the year in December will be difficult!
Classics Club:
Dune, Frank Herbert. And that the “Classic SF” section of my list done! I’ve read two CC for the year, so I’m really doing rather abysmal.
Science Survey:
8 of 12 categories filled, 10 titles read so far.
SF Book Bingo:
The Popular Kid: A Book Nominated for the Hugo Award. Psalm for the Wild-Built, winner of Hugo award.
Better Together: A Book with Multiple Authors. Counting the Dune adaptations for this.
Nothing Human: A Book with an Alien Main Character. ST Pliable Truths begins with a Bajoran lead whose viewpoint is woven through the book.
Supermassive: a book over 500 pages. Dune, of course. Was going to use it for the Masterworks slot but I plan on reading le Guin this year and she has several.
Free Space: ST Burning Dreams. Or maybe I’ll use it for Four-Legged Friend….Pike talked about his horse a lot.
The Unreviewed:
I’m going to short-round Scarcity Brain and We Will Prescribe You a Cat.
…
Coming Up in July:
No firm plans, to be honest. I usually do a nod to the American Revolution, plus Space Camp, but I’m weary/wary of politics and am running out of astronaut books (I’ve read over fifty of them at this point). I’m tempted to do a Blast from the Past repeat: that was a fun way to bridge July & August last year.
Reading Freely 
It looks like you’re doing wonderfully with your Sci Fi Bingo board. What was your other classic fantasy novel out of interest? And wow I honestly didn’t know how many astronaut books there were 😂
You’re doing great on the science fiction board! I’ve only checked off six so far, but that isn’t surprising with an average of one SF read per month. I’ll look forward to seeing what you pick for the others.
The animal lead one poses the greatest challenge. I’m thinking A Princess of Mars for the old one, Becky Chambers “Angry Planet” book for the spaceship one, two le Guins for the buddy read and masterworks books, Jumpnauts for the translated item..
Your Sci-fi bingo board looks like so much fun and you’re making great progress! Over 50 Space Camp books? That’s impressive, what a fun topic to explore. As much as I love Star Trek, I’m actually mildly terrified of space but it’s still fascinating to learn about. Are there any introductory space exploration books that aren’t biographies that you would recommend? If you do another Blast from the Past I’d Love to see what you read as a kid, as a 90’s baby I’m a fan of that decade’s vibes. What a fun idea for themed rereads!
A Man on the Moon, Neil Chaikman. The absolute best Apollo history out there, bar none. It was one of the source materials for the exquisite docu-drama From the Earth to the Moon, with producer Tom Hanks. I’ve been obsessed with space for as long as I can remember — my eighth grade history class had a big photo of Armstrong on the moon, and I chose to sit at the closest table just to stare at it. I’m not even sure how I became fascinated by it — maybe a childhood trip to Huntsville gave me the bug. I remember seeing a big model of the Enterprise there. XD
If you check out my July ’23 archive, all the stuff at the top is from Blast from the Past. My favorite was the Matthew Martin series, which basically inspired the theme week because I wanted to re-read them and wound up buying copies on ebay. I’m pretty sure I’ll do it again this year, as a friend of mine gave me a box of her childhood stuff — so I’ll be mixing “90s stuff I missed” with more revisits. One thing I missed last year was doing the Bruce Coville SF series. I’ll schedule Blast in the same slot as last year — the very end of July. 🙂
A Man on the Moon, Neil Chaikman. The absolute best Apollo history out there, bar none. It was one of the source materials for the exquisite docu-drama From the Earth to the Moon, with producer Tom Hanks. I’ve been obsessed with space for as long as I can remember — my eighth grade history class had a big photo of Armstrong on the moon, and I chose to sit at the closest table just to stare at it. I’m not even sure how I became fascinated by it — maybe a childhood trip to Huntsville gave me the bug. I remember seeing a big model of the Enterprise there. XD
If you check out my July ’23 archive, all the stuff at the top is from Blast from the Past. My favorite was the Matthew Martin series, which basically inspired the theme week because I wanted to re-read them and wound up buying copies on ebay. I’m pretty sure I’ll do it again this year, as a friend of mine gave me a box of her childhood stuff — so I’ll be mixing “90s stuff I missed” with more revisits. One thing I missed last year was doing the Bruce Coville SF series. I’ll schedule Blast in the same slot as last year — the very end of July. 🙂
Okay adding A Man on the Moon to the list right away if its the best one that’s where I gotta start 🙂 And that is so cute lol, grabbing the best seat for daydreaming about space hehehe. That’s cool!! Oh you’ll appreciate this then: a few years ago I went to the space museum in Toulouse on a day the international space station was flying over the city and I got the see its little light dot which I thought was pretty cool!
I shall definitely check out your archive when I get back, and that’s an awesome gift a bunch of 90s books? What a haul! Okay excellent I look forward to your end of July Post!
Enjoy your honeymoon! I had no idea Toulouse had a space center.
Yeah, me neither until I went! The more you know!
I also finally read, and enjoyed Psalm for the Wild-Built.
Haven’t yet reviewed We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, but for once this Japanese novel didn’t work too well for me.
https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/06/29/2024-june-wrap-up/
My reaction was about the same for We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. I think I rated it 3 stars on goodreads. Fun premise, but increasingly surreal.