Numbers: April 11,2022

Welcome to a Magic Monday, the second one of April, but the first entry in the blog. Must protect those streaks.

My challenge of 52 books in 52 weeks challenge is still way ahead of schedule, starting week number 43 , I am working on book number 51 the first collection of novels of the famous Black Company, series penned by Glen Cook, I must say that this series doesn’t get thrown around as one of the best ever written, but just 150 pages into it, and there’s clear resonance to another newer series, where Mr. Cook’s writing clearly influence them, for example The Malazan Book of the Fallen .

I’m just about to start a new short story collection, Legends II, edited by Robert Silverberg, and containing story by top writers like Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffrey, Tad Williams, and Neil Gaiman.

With my impending end of the year just looming over the horizon, I need to enter into turbo mode, there’s some Hellboy novels on my queue and around 40 graphic novels to fill in the gaps. There’s a supernatural determination from my end not to come up short from this year’s goal.

The one short story a day challenge is finally, and apparently, successfully restarting, today I finished Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane collection, tomorrow, the first story of the new collection will be Robin Hobb’s Homecoming.

Now let’s talk about MY NUMBERS, the current total is 52,124 of the 64,952 pages of this year’s goal, that’s a very decent 2,306 registered pages more than last update.The next step, and focus from now on, is to reach those 64,000 plus pages.

The end of the year projection of total pages had a small step back ,currently is at 61,739 pages, 69 pages less than the last update. My reading schedule is still 16 days behind,that’s a one day more than the last update, this is one of the things I have been chasing all year.

I keep on sticking to my mantra, one step at a time, one page at a time.

I start week 43 with a deficit of 3,786 pages, and a total 4,951 pages to get back to balance, this week I came short by 67 pages. The total for the month of April sits at 1,505 pages, which represent around 28% of the projected total, not exactly where I want to be, but this doesn’t not deter me, as I said, supernatural determination .

For the first 500,000 pages, I have only 97,299 pages left, and the new date of reaching that goal is July 16, 2025, that’s 18 days earlier than the last projection, my sights are still pointed at March 20, 2023 as the desired date to reach the first half of the challenge, 344 intense days of reading.The gap narrowed from 867 to 850 days behind schedule.

The second part of the journey, or the other 500,000 pages, my weekly pages needed are now 1,626 with a daily average of 232 pages, a two page a day drop from the last projection.

Now for the golden prize of 1,000,000 pages, to my delight, the projections puts it 7,315 days away, a 50 day gain from the last projection, making the end date is April 21, 2042, that’s 3,973 days after the original plan, 36 days less that the last projection. This forward momentum in time gain is becoming the standard, the goal is to at least a month of time with each week. I have to keep reminding myself that my goal is to reach my goal by my 50th birthday, right now, I would be 60 years 10 months, and 16 days old.

In this case 60 is not the new 50.

To summary the numbers from my Journey Back.

• Pages to reach 500,000: 97,299 pages
• Days to reach 1,000,000: 7,315 days
• Days behind schedule: 3,973 days

Now back to work on the final goal of the year.

Off to read.

azr.