Follow Friday/TGIF

Hello everyone, and thanks for coming by my blog! One note, if you have come here before and followed me and I have not followed you back, it's probably because the follow feature wouldn't show up for me when I went to your blog. If this is the case, please let me know in the comments so I can follow your blog. And now on to the Friday fun!







This week's question:

Do you have a favorite series that you read over and over again? Tell us a bit about it and why you keep on revisiting it.


My response: I have to say off the top of my head that I love Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. I couldn't possible do it justice trying to explain what it's like, but it's full of allusions to books and authors and clever wordplay and it makes me laugh while telling a really creative story based around books and reading that I really enjoy. It's fun to reread because I catch more little things I previously missed each time I read.

I also enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series and have reread that once, I suspect I'll read it again at some point as well. I really like the character of Lisbeth Salander, and I think Stieg Larsson did a good job of making her sympathetic and at the same time prickly and sometimes unlikable. And I wish I had her memory and computer skills :)

And of course I have reread Harry Potter multiple times, it's such an engrossing story with great characters and a wonderful magical world.

Lastly I would probably say I devoured all the Nancy Drew books as a child, and I have a few books from the series that I've picked up in the last few years, and they are fun to reread now and then - partially because they are simple and comforting, I guess.







This week's question:

Reading Challenges: Did you sign up for any this year? How has your progress been?

My response: I can honestly say that this blog began specifically because of reading challenges I signed up for in January. I just wanted a place I could keep track of the challenges and log the books I read. I started with Roof Beam Reader's To Be Read Pile Challenge, and since then I keep finding challenges to join so now I have several, as shown below. The Hogwarts Reading Challenge ended June 30th, and as I reported, I won that challenge - I'm still really happy about that :) 

Overall my progress has been OK so far, I have more or less kept up with all of them except for the War and Peace challenge - I'm still fairly far behind with that one but I hope to catch up. 

• TBR Pile Challenge - read 6 out of 12 books, and will probably finish a 7th today
• 100+ Books Challenge - read 130 books so far in 2011
• The Buck Stops Here Challenge - I am 1 book away from achieving Level 4 (bonus level) - it will probably happen today
• The Forgotten Treasures Challenge - 6 books away from Level 3 (bonus level)
• War and Peace One Chapter A Day - very behind on this one, but working on catching up :(
• The Hogwarts Reading Challenge - completed 30 June, and won :-) 
• Read Outside Your Comfort Zone Challenge - I said I'd read between 16 - 20 books for this one, and so far I have read 8 books, so I still have some reading to do here
• The Color Coded Reading Challenge - I have read 4 out of 9 books for this one, and will have another one that I will most likely finish today (and yes, it's one book for multiple challenges)
• GLBT Reading Challenge - read 10 out of 15 books
• Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge - read 1 out of 3 books 

It's been really fun to participate in all of these challenges this year, and I have definitely read a lot of books I might not otherwise I have read, which is always a good thing! 

How are your challenges going?