Category: Books

Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’ve been having a re-think about reading challenges. I had decided that I wasn’t going to join many challenges for 2011, but was going to read whatever takes my fancy. BUT I’ve been looking through my list of tbr books on LibraryThing, where I have 328 books listed as unread and I think it’s time I reduced that down as much as possible. This challenge should help me do that.

The Ireland Reading Challenge is being run by Carrie at Books and Movies. It involves reading any book written by an Irish author, set in Ireland, or involving Irish history or Irish characters. It can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, audiobooks, children’s books €“ all of these apply.

There are three levels:

Shamrock level: 2 books
Luck o’ the Irish level: 4 books
Kiss the Blarney Stone level: 6 books

I’m aiming for the third level as I have  several books in my tbr list that are set in Ireland, or are by Irish writers:

  • Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker – finished see here
  • The Gathering by Anne Enright
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden – finished see here
  • Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
  • Ulysses by James Joyce – if I read that next year I’ll be really pleased (and surprised)!
  • The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
  • Watchman by Ian Rankin
  • Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

Sunday Salon – Current Books

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The snow is slowly retreating with the slight thaw we had yesterday, the fir tree is green again, but there’s no green anywhere else. It’s still mainly a white world.

In keeping with the weather my current reading is Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder. It’s set in Sweden at Christmas time – well it keeps flashing back to an unspecified season in 1993, but it’s mostly a cold, snowy scene. I haven’t read much beyond the first murder – a man is found shot in the head and he was also run over repeatedly for good measure. I know from the blurb that there is another murder and the police are baffled.

As I’ve finished the two autobiographies I was reading last week I’ve started another – Just Me by Sheila Hancock. I haven’t read much of this yet either. Sheila is trying to come to terms with the death of her husband, John Thaw and has decided she needs to keep busy. She has put the house in France that she and John loved on the market and decided to go travelling. As she writes about her current life she also reminisces about the past. So far I’m enjoying her candour and easy style of writing.

Two Moons by Jennifer Johnston: A Very Short Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

There’s a touch of magic about Two Moons by Jennifer Johnston and I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Set in Dublin it’s the story of three women. Mimi and her daughter Grace live in a house overlooking Dublin Bay. Grace, an actress, is absorbed in rehearsals for Hamlet in which she is playing Gertrude, and Mimi, her elderly mother is similarly absorbed in talking to an angel, Bonifacio, who is invisible to everyone except Mimi. Their lives are disrupted by the arrival of Grace’s daughter, Polly who arrives to stay for a few days bringing with her, Paul, her new boyfriend.

Two Moons is a warm and intimate novel, portraying the problems of falling in love at all ages and the difficulties of  growing old and coming to terms with the disappointments of the past with great sensitivity. I especially liked Jennifer Johnston’s style – delicate and light yet at the same time there is a great depth of meaning. The characters are all real and their emotions are so beautifully expressed.

I read it as slowly as possible to savour the experience and I shall certainly re-read it. But I wish I could read it again as though it were for the first time.

U is for …

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

… Unfinished …

My first entry for ABC Wednesday was J and I chose Jigsaw. I’d just got the pieces out ready to do it:

It’s a beautiful picture of Little Langdale in the Lake District. It’s also a very difficult puzzle partly because so many of the pieces are so similar in colour. Often a puzzle like this has to be done by matching the shapes of the pieces but what is so frustrating in this puzzle is that so many of them will fit together but they aren’t quite right and I end up with pieces that just won’t fit anywhere. The grass was bad enough and I know I’ve not got the pieces all in the right places because I have one green piece left and it won’t fit into the one remaining space. The sky is even worse.

It is UNFINISHED.

Also UNFINISHED is another U – namely Ulysses by James Joyce. Back in January I was full of determination to read this book, but so far I’ve only managed a few pages. It will certainly remain unfinished this year – maybe next year will be my Ulysses year, maybe not. It’s a daunting book because of its sheer length and reputation as a difficult book. It would probably help if I read it alongside Declan Kiberd’s book Ulysses and Us. I love the cover of this book, showing Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.

More variations on the letter U can be found on the ABC Wednesday site

Alphabet in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I mentioned in an earlier post that I hoped Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise would be running the Alphabet in Crime Fiction – a Community Meme/Challenge again. I really enjoyed taking part in it this year, not only reading and writing the books, but also reading the other participants’ posts. I found so many authors and blogs that were new to me.

And she has set it up again for  2011!

Here are the rules:

Each week, beginning Monday 10 January 2011, you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.
Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname.

So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.

There is as Kerrie says lots of choice but the real challenge for me is writing a post every week and in some cases finding a title, or author for some of the letters – X, Q, and Z were  hard and I seem to remember that N was quite difficult and J too.  I was particularly pleased to have found Dave Zeltserman’s books and I’ll be looking for more by him to fill the Z spot.

I’m looking forward to it immensely.

Weekly Geeks – Reading Challenges

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week the question is about reading challenges:

Do you plan on participating in any reading challenges in 2011? Are you planning on hosting any reading challenges? You don’t have to “officially” join any of the challenges for this weekly geek.  You might want to spend some time browsing A Novel Challenge. Are there any challenges you are looking forward to that haven’t been announced yet? Regardless of your challenge plans, are you starting to plan ahead for next year? Do you make lists or goals? Are you a person who enjoys reading more if it is structured? Or are you all about being free to read what you want, when you want?

I’ve already signed up for two challenges next year – 2011 Global Reading Challenge and What’s in a Name and I’ll be carrying on with the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

I’m in two minds about reading challenges. Part of me enjoys them. I like the challenge and making lists and deciding what to read is very appealing. But another part of me reacts quite badly and I find that once I’ve decided I ‘should’ read a book within a set deadline I don’t want to read it. So the best challenges for me are those that give me flexibility to change my mind about what and when I read, which the three I’ve joined do.

You could argue that the very nature of a challenge is to extend yourself, to broaden your reading experience and read books you wouldn’t otherwise. And to a certain extent I like that and the challenges I’ve done in the past have done just that, but I now have so many of my own books that I have yet to read, that I’ve tended to use challenges to nudge me into reading those books instead of searching out new ones, just to do a challenge. My reading, is after all, purely for me, for my own entertainment and information. I no longer have to read from anyone else’s reading lists to take a course or exam, or for work, so I like to read what I want, when I want.

Having said all that I expect that I will want to read something different, in a genre I’m not familiar with and by authors that are new to me. I love variety in my reading.

I hadn’t come across A Novel Challenge blog before. It’s an amazing resource, listing so many different challenges and weekly events that my mind just boggles! No doubt I will be tempted by one or more of these, but I could spend hours just finding out about challenges and planning to do them and not have time for reading!

So, I’ll probably just stick to those three – unless Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise decides to host another Crime Fiction Alphabet challenge, that would be good.