Category: Challenges

Attacking the TBR Tome Challenge

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

This is Emily’s Attacking the TBR Tome challenge.

The challenge is to read 20 books from your TBR list between December 1st, 2009 and December 31st, 2010. AND you’re supposed to refrain from buying books until you have read or attempted to read all 20 of your chosen books, unless you need to buy a book for a book group. You also have to write a blog post about each book as you finish (or decide you can’t finish) it.

There’s been some discussion on blogs recently about feeling guilty about buying books and not reading them soon after buying them. This is something I’ve never felt. I often buy a book knowing I won’t get round to reading it for a while because I’m currently reading other books and this doesn’t bother me at all. In fact it adds to the pleasure of reading, knowing I’ve got some good books lined up to read in the future. The only time I feel bad about not reading books is when someone has lent them to me and months later I still haven’t read them. I’ll try not to buy any more books (I’m always trying not to buy books!) but I can’t see myself sticking to that for very long.

I attempted to read from my to-be-read piles this year and managed a few, but also added lots of books to the piles. So there are plenty to choose from. Emily’s challenge is to specify the books you’re going to read and not substitute them, but I think I’d better give myself some leeway and if I want to read a book I haven’t listed I will.

As there is a delay between our house sale and house purchase most of my books will be going into storage next week. This challenge has helped me focus on which books to keep out to read until I can get my hands on the rest. I keep changing my mind about which ones to take but so far these are in a box:

  1. The Day Gone By, by Richard Adams (autobiography)
  2. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
  3. The Children’s Book by A S Byatt
  4. The Country Life by Rachel Cusk
  5. Helen of Troy: a novel by Margaret George
  6. The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie
  7. Ghost by Robert Harris
  8. Slipstream: a memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard
  9. Rivers by Griff Rhys Jones
  10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  11. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
  12. Mollie Fox’s Birthday by Deirdrie Madden
  13. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – read
  14. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  15. Eden’s Outcasts: the story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by J Matteson
  16. Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan – read
  17. Map Addict by Mike Parker
  18. Resistance by Owens Sheers
  19. Corvus: a Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson
  20. Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Anne Wroe

This could easily change in the next few days.

Weekly Geeks – Reading Challenges

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

weekly-geeksThis week’s Weekly Geeks topic was suggested by Sheri of A Novel Menagerie. She writes:

“Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you’ve failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I’ve picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?”

As we pass the halfway point of 2009, how are you doing with your reading challenges? Did you participate in any challenges this year?

I’m always attracted to the reading challenges, full of enthusiasm for reading the books and I joined quite a few last year. But then I found that I wanted to read other books when I “should” be reading the challenge books.  Now, bearing in mind that these are all books I want to read I can’t really understand that, except that it’s that imaginary “should” that’s the stumbling block. I’m very much a mood reader!

So, at the beginning of this year I decided to limit myself to just a few reading challenges and I chose What’s In a Name? I took part in that last year and completed it. This has six categories such as read a book with a building in the title, the time of day, the name of a relative etc. I’m doing OK and have read books from two of the categories; as this challenge is for the whole year I reckon I can still easily finish it. They’re all books from my TBR list, which helps.

I can’t say that doing any of the reading challenges has made me pick up and read books I haven’t heard of before, but that’s because I’ve used them to read books I already own or by authors I already know – such as the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. I’m loving that one – each time I finish one I go to the library and borrow another one. So far I’ve struck lucky, with at least one AC book sitting on the shelf ready for me to read.

There’s a tab at the top of my blog for Reading Challenges where I’ve tried to keep track of them – I need to add the Agatha Christie Challenge to it and update the whole thing!

There’s also Support Your Local Library Reading  Challenge 2009 – which is really easy if you read library books. I didn’t have to think twice about taking part – my aim was to read at least 25 library books this year, but as I’ve already read 20 I think I’ll be way beyond that by December.

The Sunday Salon – Reading Report

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

tssbadge1As the first quarter of the year is now over (where did it go?) I thought I’d look at the state of my reading over the last three months. Given my obstinate urges not to read books I’d planned to read I’d decided at the end of last year not to join any challenges apart from What’s In a Name 2?, which I’d enjoyed very much last year. So of course I then signed up for Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge, the Chunkster Challenge and the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

Challenge Progress January – March

  • What’s In a Name 2?

The Challenge is to read one book from each of 6 different categories between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009. So far I’ve read 3 books from 2 of the categories. Not too bad – at this rate I’m on target to complete the challenge.

  • Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge 

The Challenge is to read 25 library books by 31 December 2009. I have absolutely no problems with this Challenge and am well on target with 10 books read so far. They don’t have to be on any particular subject, have particular features in the title, or be in any specific genre. They just have to be library books. This suits me down to the ground as I can pick whatever takes my fancy whenever I go to the library.

  • Chunkster Challenge

I joined this in an attempt to read some books that I’ve owned for a while and not read yet. A Chunkster book is 450 pages or more long and I signed up to the Too Big To Ignore Anymore section – that is books you already own on your to-be-read list.

You have to decide which ones to read in advance and stick to that. I’m no good at that and haven’t read a single one of them yet. Why do I suddenly have an aversion to reading books that I really do want to read just because I’ve put them in a list? Looking at my list today they all look enticing, so why haven’t I even picked up one of them?

