33 posts tagged “books”
I participated in quite a few reading challenges last year, and I even succeeded at most of them. My final tally of books finished in 2009 was 76, 12 of which were audiobooks. Here is a breakdown of what counted for which challenges, along with a few of my reading highlights for the year.
The 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge. My goal was 10. I read 9. None of these made my all-time favorites list, but none of them totally sucked, either.
The New Authors Challenge. My goal was 25. I read 38. My favorites were The Nymphos of Rocky Flats by Mario Acevedo, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, Voice of the Violin by Andrea Camilleri, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
The BookCrossing Top 100 Challenge. I didn't really have a specific goal for this one, but it looks like I racked up 12 points by finishing 7 books and releasing 5 of them. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett was the only standout of this bunch.
The Audiobook Challenge. My goal was 12, and I listened to 12. My favorites were T Is for Trespass by Sue Grafton, The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell, and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
The Steinbeck Mini-Challenge. My goal was 2, and I read 2. Neither is a favorite.
The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge (Perpetual) and the Christie Mini-Challenge. My 2009 goal was the next 2 books in publication order. I read them for a perpetual total of 3. A thumbs-up to both books, but my all-time faves are yet to come.
The Seconds Challenge. The challenge goal was 12, but I read only 7 since I wasn't trying very hard on this one. My favorites were The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, The Dogs of Riga, and Good Omens.
The Keep Them Moving Challenge. I read and released 10 books that were registered by other BookCrossers. My favorites of this bunch were Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh, Illegal Alien by Robert J Sawyer, and Graveyard Dust by Barbara Hambly.
The Rescue Those Books Challenge. My goal was 15. I read and released 27 books that had been languishing on my shelves for longer than three years. The best of this batch were Artists in Crime, Illegal Alien, and Good Omens.
The Read Your Own Books Challenge. My goal was 24. I read 60. It's tough to choose just one, but I'd say my favorite of all of them was The Lies of Locke Lamora.
The Movie/TV Tie-In Challenge. I read 28 books adapted to or from film or television. My favorite of these was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The Buy One Book and Read It Challenge. My goal was 12 (one per month). I doubled up in February and September for a total of 14. The Lies of Locke Lamora wins again.
The 20 Book Challenge. The goal was 20 books (duh) meeting certain criteria (no audiobooks, no graphic novels, etc). I read 61. Standouts (getting 8 stars or better from me) were Artists in Crime, Martians in Maggody by Joan Hess, The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Voice of the Violin, The Shape of Water, Illegal Alien, A Wicked Way to Burn by Margaret Miles, Who's Afraid of Virginia Ham? by Phyllis Richman, The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Graveyard Dust, The Trader's Wife by TC Black, The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, The Clovis Incident by Pari Noskin Taichert, Dark Horse by Tami Hoag, Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn, Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Rumpole and the Age of Miracles by John Mortimer, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, and Good Omens.
Starting in January, I will be participating in the Abandoned Books Challenge posed by BookCrosser Secretariat. So here is my list of books that I have abandoned but would like to try again. I am sure I won't be able to get through all of these in a single year, but I will update this post as I finish them.
The Quincunx
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Cryptonomicon
Anna Karenina
Nineteen Eighty-Four
New Moon
My Life in France
The Monkey's Raincoat
21 Great Stories
Flowers in the Rain and Other Stories
Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories
Botchan
The Madonna Companion: Two Decades of Commentary
The Audacity of Hope
The Lord of the Rings
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Gargoyle
The Amber Spyglass
The 9/11 Commission Report with Related Documents
Night of the Big Heat
Shadows of Chaco Canyon
God Save the Sweet Potato Queens
Nature Via Nurture
Vikings: The Battle at the End of Time
Touching Tomorrow
Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls
The Uninvited Countess
Organizational Communication for Survival: Making Work, Work
The Merchants
Night Music
From the Darker House
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy
King Solomon's Mines
The New Jackals
Twain, Plains & Automobile
Master and Commander
Dragonsdawn
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories
The Lions of Al-Rassan
Death Masks
The Terror
L'élégance du hérisson
You may have noticed that I'm something of a sucker for reading challenges. And I'm signing on for yet another. Fortunately for me, this one does not actually require me to read 1,001 books. The challenge for 2009 is to read 10 books from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.
