2010 Bibliophilic Books Challenge - Completed

The 2010 Bibliophilic Books Challenge was one of my favorite challenges of this or any year – I just can't get enough of books about books. The challenge was hosted (and is still being hosted, until the end of the month) by Lesley of A Life in Books. I signed up at the "Bookworm" level (three books), and almost made it to "Litlover" (six books). I even managed to review most of the books I read, although I haven't been very good about remembering to post my reviews to the challenge review site (my brain is old and slow – just like my body).

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

1. The Anthologist. Nicholson Baker
2. The Forgotten Garden. Kate Morton
   
3. The Egypt Game. Zilpha Keatley Snyder
   
4. The Inheritance. Simon Tolkien
   
5. People of the Book. Geraldine Brooks (Review to come)
   

I thoroughly enjoyed them all, even though I wasn't quite as wowed by People of the Book as I had expected to be (explanation to come in my review).

I had hoped to get in a nonfiction work or two, but it just didn't happen. Maybe next time around (if there is one). My thanks to Lesley for hosting and to all the other participants for helping me add many, many new titles to my already overwhelming TBR list!

The Awesome Author Challenge - Completed

The Awesome Author Challenge was hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books, and ran (actually, it's still running) throughout 2010. As Alyce said, the idea behind the challenge was "to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the 'Awesome Author Challenge' title."

I signed up at the ten-author ("Challenging") level, and actually read a few more "awesome" new authors than ten. But this is my "official" list (in, roughly, the order read), with links to my reviews:

1. Nick Bantock: The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy
   
2. Nicholson Baker: The Anthologist
   
3. Iain Pears: The Raphael Affair
   
4. Henry Roth: An American Type
   
5. Elizabeth Peters: A River in the Sky
   
6. Lisa Gardner: Live To Tell
   
7. Kate Morton: The Forgotten Garden
   
8. Alex Kava: Damaged
   
9. Zilpha Keatley Snyder: The Egypt Game
   
10. Anne Rivers Siddons: The House Next Door
    

I enjoyed all of the books I read – some more than others, of course. I suppose if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker's marvelous novel about life, love, and poetry. And, contrariwise, if I had to choose one for the "most disappointing" category, I think it would most likely be Henry Roth's An American Type. Not a bad book and I enjoyed reading it; but it just didn't live up to my expectations (which were probably too high, but you know how that goes).

I want to say thank you to Alyce for hosting. This was a fun (and easy!) challenge, and a great idea!

Challenges for 2011

So. Reading challenges. Lots and lots of reading challenges planned for 2011, and I'm having so much trouble deciding which ones to sign up for. Naturally, I'd really like to sign up for every one I hear about, but I'm trying to go a little easy on the challenges next year. And, as always, I'm looking for challenges that don't have too many rules and limitations.

To save time, I'm not going to do a separate post for each of the challenges I'm joining, so here's my list so far:

1st in a Series Challenge 2011

1 January - 31 December 2011
Four levels: 3, 6, 12, or 20 books
Host: Katy @ A Few More Pages
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ I have a huge list of "firsts" possibilities that I'll be posting on my challenge blog. But I'll also be playing it safe here, and just signing up at the three-book ("Series Novice") level.

2nds Challenge 2011

1 January - 31 December 2011
Read books that are the second in a series, or by an author you've read only once before.
Four levels: 3, 6, 12, or 20+ books
Host: Katy @ A Few More Pages
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ I participated in the 2nds Challenge a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it a lot. Again, I'm playing it safe and signing up for just three books ("Just a Spoonful").

Alex Cross Reading Challenge

1 September 2010 - 31 August 2011
Read as many Alex Cross mysteries as you want (the books are, in order of publication: Along Came a Spider; Kiss the Girls; Jack & Jill; Cat and Mouse; Pop! Goes the Weasel; Roses Are Red; Violets Are Blue; Four Blind Mice; The Big Bad Wolf; London Bridges; Mary, Mary; Cross; Double Cross; Cross Country; Alex Cross's Trial; I, Alex Cross).
Host: Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ I've never read any of the Alex Cross books, but always intended to; so this is a great nudge for me. I'll be starting at the beginning with Along Came a Spider, and then see if I can go on from there.

Mystery and Suspense Challenge 2011

1 January - 31 December 2011
Read a minimum of twelve books, from any of the many sub-genres provided.
Host: Book Chick City
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ This was one of my favorite challenges in 2010, so I'm really looking forward to the 2011 edition. I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers anyway, so this one is a piece of cake.

Off the Shelf Challenge

1 January - 31 December 2011
Choose from books you already own, or that are already on your TBR list.
Seven levels: 5, 15, 30, 50, 75, 75-125, or 125-200 books
Host: Bookish Ardour
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ I really, really need this challenge, so I'm going to be signing up at the 15-book level, even though that may be more than I can really expect to finish. I've got a virtual shelf set up for the challenge, at Shelfari (here).

