End of the Year....

I did a horrible job this year keeping up with my reading challenges/reviews. On the plus side, I did read 55 books as of tonight. And some of them are reviewed on goodreads. On the minus side, almost none of them are reviewed on the blog, and I didn't finish any of my challenges to speak of. Pa.The.Tic.



So I'm going to try to catch up with what I've done, and pick some new challenges, and maybe eventually even catch up on reviews. It's a new year, right? I'll at least do a best of 2010 list next week sometime.



On to 2011!

RIP Challenge V

I have sort of dropped the ball on my reading challenges this year, but if I am going to pick it back up, it's for this one. I love Halloween, and I love reading, so I super-love Carl at Stainless Steel Dropping's RIP Challenge. I have been doing this challenge since RIP II, and I almost missed it this year, but jumped in in the nick of time. Since I am joining late, I am going to do Peril the Second, which only requires the reading of two books sufficiently Halloween-ie. And, coincidentally, they are also written by a father and son.

1. Horns--Joe Hill--10/25/10
2. Under the Dome--Stephen King--11/6/10 (better late than never)

If I have time, I would like to read a book of short stories by each of these authors as well, which would be

3. Just After Sunset--Stephen King--12/8/10
4. 20th Century Ghosts--Joe Hill

but that is unlikely, given that it is already October 25.

Boo!

Decades 2010--1/1/10-12/31/10

DID NOT FINISH

One of my favorite challenges is the Decades Challenge. This is the third year that I will be participating. The goal is to read one book from ten consecutive decades, 1990s and earlier. My list follows:

1990s: The Robber Bride--Margaret Atwood1/23/10

1980s: Love in the Time of Cholera--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1970s: Song of Solomon--Toni Morrison

1960s: The Bell Jar--Sylvia Plath

1950s: A Town Like Alice--Nevil Shute

1940s: I, Robot--Issac Asimov

1930s: Gone With the Wind--Margaret Mitchell

1920s: Women in Love--D.H. Lawrence

1910s: Of Human Bondage--W. Somerset Maugham

1900s: The Railway Children--Edith Nesbit

Gregor the Overlander--Suzanne Collins

Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Year Published: 2003
Pages: 320
Rating: 3.5/5

"Gregor had pressed his face against the screen for so long, he could feel a pattern of tiny checks above his eyebrows."

I read this book on my son's recommendation, and it was really quite enjoyable. Gregor is an 11 year old boy with much weight on his shoulders--his father has disappeared, and he has to help his mother and grandmother tend to his 2 year old sister so she can try to make enough money to support the struggling family. But he is also a warrior, foretold in a prophecy in the underland. Of course Gregor doesn't know this, until he follows his little sister into an airvent in his basement and falls into the underland, where bugs, bats, and rats are huge, and a tribe of people survive under the ground. Upon learning he might be able to rescue his father, Gregor takes the quest--though he is dubious that he is the fabled warrior.

The story moves fast, and Gregor's little sister, Boots, is delightful. I am going to try to read the rest of the series when I get a chance.

Book a Week # 1
Challenge/s: Young Adult, TBR
Date Read: 1/1/10

Queen Bees and Wannabes--Rosalind Wiseman

Genre: Non-Fiction/Self-Help
Year Published: 2002
Pages: 336
Rating: 3/5

This was a very well-written book about dealing with "Girl World". I like Wiseman's style--she cuts to the chase and calls it like it is. A lot of this is common sense, but stuff we don't really pay much attention to. It did get a little redundant by the end, but I still think it's worth reading. There is a chapter on raising boys that I enjoyed a lot as well, and my son and I already had a talk about our culture's expectations of men and women.

Book a week # 64
Challenge: A-Z
Date Read: 12/31/09