  • The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge

I’m doing much better with this one, mainly I think because when I go to the library there are always quite a few Christie books to choose from. But on looking more closely I find that the Challenge as described by Kerrie is to read them in the order they were written – at least that’s what she is doing.  I’ve read three so far, not in the order they were written because that would mean trying to buy them or find them at the library. I’m trying to cut down on the number of books I buy and I’m too impatient to wait for library reservations to materialise. So I’m reading them as I find them.

General Progress

Of course I’ve read other books apart from the ones in these Reading Challenges. They’re all listed with links to posts where I’ve written about them on the Books Read tab at the top of the page. So far this year I’ve read 26 books, most of them have been really good reads. A lot of them have been spontaneous choices either from the library, bookshops, presents or my own shelves.

My “Plan” for Reading over the next three months is not to plan what I read, not to bother if the books I choose fit into any of the Challenge categories, but each time I finish one book to read whatever takes my fancy next.

What I’m Reading Today

So far today I’ve read a few pages from Sue Roe’s book The Private Lives of the Impressionists. I wish it had more illustrations, because I want to see all the paintings she mentions. This morning I read about Manet’s paintings of Berthe Morisot in 1872/3. His wife Suzanne was  tolerant of his womanizing and put up with his love of other women. He painted Berthe (who was also a painter) in seductive poses, searching for the

 sensation élémentaire, the sensation de vivre which Valéry elsewhere equated with the frisson of being in love.

Castle Dor

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Castle Dor

Castle Dor by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne du Maurier is the first book I’ve read for the What’s In a Name 2 Challenge ( a book with a “building” in its title). It’s also been on my to-be-read list for at least a year. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch was born in Fowey, an English professor, writer and critic, the editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900), who wrote under the pseudonym “Q”.

Although not as good as Rebecca it’s an interesting book, mainly because of its joint authorship and its retelling of the legend of the tragic lovers Tristan and Isolde. It was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s last unfinished novel and Daphne took it over at the request of his daughter after his death. It came at a low point in her life and I think she struggled to complete the book. The first part (by Quiller-Couch) has a more mysterious, mystical and dreamlike atmosphere than the latter part which is written in a more straight forward and somewhat chatty style.

Place and time are fluid as events from the past are repeated in the present and the characters are held by something stronger than themselves, linking them inexorably to the past. The land itself, its history and above all the ancient earthworks at Castle Dor are central to the story. Castle Dor, an “ancient cirque, deserted, bramble-grown”, once a bastion “filled with men commanding this whole wilderness now grass mounds, sleeping under a quiet sky.”

There are different versions of the Tristan and Isolde legend and these are explored in the story by Dr Carfax and his patient Mr Tregentil. Set in Cornwall in the 1860s, Dr Carfax recognises the signs that Linnet and Amyot Trestane are unknowingly re-enacting the tragic events that befell Tristan and Isolde. He tries to to keep them apart but from the moment she heard his name and met him

… she had a strange sensation of something breaking out of the past to connect itself with something immediately to come.

And Linnet too late realises

 … that bliss is transient, that nothing perfect lasts…

Books for 2009

Published on by Margaret4 Comments
powered by LibraryThing

These are just a few of my to-be-read books. They are all books I own and have not read – some of them have been on my bookshelves for years. So as a challenge for myself I am aiming to read them before the end of next year. For variety I’ve chosen a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Fiction

  1. Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon by Jane Austen (her last and unfinished novel and two fragments)
  2. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  3. The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
  4. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
  5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  6. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning (the last book in The Balkan Trilogy)
  7. East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood

Non-fiction

  1. Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
  2. Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and Its People by Jonathan Dimbleby
  3. Big Chief Elizabeth: How England’s Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World  by Giles Milton
  4. 1599: A Year In the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro
  5. Thomas Hardy: the Time-torn Man by Claire Tomalin
  6. Great Escape Stories by Eric Williams
  7. After the Victorians by A N Wilson

Book Awards Challenge II

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

As the Heart of the Child Challenge finishes on 14 July and I’ve all but finished the Chunkster Challenge I’ve decided to start a  new one. This is the Book Awards Challenge which starts on 1 August and ends on 1 June 2009. It is one of those challenges where you can change the books you’ve initially chosen which suits me fine. The books I’ve listed below are mainly ones that I already own and want to read anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem and I’m looking forward to reading them.

The challenge is hosted by Michelle at 1morechapter.com and the details are:

Book Awards II Rules and Signup

10 months. 10 award winners. Rules:

  1. Read 10 award winners from August 1, 2008 through June 1, 2009.
  2. You must have at least FIVE different awards in your ten titles.
  3. Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.
  4. You don’t have to post your choices right away, and your list can change at any time.
  5. ‘Award winners’ is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs, keeping in mind Rule #2.

These are the books I’ve initially picked to chose from (I can’t think I’ll read all of them):

Agatha Award
Birds of a Feather, Jacqueline Winspear – one I don’t own, but I’ve read others in the series.

Alex Awards
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Booker Prize
The Gathering by Anne Enright
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

British Book Awards
Wild Swans by Jung Chang – another one I don’t own, but have wondered about reading.

Costa/Whitbread
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

Edgar Ward
Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin

Gold Dagger Award
Black And Blue by Ian Rankin
The Honourable Schoolboy  by John le Carre

James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Persephone by Jenny Joseph,  – I don’t own this either. In fact I’ve never come across it before, but it sounds good.

Pulitzer Prize
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Nobel Prize Winners
Rudyard Kipling – I don’t own any of his books – yet.
Gabriel García Márquez
Orhan Pamuk