Update.

Just a short and quick update, with some details about the novels and comics I won't get around to writing about.

With Winter's Dreams done and dusted with, I have now already finished 3 out of 5 of this year's reading goals. For some reason this is all going a lot faster than expected. A side product of having more free time on my hands obviously. My health is still going up and down, an infection in my eye requiring heavy medication and limited time in front of the telly and pc for the moment. It's currently stopping a steady reading and writing speed from manifesting itself. But I'll be right as rain at the end of the week I expect.

I hope to finish off the Grendel reading goal this month, which means reading Beowulf and the Fantasy Masterwork Grendel, and do a Fantasy masterwork post for the latter, which could take some time. I'm also dedicating some time to the Warhammer Horror imprint this month: as long as I have the time I better make good use of it.

Also, besides what was on my to do list for this year, and besides the novels and short story collections that have already merited their own posts on the blog, I've also finished 2 novellas of Warhammer's Old World in rather quick succession. The Life of Sigmar limited edition; an ancient book responsible for heavily inspiring McNeill's Life of Sigmar trilogy, and the Bloody-Handed novella by Gav Thorpe; a short story easily slotting into the Sundering trilogy. Both had their merit, with varying shades of readability.
I breezed through the absolute gothic horror classic the Turn of the Screw, which has become better and better the longer I have it in my rear-view mirror.
I also paced my way through two out of the three remaining Penguin Red Classics I still had left to read and though they ended up being 'just ok' I'm glad I did get round to them. They were collections of short stories by MR James and Ambrose Bierce, and it is the Gaskell collection which is still left.
The Old Man and the Sea and Slaughterhouse 5 were beautiful and stunning respectively, and as they're short and absolute classics, they can be recommended to just about everyone. I'm very glad I spurred-of-the-moment on these as they definitely gave me a unique experience each.

I've also plowed through a host of comics I had lying around.
Most notably, I've now read everything that's available in the Hellboy universe, excepting the trade paperback of Being Human. In my opinion the main BPRD series is very much a disappointing mess, with most of the merit to the Hellboy universe coming from the stories featuring the titular character, most of the spin-offs, which tend to be very focused and coherent, and several isolated stories such as The Long Death, in particular. But the central BPRD storylines just tend to fail again and again, due to rushing their storylines, having too many characters to juggle with, and just by having too many different things at play, frequently jarring the casual reader and requiring the reader who has read all of it to have an almost eidetic memory in order to enjoy the stories to their maximum potential. They also are very much too sprawling and unfocused. The Mignolaverse is very definitely overrated.
Hellblazer I'm practically through half of the entire 300 issue run, and still very much enjoying it, even though Constantine has shifted back and forth in characterization between absolute bastard and plaything of fate along the way. The artstyle has shifted to more contemporary art which is lovely, because as good as I found most of the earlier stories, the art almost always felt lacking.
Alan Moore's Light of Thy Countenance comic adaptation also deserves a mention, as I thought it was absolutely gorgeous and mesmerizing in concept and execution.

There's much more I got around to finishing off, but those are the big ones.

Up next: Some Warhammer Horror!