Category: Books and Reading
The 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along begins in a few days and it’s time to get ready for our first book! If you’ve been part of our read-alongs the last few years, you know that we’ve already read some of the greatest novels of all time — works like War and Peace, Don Quixote, and The Count of Monte Cristo. But our first book of 2021 has been called “The Greatest Single Work of Western Literature.” I speak, of course, of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Dante’s masterpiece has had...
This is the official sign-up post for the Aubrey/Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Odyssey. Yes, you read that right. This is a four year challenge to read what some call the greatest historical fiction series ever written, the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin nautical series by Patrick O’Brian. Join me in a long, slow read of this masterful account of life at sea (and on land) during the Napoleonic era. This reading odyssey will require a heart of oak but the journey will be well worth the effort. Why These...
This is the official sign-up post for the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along. This marks the fourth year of the read-along, and we are once again back to reading several books instead of just one. As you might remember, there aren’t too many books that have exactly 365 chapters, and we’ve already read the most well known: Les Misérables and War and Peace. So, like we did in 2019, for 2021 we will be reading several different books whose chapters add up to 365. By joining along in reading one...
As we get ready to say goodbye to November, we flip the pages closer and closer to the end of the War and Peace Chapter-a-day Read-along. I hope you have enjoyed the book as much as I have in this very challenging year. Although I haven’t been able to blog during these last months, I’ve been keeping up with reading a chapter each day and posting quotes on Twitter and Facebook. And now the story is reaching its end. In fact, if you’ve looked at the schedule lately,...
Every year the Tolkien Society sponsors Tolkien Reading Day on March 25, the anniversary of the fall of Sauron: It has been organised by the Tolkien Society since 2003 to encourage fans to celebrate and promote the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien by reading favourite passages. We particularly encourage schools, museums and libraries to host their own Tolkien Reading Day events. With the world in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, reading a bit of Tolkien can give us hope. Far from being an escape from reality,...
Was it really the hag I killed? It was myself I killed, not her! I murdered myself in one fell blow, for all time! It has taken me many false starts to try and read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but I finally managed to do the deed. I’m not sure why it has taken so much effort for me to read this Russian classic. The characters are well developed and believable. The plot is suspenseful and compelling. The issues it explores are timeless and significant. And...
We’ve just finished week 2 of the War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along. If you’re reading according to the schedule then you read chapters 6 through 12 this week. How do you feel about Tolstoy’s writing style so far? Does War and Peace read the way you expected it would? Leave comments on those questions or on any other War and Peace topics you choose.
Welcome to week 1 of the War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along. Each Monday morning during the read-along I am going to try and publish a short post to give everyone a chance to comment on the previous chapters. These posts will be very brief, because their main purpose is to provide a forum for us to talk about the book. Please be sure to talk only about the chapters that have been scheduled up to this point, so as not to spoil anything for other readers. And if...
When 2019 began I knew that my reading time would be limited, so I set a modest reading goal of 25 books for the year. I’m happy to say that just this morning I finished book number 30, exceeding my goal by five. I’m also happy that I was able to complete the three other reading challenges I set for the year, the Charity Reading Challenge, the European Reading Challenge, and the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge. For the Charity challenge, since I read 30 books I...
Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s Chapter-a-Day Read-along, whether you read all four books or limited yourself to one, two or three of them. In this post I’ll share a few of my reflections on the year, and I would love to know your thoughts about the experience. I invite you to leave a comment on this post to share what reading a chapter a day was like for you. First of all, while I still love Don Quixote, I am not sure that reading...
We’re only two days away from the War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along, and I hope you’re as excited as I am. Please tell your friends and family that they can still sign up by visiting the announcement post. As we get ready to start our journey I thought I’d share a few things to help us prepare. First of all, Cary, one of our fellow readers, has created a calendar that can be imported into your favorite calendar app. Thank you, Cary! The calendar comes in two formats,...
This is the official sign-up post for the 2020 War and Peace Chapter-a-Day Read-along. You’re invited to join me in spending the first year of the new decade reading one of the truly monumental literary achievements of the world, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The best thing about it is that you don’t have to be intimidated by how long the book is because we’ll be reading it in little bites, a chapter a day, savoring the experience and making it a part of daily life for...
