In the Home Stretch

With just a couple of weeks left in 2009 - just 17 days to go in my 365 SF Short Story Challenge, today I've entered the home stretch. Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star" puts me at 266. That means I've only got 99 to go!

Woohoo!!!

But can I clear 99 stories in so little time? Well, I think I've got a good shot at it.

The two anthologies I like to read around the holidays, Christmas Stars and Christmas Ghosts will be good for a couple of dozen to get a good pace going.

After that, it's a choice of whether to dive into a new anthology or two, or make the safe bet and read a few old anthologies that I know contain stories that are fairly short. Seeing as how some of the older collections like Asimov & Greenberg's "The Great SF Stories" series are ones that I haven't read (at least not cover-to-cover) in 10 to 25 years, I don't fee guilty about including them in the challenge over a newer book or two. Nothing wrong at all with getting reacquainted with old friends.

Then there's the travel time that'll work in my favour. We'll be out of town for a week over the holidays, and while airtravel these days is lacking in so very many ways, one of the benefits it does offer is plenty of time for reading. There's nothing like a 5-hour flight to chew through a book. Sure I won't get much reading done when we're actually at our destination, but the flights will more than make up for it.

And when we get home, I've got another week off of work, which should give me enough time to finish things off.

I hope.