I'll begin by taking stock of those that I read prior to 2009:
1. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
3. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
4. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
5. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
6. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul - Douglas Adams
7. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
9. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
10. The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
11. Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
12. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
13. The Third Man - Graham Greene
14. Animal Farm - George Orwell
15. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
16. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
17. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
18. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
19. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
20. The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L Sayers
21. Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L Sayers
22. Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
23. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
24. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
25. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
26. The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
27. The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
28. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
29. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
30. The Trial - Franz Kafka
31. Billy Budd, Foretopman - Herman Melville
32. The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan
33. Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
34. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
35. Dracula - Bram Stoker
36. The Time Machine - HG Wells
37. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
38. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
40. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
41. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
42. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
43. Candide - Voltaire
44. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
45. Walden - Henry David Thoureau
46. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
47. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
48. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
49. The Purloined Letter - Edgar Allan Poe
50. The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allan Poe
And these are books I haven't read but already own:
1. La Princesse de Clèves - Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
2. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
3. Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
4. Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
5. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
6. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
7. The Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne
8. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
9. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
10. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
11. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
12. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
13. King Solomon's Mines - H Rider Haggard
14. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
15. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
16. The War of the Worlds - HG Wells
17. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
18. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
19. Jacques le fataliste - Denis Diderot
20. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
21. Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
22. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
23. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
24. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
25. The Once and Future King - TH White
26. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
27. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
28. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
29. Slaughterhouse-five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
30. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
31. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
32. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
33. Empire of the Sun - JG Ballard
34. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
35. Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Now, my reads for 2009:
1. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
2. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
4. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There - Lewis Carroll
6. The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe
7. A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
8. Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
9. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Yes, another reading challenge. This is for authors that are new to me this year, and I'm shooting for 25.
1. Carolyn Haines (Splintered Bones). Finished 29 January 2009.
2. Thomas Christopher Greene (Mirror Lake). Finished 14 March 2009.
3. Mario Acevedo (The Nymphos of Rocky Flats). Finished 15 March 2009.
4. Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie). Finished 26 March 2009.
5. Andrea Camilleri (Voice of the Violin). Finished 2 April 2009.
6. Robert J Sawyer (Illegal Alien). Finished 10 April 2009.
7. Margaret Miles (A Wicked Way to Burn). Finished 19 April 2009.
8. Phyllis Richman (Who's Afraid of Virginia Ham?). Finished 19 April 2009.
9. Lynne Reid Banks (The Indian in the Cupboard). Finished 26 April 2009.
10. Harry Kemelman (Friday the Rabbi Slept Late). Finished 6 May 2009.
11. Diana Gabaldon (Outlander). Finished 15 May 2009.
12. Henning Mankell (Faceless Killers). Finished 16 May 2009.
13. James D Doss (The Shaman Laughs). Finished 19 May 2009.
14. Jennifer 8 Lee (The Fortune Cookie Chronicles). Finished 20 May 2009.
15. Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics). Finished 7 June 2009.
16. Barbara Steiner (The Phantom). Finished 15 June 2009.
17. Joan Lowery Nixon (The Name of the Game Was Murder). Finished 18 June 2009.
18. TC Black (The Trader's Wife). Finished 23 June 2009.
19. Ian Caldwell & 20. Dustin Thomason (The Rule of Four). Finished 1 July 2009.
21. Katherine Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane). Finished 12 July 2009.
22. Edward Monkton (The Lady and the Chocolate). Finished 14 July 2009.
23. Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb (Naked in Death). Finished 30 July 2009.
24. Lois Lowry (The Giver). Finished 13 August 2009.
25. Julie Powell (Julie & Julia). Finished 20 August 2009.
26. Pari Noskin Taichert (The Clovis Incident). Finished 26 August 2009.
27. Tami Hoag (Dark Horse). Finished 1 September 2009.
28. Carrie Vaughn (Kitty and the Midnight Hour). Finished 3 September 2009.
29. Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island). Finished 23 October 2009.
30. Peter F. Neumeyer (Donald Has a Difficulty). Finished 24 October 2009.
31. Dene Larson (2gether 4ever: Notes of a Junior High Heartthrob). Finished 25 October 2009.
32. TC Boyle (The Tortilla Curtain). Finished 30 October 2009.
33. Tatiana de Rosnay (Sarah's Key). Finished 8 November 2009.
34. Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries). Finished 4 December 2009.
35. Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora). Finished 8 December 2009.
36. Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Finished 12 December 2009.
37. Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal). Finished 30 December 2009.
38. Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol). Finished 31 December 2009.
