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!

2012 - The Year in Reading

Well, I had another reasonably productive reading year. I managed to read a total of 81 books, which is not bad, but far less than I had planned. Here's a quick recap of the goals I set last year and how I did:

• Read more in general. This didn't work as well as I might have hoped. I read about half the books I managed in 2011, but at least I did read. 
• Read more classic books. I think I did OK with this, but of course didn't read as many as I would have liked. 
• Clear the TBR pile once and for all. I can't even type this with a straight face - Mount TBR still looms, but I'm still chipping away at it! 
• Read 2 books in foreign languages. This is a big disappointment for me. I did start both the books I have on hand though - it's just very slow going for my rusty language skills. I'll keep this for next year. 
• Explore some new series. I kind of did this but didn't read enough to really get into the other series I was hoping to check out. Maybe I can work on this for 2013. 
• Read at least one book by each of the new authors I discovered and loved this year. No need to elaborate, this didn't happen. Luckily a whole new year is coming up to redeem this! 
• Read more quality overall. I think I did OK with this.
• Complete all my reading challenges. I definitely did this one - HOORAY! So I met one goal from 2011, ha ha. 

So here are some more modest goals for 2013:

• Read more than 81 books. I think it's doable, I just need to do it!
• Read more classic books. I made sure there were a few on the TBR Pile Challenge list to ensure this! 
• Finish the 2 foreign language books. As I wrote above, they're both in progress, so this is doable.
• Complete all my reading challenges. I did this 2 years in a row, so I know I can do it again in 2013. I'll do a separate post tomorrow listing the challenges and etc. 

Once again, I wish my readers all the best in 2013. I hope you have a wonderful year full of books! :-)

December - This Month in Reading

Another pathetic reading month. I had a busy work month, which ate up a lot of time, and then the holidays took over. I did, however, make last month's goal, which was to finish the TBR Pile Challenge - hooray!! So I finished all my challenges this year again, which is great. I'll do a quick yearly wrap-up post shortly. But for next month, I'd like to read at least one book for each challenge I've signed up for, keep track of my ongoing Planet Earth challenge, and otherwise reduce the TBR pile. I know that a good part of January is going to get messed up with work again, so I'm hoping I can work around that and still get in a lot of reading before that really hits.

Snow - Orhan Pamuk

I miss snow. I grew up with stereotypical snowy winters and it just doesn't snow much where I live now, and around this time of year I miss it. (OK, I don't miss shoveling.) There is nothing better than a winter night, when it gets dark by 5 pm and snow is falling in big flakes. Taking a walk and having the snow fall through the glow of streetlights is magical. So while reading this book I was able to picture the snow vividly, and the way it shuts down a town when it has been falling for a long time; the way it softens sounds and enhances the glow of artificial light. That did a lot to contribute to reading this book, as it provided a backdrop for imagining the events as they take place. I suspect that if I knew more about Turkish I would have picked up on the relationship between the main character's name, Ka, the Turkish word for snow (Kar) and the name of the town in which the book takes place, Kars, as I suspect there is some interesting wordplay there that is lost in translation - maybe I can Google it. All in all this felt like a slow book; it felt like watching snow fall. I enjoyed it.

1001 Books You Must Read...

I have seen this list all over the Internet and decided to finally pay attention to it. I had read some of these books before starting this blog, and others I have read since 2011. I have seriously mixed feelings about this list - there's no Shakespeare, but I'm supposed to read everything ever written by Don DeLillo? It omits two of my favorite classic books - Anne Frank's diary and McTeague by Frank Norris, but lists everything ever written by Douglas Adams (and I adore Douglas Adams, so I have no problem with him being on this list, but - really?). I am too lazy to link the reviews from the past couple years, and there aren't that many, but starting in 2013 I'll add review links as I read. Some of these happen to be on hand so there is hope that I will read them in the next couple years. I do confess that there are books on this list I will most likely never read, but who knows. It's still interesting to keep track. I might add books too :-)

UPDATE, January 2014: I have removed the list and replaced it with multiple posts with these lists in January 2014. I won't link to them here, because if you're reading this post, you either already saw those posts, or I trust you can find them without much to-do. :-)

FURTHER UPDATE, later in January 2014: I removed the replacement lists because they took up a lot of space and the more I thought about the lists the stupider (that's a word, right?) they got. Lists like this are all over the Internet so if I feel the need I can find them and etc. etc., but cluttering up my blog with nonsense seemed like a big waste of time. I'd rather actually focus on real classic books and literature and other books I read just for fun, not some random, arbitrary list. Sorry for all this back and forth on this topic, and on with the reading!