This challenge, hosted by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook runs from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022.
Read a book in any format (hard copy, ebook, audio) with a title that fits into each category. Creativity for matching the categories is not only allowed, it’s encouraged!
Click on the links below for more examples and info about the categories.
It’s a challenge that looks deceptively simple because ‘all’ you have to do is read six books from six categories – but each year there is at least one that that takes me nearly all the year to find. This year it looks like there are two – the first two! I have plenty of titles to choose from for the other categories, but not for the first two.
We’ve come to the end of Bev’s Mount TBR Challenge, so it’s time for the final checkpoint!
I began the year aiming for Mount Vancover – that is 36 books and I made it, ending the year by reading 40 of my TBRs, although I haven’t managed to review each one. These are the books I read:
My thanks to Bev for hosting Mount TBR 2021. And so on to Mount TBR 2022
Books must be owned by you prior to January 1, 2022. No library books. Any reread may count, regardless of how long you’ve owned it prior to 2022, provided you have not counted it for a previous Mount TBR Challenge. Audiobooks and E-books may count if they are yours and they are one of your primary sources of backlogged books. You may count “Did Not Finish” books provided they meet your own standard for such things, you do not plan to ever finish it, and you move it off your mountain [give it away, sell it, etc. OR remove it from your e-resources].
There is no page limit–if it was published as a book, it counts. No single short stories–but collections of short stories do count. And you do not have to review the books you read.
There are a number of different levels to choose from:
Pike’s Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s El Toro*: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s (*aka Cerro El Toro in South America) Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s
and for now I’m aiming to climb Mt Vancouver, which is to read 36 books and hope to move up to the higher levels if I can.
And it’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate atBooks Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
The chain this month begins with Rules of Civilityby Amor Towles, a book I haven’t read. Set in New York in 1938, it begins, appropriately for today, on New Year’s Day.
Myfirst link is to another book by Amor Towles – A Gentleman in Moscow – another book I haven’t read, but one that is on my TBR list. Both books have received rave reviews, so I’m hoping they aren’t over hyped! The Times describes it as ‘A book to spark joy’. I do hope so.
My second link is The Kill Fee by Fiona Veitch Smith, the second book in the Poppy Denby Investigates series. It’s historical fiction is set in London in 1920 with flashbacks to Russia in 1917, beginning with an episode in Moscow in 1917 as an unnamed man in a bearskin coat enters the house of an aristocratic family to find a scene of carnage.
Moving from Moscowmy third link is via the name Poppy. This time it is the author’s name, Poppy Adams and her book, The Behaviour of Moths. I thought this was a brilliant book! It’s the story of two sisters, Ginny and Vivi. Vivi, the younger sister left the family mansion 47 years earlier and returns unexpectedly one weekend. Ginny, a reclusive moth expert has rarely left the house in all that time.
My fourth link is to the word ‘moth’, but this time used as a name. Moth is Raynor Winn’s husband and their story is told in her book, The Salt Path. Despite finding out that Moth has a rare terminal illness, the couple decided to walk the South Coast Path. He had been diagnosed with a brain disease for which there is no cure or treatment apart from pain killers and physiotherapy. It’s not just the story of their walk, but also about their determination to live life, about overcoming pain and hardship, and the healing power of nature.
Myfifth link is via the place, Penzance, which is one of the places the Winns went to on their walk. Penzance is the setting of W J Burley’s crime fiction novel, Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death. Wycliffe is mystified by the murder of Matthew Glynn, a respectable bookseller who was found bludgeoned and strangled and there are plenty of suspects, including his brothers and sister and their grown-up children.
My sixth link: is to another bookseller, Marc Amos, a rare book dealer who owns a secondhand bookshop in Martin Edwards’ Lake District murder mysteries, featuring DCI Hannah Scarlet, in charge of the Cumbria’s Cold Case Team. Amos is her partner and in The Serpent Pool George Saffell, one of Marc’s customers, is stabbed and then burnt to death amidst his collection of rare and valuable books.
My chain started in New York and travelled via Moscow, and in various periods of time and places in England, ending up in the English Lake District. It links together historical fiction, nonfiction and crime fiction.
Next month (February 5, 2022), we’ll start with a book that topped Best of 2021 lists, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.
Let’s hope this new year will be a happy and healthy one and for those of us who love reading, may we all enjoy lots of good books!
2021 was an odd year in many ways and the various events affected my reading. There were times when I didn’t want to read and several times when I certainly didn’t want to write about the books I did read. In total I read 80 books and didn’t write about 19 of them. I will write about two of them at least, a NetGalley book and also The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel.
I began the year determined to read Mantel’s book as I’d bought it in March 2020, but as the months went by I kept reading other books instead. After a good start I just couldn’t get interested in it and I’d loved the other two books in the Wolf Hall trilogy, but this third book was just dragging along. I left it for a few months and finally finished it just before Christmas.
This challenge was hosted again for 2021 by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook. It ends tomorrow, 31st December 2021.
The idea of the challenge was to read a book in any format (hard copy, ebook, audio) with a title that fits into each category. I’ve managed to complete the challenge by finishing reading Fifty Fifty only the day before yesterday and have not had time yet to write my review.
These are the books I read, with links to my reviews
My thanks go to Andrea for hosting this challenge – it was not as easy as I thought it would be, but it was most enjoyable finding books to fit the category, especially for the ‘repeated word’.
Andrea is hosting this challenge again for 2022 – and I’ll be signing up for it in a later post.
Today I’m looking back at my post on Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case by Agatha Christie, one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. I first reviewed it on December 2, 2010.
My review begins:
Curtain was first published in 1975, but it was written in the 1940s during the Second World War. Agatha Christie had written it with the intention that it be published after her death, but in 1975 her publishers persuaded her to release it so that it could appear in time for the Christmas season – a ‘Christie for Christmas’.
In this book Poirot and Hastings have come full circle, returning to Styles, the scene of their first case. Poirot is now an old man (just how old is not revealed – I think if you go by the chronology of the novels he must have been about 120, but there is no need to be too precise), and close to death. Hastings is the narrator of this mystery. He is saddened by the devastation age has had on Poirot
BooksPlease 