I am actually hosting a read-and-release challenge for 2009. It's based on the BookCrossing Top 100 survey results for 2008, and I'll be updating the official point tallies here, with links to the detailed threads in the BookCrossing forum. To post in those threads and accumulate points (and qualify for the occasional token prize), you do have to join BookCrossing, which offers free basic membership. Even if you don't wish to participate officially, you are perfectly welcome to accept the challenge on your own (who am I to stop you??), and if you like, you can comment here with links to your relevant blog posts.
denny08: 13 points
discoverylover: 2 points
ILuvToRead2: 3 points
Jare: 2 points
spaceystacey: 1 point
stinalyn: 1 point (Finished Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.)
denny08: 1 point
ILuvToRead2: 1 point
stinalyn: 1 point (Finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.)
stinalyn: 1 point (Finished Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.)
June 2009
stinalyn:
July 2009
stinalyn:
August 2009
stinalyn: points (Finished The Giver by Lois Lowry.)
September 2009
stinalyn:
October 2009
stinalyn:
November 2009
stinalyn:
December 2009
stinalyn: points (Finished Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett; Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder; and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.)
What's this? Another reading challenge? Naw.... It couldn't possibly be.... But it is!! The goal for the audiobook challenge is to listen to 12 audiobooks in 2009. I can't count the one I just finished up, as I started it in 2008, but I returned it to the library and picked up two more, so I'm off to a good start.
1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald. (23 January 2009)
2. S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton. (5 February 2009)
3. Death on the Downs by Simon Brett. (8 March 2009)
4. Mirror Lake by Thomas Christopher Greene. (14 March 2009)
5. T Is for Tresspass by Sue Grafton. (26 March 2009)
6. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (23 April 2009)
7. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. (14 May 2009)
8. The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell. (19 May 2009)
9. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. (17 June 2009)
10. The Kalahari Typing School for Men. (30 June 2009)
11. Naked in Death by JD Robb. (30 July 2009)
12. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. (24 August 2009)
I am signing on for this 2-book mini-challenge to read John Steinbeck. I don't really care much for Steinbeck, but last night I finished
Of Mice and Men, and I already own copies of Cannery Row and Grapes of Wrath, so I can read one of those and free up some shelf space.
Update - 31 December 2009 - Finished Cannery Row.
I am accepting the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, which has no time limit. I started reading Dame Agatha when I was 8, and by the time I finished high school, I'd read most of her novels. I may have read all of them by now. If not, I've only missed one or two. This challenge is to read all of them in order, and that is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I've amassed a nearly complete collection to that end. A few years ago, I re-read
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but then I got sidetracked with grad school and BookCrossing bookrings and the like. So now I can get back into it, and I will list each book in this post as I read (or re-read) it. I've also signed on for this Christie challenge, which just requires 2 books in 2009. I think I can do that.
2. The Secret Adversary (7 August 2009)
3. Murder on the Links (21 November 2009)
I am accepting the 2nds reading challenge, which is for reading another work by an author I've read only once before. I will keep track of qualifying reads in this post.
1. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. (10 January 2009) The first Steinbeck work I read was The Pearl, back in high school.
2. Meet Me at the Morgue by Ross Macdonald. (13 January 2009) The first Macdonald I read was The Name Is Archer, a collection of Lew Archer short stories.
3. The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri. (7 April 2009) This is the beginning of the Inspector Montalbano series, but I actually read the fourth book, Voice of the Violin, first.
4. The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell. (19 May 2009)
5. A Mind to Murder by PD James. (10 August 2009)
6. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. (24 August 2009)
7. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. (28 December 2009) I've read quite a bit by Gaiman, but this is only my second Pratchett work.
I have done this challenge in the past but in a very half-assed way. Maybe if I keep track of the book releases here, I'll be better about getting them posted to the challenge thread.
1. Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh. Released 6 February 2009 at an art auction.
2. Illegal Alien by Robert J Sawyer. Released 13 April 2009 to another BookCrosser.
3. A Wicked Way to Burn by Margaret Miles. Released 23 May 2009 during my moving sale.
4. The Cat Who Smelled a Rat by Lilian Jackson Braun. Released 23 May 2009 during my moving sale.
5. Graveyard Dust by Barbara Hambly. Released 14 July 2009 to another BookCrosser.
6. Episode of the Wandering Knife by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Released 11 August 2009 to another BookCrosser.
7. Rumpole and the Age of Miracles by John Mortimer. Released 13 October 2009 to another BookCrosser.
8. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Released 23 October 2009 to its original owner.
9. Donald Has a Difficulty by Peter F Neumeyer. Released 25 October 2009 during the reverse scavenger hunt at the KC UnConvention.
10. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. Released 31 December 2009 to family in Michigan.
