Category: Books and Reading
Bev at My Reader’s Block is too good at coming up with tempting reading challenges. I can’t seem to keep from signing up for them. A new one for me for 2018 is the Monthly Keyword Challenge, which she is hosting for the first time. In this challenge, Your task is to read at least one book each month whose title includes one or more of the key words for that month. For instance, in January you might read Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon. See Bev’s...
The Color Coded Reading Challenge caught my attention last year and I find myself interested in it again this year. I’m not sure why, since it’s not easy to find books that match the color categories. My own personal rule for this challenge is not to use the covers of books to satisfy the categories, but only to use the titles of the books, which makes it even harder. I’m not sure how many years I’ll be able to do this using only books from my TBR pile,...
The Charity Reading Challenge, hosted by Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews, is a new challenge for me, and I’m excited to participate in it. Here’s how Becky explains it: Read for a good cause! Buy books at a charity shop, or, even a friends of the library book sale, or, donate a certain percentage of money for each book you read for the challenge. You can choose your own goal of how many books to read, what charity you’ll be donating money towards, how much money, etc. (For...
I’m happy to be participating again in the Back to the Classics Challenge, hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate. The idea of the challenge is to read six to twelve classics that fit predetermined categories. This year’s categories are a perfect fit for many of the books I’ve already got planned, so I’m going to go for all twelve. I think most of the categories speak for themselves, but there are a couple I want to mention. First, for the “classic that scares you” I’ve chosen The Violent...
Gilion at Rose City Reader is hosting the European Reading Challenge again for 2018. The “gist” of the challenge, according to Gilion, is to read books by European authors or books set in European countries (no matter where the author comes from). The books can be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre. You can participate at different levels, but each book must be by a different author and set in a different country – it’s supposed to be a tour....
The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a masterpiece of suspense that should not be missed by anyone who loves atmospheric settings, classic mysteries, or gorgeous prose. Ranked as the 9th greatest mystery novel of all time by the Mystery Writers of America, Rebecca entrances the reader with its lyrical sentences as the story slowly unfolds, picks up speed, and then builds into a page-turning climax. I enjoyed every sentence of this haunting...
One of the reading challenges that took the most planning last year was the Follow the Clues Mystery Challenge from Bev at My Reader’s Block. I’m still working on finishing this year’s challenge, but it was such fun to set up that I’ve decided to try it again for next year. As Bev describes the challenge, the goal is to follow a set of clues furnished by the mystery books you read to create a body of evidence to support a book court case. Each book clue should...
Hard Day at the Scaffold is a solid collection of short stories edited by Alfred Hitchcock that I read over the course of a year for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge. Hitchcock’s anthologies always feature darkly humorous stories with a generous dose of creepiness, and this one was no different. Though this collection had fewer memorable stories than others I’ve read, it was still enjoyable. My favorite was “One on a Desert Island” by Donald Westlake, the tragicomic story of what can happen to a man’s...
I had so much fun with my first year of reading challenges that I can’t wait for next year. I still have several challenges to finish for 2017, but I’m already planning for 2018. Last December I summarized all of my challenges in one post and tracked them all on one page. This year I still plan on tracking them on one page, but I’m going to write separate posts about each of the challenges, and right now I’m already up to nine challenges, not including the Les...
This final week of Nonfiction November 2017 is hosted by Lory at The Emerald City Book Review who asks us to look back on the month: It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book! Looking back, not only has Nonfiction November 2017 given me several interesting book suggestions, but it has also motivated me to put more nonfiction on my reading list for 2018. I...
The Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge motivated me to read some books that had been on my TBR list for many years, and it also enabled me to re-read some of my favorites. Fantasy was my first favorite genre, but I haven’t read a lot of it lately because it seems to have lost its magic, as I wrote about several weeks ago. In fact, all of the fantasy I read this year was written before 1993. My year in fantasy fiction began with a fantastically original series...
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol reaffirmed one thing for me: I really don’t like classic satires. From Candide to Gulliver’s Travels to Zuleika Dobson, they hold very little interest for me. I’ve had a bit more success with modern satires like the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett, but in general satire is not a genre I appreciate. Dead Souls is an episodic story in which the main character Chichikov travels to various Russian estates trying to purchase “dead souls.” It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Dead souls are peasants that...
