Update on my readerly life

After only reading once in a blue moon in January (how appropriate, right?), I realized towards the end of the month that I was never going to finish Les Miserables so I spent the two nights before Books & Beer reading the Sparknotes. Which was very helpful in discussing the book - and in watching the Liam Neeson from 20 years ago.

Once I made the decision that I wasn't going to attempt to continue with the book but I was ready to ease back into reading after my fall, I picked up Maeve Binchy's Chestnut Street, a collection of short stories. I was able to read a short story a night. Until Books and Beer Club picked the February title, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. It's slow reading for me. And at about a little more than a third of the way thru with  the book, I believe it's going to be the type of book that I sort of slog through, but that I'm very anxious to discuss with the book club. It's got so many talking points, even though a lot of the details of the book don't interest me at all. The big ideas intrigue me.

That was the case with Barkskins by Annie Proulx which my community book club got to discuss yesterday. I'll write a separate post about the book club discussion later in the week.

During the days when I wasn't reading Les Miserable and was reading Chestnut Street, I requested quite a few ebooks from the library. As should have been expected, 3 of them came in in the past 2 days. All 3 of them hold more appeal to me than The River of Doubt, but because of how much I am looking forward to discussing Roosevelt's expedition thru the Amazon, I really do need to focus on finishing that book.

So that's where I am. It's pretty distressing to think that February is half over and I haven't finished a single book. I finally set a total number of books on the goodreads reading challenge for 2018. I unrealistically set my goal at 32 books. Last year my goal was 36 books, 3 per month. So based on that, I subtracted 3 for the books I didn't read in January... hoping that even though I've yet to finish a book that I can finish 2 books in this very short month.

I guess my biggest success (and luck) is that I'm once again able to read.

2017 Reading Challenge - How Am I Doing?

According to goodreads.com, I've read 27 out of the 36 books that I hope to finish this year. They include one book that I dropped (Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven, Japan, 1858) and they've doubled counted After You by Jojo Moyes. So, 25 out of 36 books. And I'm in the middle of reading two more, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist.

How am I doing with this 2017 Reading Challenge that I found online? Pretty well. Although I'm using several titles several times... which I'm sure isn't the intent of the challenge creator.

• A book I read in school - A Wrinkle in Time
• A book from my childhood - The Hobbit
      It was published in 1937 so I could have read it in my childhood had I wanted to!
• A book published over 100 years ago -   Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 
• A book published in the last year - Hum If You Don't Know the Words
• A non-fiction book - Hillbilly Elegy
• A book written by a male author - My Reading Life
• A book written by a female author - 1929
• A book by someone who isn't a writer - When Breath Becomes Air
• A book that became a film - A Wrinkle in Time
• A book published in the 20th century - Everything that Rises Must Converge
• A book set in my hometown/region - Best. State. Ever.
• A book with someone's name in the title - LaRose
• A book with a number in the title - nine, ten: A September 11 Story
• A book someone else recommended to me - Lilac Girls
• A book with over 500 pages - Barkskins
• A book I can finish in a day - nine, ten: A September 11 Story; Golf Chronicles; Hum If You Don't Know the Words; Best. State. Ever.
• A book with a one word title - 1929   That counts, right?
• A memoir or journal - The Watchmaker's Daughter
• A book written by someone younger than me - Commonwealth
• A book set somewhere I'll be visiting this year - nine, ten: A September 11 Story
• An award-winning book - The Girl Who Drank the Moon
• A self-published book - Golf Chronicles

In order to truly, legitimately complete this challenge, I need to find - and read - the following books. I'm looking for suggestions.

• A book that became a film
• A book with a character with my first name
• A book I can finish in a day
• A previously banned book - I've got that one covered as I'm reading Beloved for banned books month at Books & Beer Club
• A book translated from another language
• A book that will improve a specific area of my life
• A book set somewhere I'll be visiting this year
• An award winning book
• A self-published book      

Thanks in advance for your suggestions. 

Update: I probably should have taken the time yesterday to check and see which of the books I've read have won awards. Not surprisingly, there were several. With many more being nominees. Here is a list of the award winning books that I've read and what awards each one won.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - Newberry Medal (2017)
An Echo in the Bone - WABWAHA Romance Tournament for Best Novel with Romantic Elements/Crossover (2010)
The Hobbit - Keith Barker Millennium Book Award (1997); Books I Loved Best Yearly Awards for Older Readers (1997); Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies (1990)
After You - Woman & Home Reader's Choice Award for Book that Made Me Cry (2016)
LaRose - National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2016)
Hood - Stonewall Book Award for Literature (1997)
Everything that Rises Must Converge - National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1966)

I really wondered about the Woman & Home Reader's Choice Award for Book that Made Me Cry as cited on goodreads.com, especially since the apostrophe in "reader's" seemed to be in the wrong place. Shouldn't it be readers'? I looked it up and it is, indeed, an award given out by a magazine based in the United Kingdom. FYI, on their  website, they don't use any apostrophe. Of my award-winning books, I most liked The Girl Who Drank the Moon which made me happy since when I was teaching I tried to keep up with all the latest Newberry Medal winners.

 

Are you up for a reading challenge?

If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, for the past week or so you've been seeing lots of your readerly friends post reading challenges or their readerly resolutions. Some of these showed up as friends posted the results of last year's reading challenge on goodreads.com. That's probably the easiest reading challenge there is. Think about how many books you can or want to read for the year. That's your goal. Log your books in goodreads and at the end of the year you'll find out if you reached your goal or not. This year they added a really cool graphic to their report. I've done this challenge for the past several years and as I posted last week, I surpassed my goal for 2016 with a book or two.

I remember last year seeing reading challenge lists that were quite similar to reading assignments I'd given to my fifth graders.

• Read a book about the Civil War
• Read a genre you don't normally read
• Read a book set in a place where you've lived

But these lists were for adults. I gave it some thought and figured if kids can do this, why can't adults. This year I've seen so many more. I sat down to search for the one that I saw last week that I liked more than any other. I must have saved it on my other computer and not on Facebook as I thought. I decided to do a search for "reading challenges." Oh, my. There were many!

There were hundreds! Which one to choose? Should I create my own?

Many of the "excuses" I've seen given for why one reader or another isn't up for a challenge is that there would be too much pressure to try and read to the list. And perhaps the books they really want to read won't fit in.

My idea about these challenges differs from that. Why not select a challenge, one that seems to include books that you might read anyway, and then as you read the books, check off the boxes of the attributes of the books you're already reading. In other words, don't read to the list. But challenge yourself to be able to check off as many boxes as possible.

Make sense?

Now, which challenge to select?