Modifying the Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge – Day 1 December 26th 2022

I started planning for the Ray Bradbury reading challenge in September with the plan of recording all of my books before I started the challenge so I could tell you exactly how much is in my backlog. I spent all of September and October recording books into my spreadsheet in the afternoons. I stopped in November when I participated in NaNoWriMo intending to start again in December with recording more books. Instead started with updating my 2023 Writing word totals spreadsheet and that is now completed. I still have not gone back to recording what is in my collection. So far I have 1676 books recorded. I still have one more shelf to record and four or five boxes that will not fit on the shelves and the ebook and audio books plus the computer games and videos I have since I want to know everything in my entertainment backlog and not just the books. I already delayed when I was going to start this reading challenge since the list was more time consuming to record than I wanted it to be.

The Ray Bradbury challenge includes reading a poem, short story and essay daily. I don’t have many essays in my collection as far as I am away so I changed that to a chapter of a non-fiction book. I modified the reading challenge even further to suit my reading needs. I am a Christian and I am very guilty of putting my Bible reading and Bible study aside when I am busy so I have included that as part of my personal challenge of reading my bible, my devotional book and a bible study book. A large portion of my collection is longer fiction so I also have reading one chapter of a fiction book on my list since I don’t want to neglect that part as well for this challenge. My collection has been ignored too much as it is with everything that I have been doing at the moment.

Day 1
For what I consider the Ray Bradbury portion of the challenge I read
Poem: 3 poems in Prayfully by Helen Steiner Rice
Short Story: The Immolation Game by Mitchell Tierney: Chapters 20 – End
Non-Fiction: Yates Garden Guide 43rd edition: Introduction – Chapter 1

For my modified reading plan
Bible: NIV following a reading plan from Cover to Cover: Day 136
Devotional: Teach me to Pray by Andrew Murry: December 23 – 24
Bible Study: Fixing Abraham by Chris Tiegreen: Introduction
Fiction: A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin – 1 Chapter

The Immolation Game which I completed was 91 pages in total which is why I included it in my short story list. I started it previously, ended up busy and just didn’t go back to it which is what has happened with most of the books on the list. It was recent enough that I didn’t have to go back to the start of the book. A quick skim of the last chapter and I was able to remember the basic premise of everything.

Everything except for the Yates Garden guide I started in previous years. The only books that was started this year was The Immolation Game and A Dance With Dragons. I started the A Song of Ice and Fire series that A Dance of Dragon belongs to in 2018. I believe every other book on the list is from 2018 as well. I hate how long it now takes me to finish books when once I would read multiple books in a day to completion.