Spring Reading Thing: The Wrap-Up

So summer is officially here now – been with us for several days already. It's also been a few days since the Spring Reading Thing ended on June 20th. This was a very easy, enjoyable "challenge," and I managed to read almost twice as many books as I thought I would during that time – although only one of them was on my original list of possible titles. I'm still working on getting all the reviews posted, and hope to get that done by the end of the week.

It would be hard to choose a favorite among all the books I read – they were a very mixed lot, and I enjoyed most of them very much. Several were books I'd had on my want-to-read list for many years, and some (like Ellen Foster and To Dance with the White Dog) were new discoveries by authors I hope to encounter again in the future. There were even a few disappointments in the bunch, but no real stinkers. I suppose the biggest surprise was The Longshot, the debut novel by Katie Kitamura, certainly a new name to watch.

Here's the list of books I read, with links to reviews:

Angels & Demons. Dan Brown
The Private Patient. P.D. James
The Way Through the Woods. Colin Dexter
The Book of God and Physics. Enrique Joven
Brimstone. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
The Old Man and Me. Elaine Dundy
The Optimist's Daughter. Eudora Welty
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O'Brien
To Dance with the White Dog. Terry Kay
The Unit. Ninni Holmqvist
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively
The Longshot. Katie Kitamura
The Valley of Fear. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I want to say thanks to Katrina at Callapidder Days for hosting, and to all the other participants for all the great reviews and recommendations. I've added quite a few new titles to my TBR list, which is now almost long enough to be divided up into a multi-volume set.

Spring Reading Thing 2009

Well, when you finish one reading challenge, what is there to do? Sign up for more, right? The Winter Reading Challenge ends today (see my wrap-up post), and Spring begins. What better time to start thinking about new books to read? And I've found a new challenge that should help me get into a springtime reading mood.

The Spring Reading Thing 2009 Challenge, hosted by Katrina over at Callapidder Days, runs from today through June 20, and it's a very easy-to-do challenge: no minimum or maximum number of books, no categories, not many rules. Just make a tentative list of however many books you think you might like to read, and post it on your blog. Then head over to the SRT/2009 announcement page, and sign up. Oh, and you can change your list whenever you want, over the course of the challenge. See – I said it was easy.

Right now, my list for this one is pretty much in flux. I've already got about a dozen or so books earmarked for other challenges, between now and the end of June, but I'd like to add at least one or two new titles for SRT/2009. So these are some of the books I'm looking at:

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, by Harriet Scott Chessman
Solstice Wood, by Patricia A. McKillip
Loop Group, by Larry McMurtry
The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton
The Way Through the Woods, or The Wench Is Dead, by Colin Dexter
The Women, by T.C. Boyle
Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan

I seem to have a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright thing going with those last two titles, don't I? Well, we'll see what develops – I'm sure I'll be adjusting/adding to the list as time goes on. Now I just have to decide if I want to sign on for the Once Upon a Time III Challenge, as well.