Reading Update - Late Summer 2011

I breezed through Knife of Dreams (Wheel of Time book 11) in June and The Gathering Storm in July, then started on Towers of Midnight (book 13 and the latest one published) on August 9th. I'm only about 100 pages away from finishing it and nearing the point of being completely caught up on Wheel of Time. This is something that only two years ago I thought I would probably never accomplish, and here I'll have read 6 books (and one prequel book) of a 14 book series in 2011 alone. My average time to read the 700-1,000 page books has been 30 days almost exactly with one book taking me up to 49 days to finish (The Path of Daggers, book 8) and the quickest one finished so far being done in only 21 days (Knife of Dreams) - but I'm at 13 days of reading Towers of Midnight and have a strong feeling I'll be finishing it tonight.

With this large task nearly complete, I'm not sure what I'll be moving on to next. The Song of Ice and Fire books are high on my list, as is the first Dark Tower book - The Gunslinger. I also have some non-fiction books to read, and I'm fairly certain that I'll be re-reading Dune sometime VERY soon here.

In other news I've been playing Magic: The Gathering lately which is an awesome blast from the past. Mostly we're playing Commander (or EDH) which as a format was very enticing to me and many of my friends to jump back into the game.

Oh, also last year I enjoyed talking about GenCon but this year I've mostly left it out. I'd at least like to list the things I bought as I believe I did last year and found it a good exercise:

• World of Warcraft: The Board Game - Burning Crusade Expansion (a steal at $15)
• a set of 25 Alea Tools magnets for my D&D game (mostly reds for bloodied heroes/monsters)
• 2 sets of earrings for Becky
• one set of Chessex Dice for Becky
• Gold: The Series Season 1 DVD

I believe that's it, which is insane and I'm sad I didn't buy more stuff but also very happy with myself that I can go to something like GenCon and be pretty reserved in my spending. If I remember anything else I bought I'll be sure to come back and add it to this list!