Vintage Mystery Challenge 2011

1 January - 31 December 2011
The purpose of the challenge is to read mysteries written before 1960.
Five basic levels: 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, or 16+ books
Also two other levels/categories: female or male authors
Host: Bev Hankins @ My Readers Block
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ Bev must have read my mind: I was planning to make reading more vintage mysteries one of my New Year's reading resolutions. I'm going to be signing up at the 4-6 book level ("In a Murderous Mood"), and I'll probably concentrate on Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh, but might branch out a bit, too.

What's In a Name 4 Challenge

1 January - 31 December 2011
Six set categories (one book per category)
Host: Beth Fish Reads
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ I thought about doing this one last year, and talked myself out of it. It sort of goes against my rule about rules, since the categories are set for me. But it looks like so much fun, I couldn't resist. Haven't made up my list yet, except for the "Life Stage" category - I'm thinking that will probably be Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler.

P.G. Wodehouse Challenge

1 December 2010 - 31 December 2013
Three categories: Blandings; Jeeves/Wooster; others (I'll probably be reading the Jeeves/Wooster series)
Host: Andrea @ The Little Bookworm
See the announcement/sign-up page here.
✸ Once again, someone seems to be on my wavelength here. I was planning to read some of the Jeeves/Wooster books next year, and this challenge should help keep me on track.

And that's it for now. Of course, there might be more to come later (I'm weak, I tell you, weak). During the year, I'll be posting progress updates on my challenge blog. At least, that's the plan.

Teaser Tuesdays: Pat Conroy's Reading Life

This week my teaser lines come from My Reading Life, by novelist Pat Conroy. In this passage, Conroy is talking about Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind, a book he read at an impressionable age (just as I did), and which he says is responsible for his becoming a novelist. The quote comes from an advance copy of the book, so please remember that it may differ in the published version:

Gone with the Wind has many flaws, but it cannot, even now, be easily put down. It still glows and quivers with life. American letters will always be tiptoeing nervously around that room where Scarlett O'Hara dresses for the party at Twelve Oaks as the War Between the States begins to inch its way toward Tara. [p.22]

I remember having a rather heated discussion with my tenth grade English teacher about whether or not Gone with the Wind should be seen as a romance or as "slice of life" realism. I was on the realism side and destined to lose the argument. But I suppose most fourteen-year-old girls have trouble distinguishing reality from romance, even today. Come to think of it, a lot of us older girls have that same problem.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in a comment here.

Booking Through Thursday: Thankful

This week's BTT question has a Thanksgiving theme: What authors and books are you most thankful for?

Well, while I've always loved books and reading, and I'm certainly glad there are so many books out there still waiting for me to discover them, I'm not sure "thankful" is really the word I'd associate with the whole process. But I won't quibble. And since I also love list-making, I'll just share my list of favorite authors from my Library Thing profile page. Here goes:

Edward Albee, Woody Allen, Margery Allingham, Kingsley Amis, Aristophanes, Louis Auchincloss, Jane Austen, Alan Ayckbourn, John Barth, Ann Beattie, Robert Benchley, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Anita Brookner, Truman Capote, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Arthur C. Clarke, Noël Coward, Will Cuppy, Len Deighton, Peter De Vries, Colin Dexter, Emily Dickinson, Joan Didion, John Donne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Daphne Du Maurier, Lawrence Durrell, Edward Eager, Harlan Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Janet Flanner, E. M. Forster, John Fowles, John Gardner, Edward Gorey, Caroline Graham, Ann Granger, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, Thomas Hardy, Moss Hart, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert A. Heinlein, Joseph Heller, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Hazel Holt, A. E. Housman, Shirley Jackson, Henry James, M. R. James, P. D. James, George S. Kaufman, John Keats, Carolyn Keene, Garrison Keillor, Jean Kerr, Milan Kundera, Harper Lee, Doris Lessing, Ira Levin, Elinor Lipman, Penelope Lively, H. P. Lovecraft, Alison Lurie, Ngaio Marsh, W. Somerset Maugham, Larry McMurtry, James A. Michener, Arthur Miller, Steven Millhauser, A. A. Milne, Jan/James Morris, John Mortimer, Iris Murdoch, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jean Plaidy, Edgar Allan Poe, Anthony Powell, Douglas Preston, Barbara Pym, Ruth Rendell, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rod Serling, Dr. Seuss, William Shakespeare, Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, Neil Simon, C. P. Snow, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Thirkell, Dylan Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, James Thurber, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Anne Tyler, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Irving Wallace, Evelyn Waugh, H. G. Wells, Eudora Welty, Patricia Wentworth, T. H. White, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Angus Wilson, P. G. Wodehouse, Larry Woiwode, Thomas Wolfe, Tom Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, John Wyndham

How's that? Hmmmm - I see I may have to add a few new ones. Like Carlos Ruiz-Zafon and George Orwell. Oh, and Kate Morton. And Emily Bronte. And Alan Bennett.

This could take a while.

RIP V: The Wrap-Up

Wow, I am soooo late getting this done. Being on the road for most of November has really slowed down all my blogging activity for the month. But I did want to do a short wrap-up post for the RIP/V Challenge, as it's one of my favorite reading events – something I wait for all year long!

