January - This Month in Reading

I confess I was hoping to read more than 3 books in January, but life got in the way once again. I did manage to read a book for the Color-Coded Reading Challenge, so that was good. I didn't manage to make my goal in January, but for February I'd like to read at least one book for each challenge as well as at least three others from the TBR pile.

The White Hound of the Mountain and Other Irish Folk Tales - Thomas J. Kiernan

I found this vintage children's book from 1962 on the Library Sale shelves and couldn't resist the cool illustrations and the title, which fits in perfectly with the Color-Coded Reading Challenge. I enjoyed these stories, and it was easy for me to imagine hearing these stories in front of a fire in a thatch-roof cottage hundreds of years ago in Ireland.

Man and Boy - Tony Parsons

Another quick read that was reasonably enjoyable.

Charley's Web - Joy Fielding

In the interest of creating some momentum in reading right away in January, I grabbed some books I thought would be fast reads and went to town on New Year's Day. This was an enjoyable thriller that was indeed a fast read. I liked the Bronte reference and it kept me guessing. It would have been a perfect beach read, but since it's even set in Florida I just imagined I was on the beach as I was reading it.

2013 Reading Challenges

In the interest of clearing the maximum number of books from my enormous TBR pile this year, I decided to concentrate on a couple of challenges instead of having to resort to hitting the library or otherwise taking in even more books (perish the thought!). So here they are:

TBR Pile Challenge. Once again hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader, this challenge has been really good for motivating me to actually read some of the books I've accumulated over the years but never opened. I've completed it both times so far (2011 and 2012) and look forward to participating again this year, and most importantly, getting those poor dusty books read!!

Color-Coded Reading Challenge. Bev at My Reader's Block is hosting this another year, with slightly modified requirements I'm looking forward to using to my advantage. I happen to have a couple I can use on my pile, and I think there will be more that now qualify. If not, I will hit the library MUCH later in the year, when I've made more progress on my TBR books.

Planet Earth Challenge. This is the challenge I belatedly came up with last year, in which I try to read a book set in each country on Planet Earth. Rather than set a time limit and therefore add pressure to my reading, this challenge will be ongoing, and will simply involve trying to use the books I have on hand to fulfill as many countries as I can. If I ever clear the TBR pile, I will probably try to locate books set in countries I haven't found books for, but that's a long way in the future :-).

So that's it for formal challenges! Very manageable I think. Which challenges are you doing for 2013?

Cumulative List of Books Read in 2013

I like to keep a running total of the books I've read in a year, so here's 2013's list.

1. Charley's Web - Joy Fielding
2. Man and Boy - Tony Parsons
3. The White Hound of the Mountain and Other Irish Folk Tales - Thomas J. Kiernan
4. The Consequence of Skating - Steven Gillis
5. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
6. Zoya's Story - Zoya with John Follain and Rita Cristofari
7. The Toughest Indian in the World - Sherman Alexie
8. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe
9. Neanderthal - John Darnton
10. Cold Zero - Christopher Whitcomb
11. Destroy All Monsters - Greg Hrbek
12. Marcus of Umbria - Justine van der Leun
13. Years of Red Dust - Qiu Xiaolong
14. Emma - Jane Austen
15. Grand Ambition - Lisa Michaels
16. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
17. Your Perfect Right - Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons
18. The Finder - Colin Harrison
19. Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa - Benjamin Constable

Edited 1/1/16 - evidently I didn't keep up with this, ha!