Reading Challenge
Michael and I went out for Mexican tonight to celebrate his last day of work, and I grilled him for possible blog post topics while we were waiting on our food. He's good at coming up with ideas. Actually, he's a pretty good writer / story teller, too, though he wouldn't say so.
So Michael said I should write about my reading challenge for the year. At the beginning of 2015 I set a challenge on Good Reads to read 100 books. I don't know how many books I read in 2014 because I wasn't great on putting them in Good Reads right when I finished them, but I know it wasn't anywhere near 100. MAYBE 50.
So far I've read 62 books this year. I'll probably be at 63 by the end of the weekend, but I'm still behind my goal. I'll need to read 37 books in the next 11 weeks to make it – 3.36 books a week. It's doable, especially if I stick to short, low effort books (cough, romance novels, cough), but I don't know if it's going to happen, especially with NaNoWriMo in November. When it comes down to it, I guess I care more about completing NaNoWriMo than reading 100 books, but if I were badass I'd still do both.
Regardless. I've read a nice mix of books so far. What stands out:
Neil Gaiman. I've always heard good things about him and already followed him on Twitter, but wasn't very familiar with his work. Last year I read Stardust and thought it was meh. But this year I did Anansi Boys, American Gods, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane and loved them. Gaiman is pretty much the quintessential story teller.
Elisa Albert. I've read two of her books so far this year - After Birth and The Book of Dahlia. Both were extremely interesting and also slightly disturbing. The Book of Dahlia is told from the point of view of a girl who's dying of cancer...and at the end she dies. I kept wondering how Albert was going to end it when her character had no hope and if she'd actually carry it through to the bitter end – and sure enough, at the end Dahlia just goes. Really interesting, really thought-provoking, and a great example of a writer who's doing things differently.
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum. This was a random one I saw on Scribd, but I loved it. It's about a man trying to bring his marriage back together after cheating on his wife. That sounds dark and depressing, but it was actually funny, and I think it had a lot of relevant things to say about marriage in general. It's one I kinda wish I had a paper copy of – I remember reading specific lines and wanting to highlight them because they were either beautiful or particularly well-written or just something I wanted to remember.
Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris by Ann Man. This is one my uncle sent me because he thought I might enjoy it, what with my having studied abroad in France in college and also being a big fan of eating. I had it on my shelf for probably a year before I picked it up to take to Greece with me this summer. Sure, okay, it's about France and not Greece, but it actually was great for invoking that European travel excitement. Most of the dishes she talks about I would never actually eat, but it made me nostalgic for France and also made me excited about seeing different cultures. It's also a good example of memoir and structurally interesting for me as a fledgling writer.
The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. I'm in the middle of book 5 of this series at the moment. I started it thinking it was a supernatural romance series, and that it'd be a quick way to get some books on my read list, but it's actually not really romance at all. There are romantic parts, but there's not even any sex in the first book. And it's actually pretty well written. Some books stumble a bit and the writing sometimes seems a little awkward, especially in the earlier books, but the world is interesting, it's got good characters, and some parts are so good they punch you in the gut. There's one part in particular where the main character essentially has to help someone die, and Harrison writes it so it's beautiful and sad and incredibly human all at the same time.
So I might not hit 100, but I'm pretty happy with where I've gotten so far. If nothing else, the reading challenge has kept reading at the forefront of my brain so that I've prioritized it, and that's always good. Now if I can just do the same thing with writing
:-/
The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. I'm in the middle of book 5 of this series at the moment. I started it thinking it was a supernatural romance series, and that it'd be a quick way to get some books on my read list, but it's actually not really romance at all. There are romantic parts, but there's not even any sex in the first book. And it's actually pretty well written. Some books stumble a bit and the writing sometimes seems a little awkward, especially in the earlier books, but the world is interesting, it's got good characters, and some parts are so good they punch you in the gut. There's one part in particular where the main character essentially has to help someone die, and Harrison writes it so it's beautiful and sad and incredibly human all at the same time.
So I might not hit 100, but I'm pretty happy with where I've gotten so far. If nothing else, the reading challenge has kept reading at the forefront of my brain so that I've prioritized it, and that's always good. Now if I can just do the same thing with writing
:-/