Reading for the RIP Challenge is always fun because it encompasses almost all my favorite genres. This year I did pretty good on the reading part of the challenge, but not so great when it comes to writing reviews of what I read (still working on that). I signed up at the Peril-the-First level (four books), but I actually finished six books. Here's what I read (with links to the few reviews I've done up to now):

1. The Inheritance. Simon Tolkien [See Review]
2. Cards on the Table. Agatha Christie [See Review]
   
3. The House Next Door. Anne Rivers Siddons [See Review]
   
4. Book of Shadows. Alexandra Sokoloff [Review to come]
   
5. The Dark Half. Stephen King [Review to come]
   
6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Shirley Jackson [Review to come]
   

And I finished everything up by spending Halloween night reading that last book (the Shirley Jackson), and watching The Haunting (the original Robert Wise version from 1963, with Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn). Had a great, spooky time and drove the hubby crazy.

This year I also took advantage of the new addition to the challenge, Peril on the Screen. I'm not going to review these, but here's my list of films/TV shows watched:

1. Midsomer Murders: "Sauce for the Goose" (TV series; Episode #807, 2005)
   
2. Midsomer Murders: "Midsomer Rhapsody" (TV series; Episode #808, 2005)
   
3. Midsomer Murders: "The House in the Woods" (TV series; Episode #901, 2005)
4. Midsomer Murders: "Dead Letters" (TV series; Episode #902, 2005)
5. Midsomer Murders: "Vixen's Run" (TV series; Episode # 903, 2005)
6. Midsomer Murders: "Down Among the Dead Men" (TV series; Episode #904, 2005)
7. Midsomer Murders: "Death in Chorus" (TV series; Episode #905, 2006)
8. Midsomer Murders: "Country Matters" (TV series; Episode #906, 2006)
9. Midsomer Murders: "Last Year's Model" (TV series; Episode #907, 2006)
   
10. Inspector Lewis: "Counter Culture Blues" (TV series; 2010)
    
11. Inspector Lewis: "The Dead of Winter" (TV series; 2010)
    
12. Inspector Lewis: "Dark Matter" (TV series; 2010)
    
13. Inspector Lewis: "Your Sudden Death Question" (TV series; 2010)
14. Inspector Lewis: "Falling Darkness" (TV series; 2010)
    
15. Inspector Morse: "Last Bus from Woodstock" (TV series; 1988)
16. Inspector Morse: "The Settling of the Sun" (TV series; 1988)
17. Inspector Morse: "Second Time Around" (TV series; 1991)
    
18. Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (film; 1972)
    
19. The Bourne Supremacy (film; 2004)
20. The Bourne Ultimatum (film; 2007)
    
21. The Brides of Dracula (film; 1960)
    
22. The Curse of Frankenstein (film; 1957)
    
23. Curse of the Demon (film; 1957)
    
24. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (film; 1964)
    
25. The Dark Half (film; 1993)
    
26. Dark Mirror (film; 2007)
    
27. Dead of Night (film; 1945)
28. Dracula, Prince of Darkness (film; 1966)
    
29. Five Million Years to Earth (film; 1967)
    
30. The Forgotten (film; 2004)
31. Frankenstein Created Woman (film; 1967)
32. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (film; 1969)
33. The Haunting (film; 1963)
    
34. The Mummy's Shroud (film; 1967)
    
35. The Revenge of Frankenstein (film; 1958)
    
36. Secrets Inside the Walls (film; 2010)
    
37. Session 9 (film; 2001)
    
38. The Talented Mr. Ripley (film; 1999)
39. These Are the Damned (film; 1962)
40. The Uninvited (film; 1944)
    
41. X The Unknown (film; 1956)
    

Gee, just one more and I'd have the perfect number – 42!

I want to say a huge thank you to Carl V. at Stainless Steel Droppings for hosting this again. I don't think I could get through October without it!

Fall Into Reading - Question No. 9

This year's Fall Into Reading Challenge is heading into its last weeks, and I haven't been very good about participating in the weekly questions. I've been reading everybody's answers, but haven't offered up any answers myself yet. So I decided it was time to chime in on this week's topic:

Once you begin a book, do you feel compelled to finish it? Or have you been known to give up in the middle of a book, to walk away from a book that is just too annoying, boring, etc.?

Well, since I've spent a large portion of my life doing editing and proofreading, I have to admit I've read plenty of manuscripts and books I found annoying, boring, confusing, vexing, and downright awful. Such is the editor's lot.

But if we're talking about reading for pleasure, then I never have a problem putting aside a book that's not holding my interest. The old saying about life being too short to read bad books (or drink cheap wine – but that's another story) is something I agree with completely. And even though I try to give each new book a fair chance by reading at least a couple of chapters (the old "first fifty pages" trial, you know), there are some books that I can tell are not for me, right from the opening paragraph. And in those cases, I have absolutely no question about what to do – I just close the book, pick up another one, and read on.