Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

15/52

Thank you everyone for your condolences and kind wishes last week on my mother's passing. I wasn't sure that people actually read responses in here.

I only read 1 book this week and I didn't think I was going to be able to count it. But I googled "Behind Closed Doors" as song lyrics and lo and behold, it popped up as a song title by Kenny O'Dell, so I included it. That is probably a great way to find out if a book title is from song lyrics.

QOTW:
My favorite assigned reading? Hmmmmm. We read so many in school. Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Those were some of the ones I actually liked reading in school. I can't believe some of you had books that were censored!

Yeah I’m not fond of snakes. Can’t breath for ages after I see them. Especially since these ones here are the second most deadly in the world. The deadliest ones are around my Lithgow house. Along with the deadliest spiders. I try hard not to think about that....

Willie willies are small, localised tornado like wind storms. Really, really small. Only the width of a room. Not very strong but can make your car jump a little if one hits you when you’re driving. You usually see them in the middle of a ploughed paddock stirring up the dust in one spot and it moves across the paddock.

And you can keep crocs Jen. I haven’t got to the top end yet. Only got as far north as Airlie Beach actually. There are crocs north of Rocky but I didn’t see any. Thankfully. Did see an alligator once....it was in the little channel beside the Johnson Space Centre in Houston right beside where you get into the little tram things to go over to Mission Control.

Reading This Week:

Reading Prompt #16: book about mental illness
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green.

Reading Prompt #34: book published in 2018
The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

Currently Reading: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

QOTW: My favorite book that I read in school was Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. My parents had this book in the house when it was first published and loved it because it reminded them of our Irish family. I wanted to read it too, but my parents thought I was too young. Then, a few years later I had to read it in 10th grade English.

In college, my favorite was The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

This week I finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. It was fantastic! I finished it several days ago and I'm still thinking about it. Which is a problem for my newest book, The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith. I'm having trouble getting into it.

QotW: I was required to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I loved that book. Thank you, Mr. Pease!

Milena wrote: "This week I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane on audio. I loved this book. I wonder if this had everything to do with Neil Gaiman's narration, or if I would have loved it ju..."

I am reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane for the previous Goodreads award winner. It won the fantasy category in 2013.

Heather wrote: "I'm so jealous of some of the books you were assigned for class! I blame our school board for supporting censorship. We were never going to be allowed to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Catch-22 or T..."

Wow...that's crazy. Glad it didn't seem to dampen your love of reading though.

This week I finished 3 books for this challenge, a Christmas carol, deja dead and when Hitler stole pink rabbit. Needed to concentrate on my other challenge after that as I’ve fallen a bit behind with it! So I’m now on 18/52.

My favourite book we read at school was blood brothers, I remember going to the theatre on a school trip to watch it after we’d read it. I’m waiting for the chance to see it again as an adult.

Jen wrote: "I don't know. I'm pretty ancient but still remember lots of books from childhood/teens. Just reread Macbeth for the first time in 30 years and could still recite huge chunks. My memory does annoy childhood friends though and I struggle to reread anything as by page 3 I remember the whole book."

Oh, I remember tons of books from my childhood/teens, but I have a hard time remembering which ones were required reading was the problem. I was always reading. :-)

Nadine wrote: whoa. where did you go to school?? that's horrifying!

I don't understand why people are so afraid to introduce ideas to kids.

A very rural, very conservative part of Indiana. Even as a kid, I thought this all seemed pretty fishy.

Sarah wrote: Wow...that's crazy. Glad it didn't seem to dampen your love of reading though.

Just the opposite! I really liked one of the books with a lot of redaction (I can't remember the title, though) so I went to the library and read all the parts our teacher had marked out. I told everyone in my class what happened in those sections. I don't remember being shocked or scared. There were a few mild curse words and maybe mild violence. Everyone was really disappointed it wasn't something racier!

Nadine wrote: "Heather wrote: "... Even the non-controversial books we read were often redacted. Our teachers used a black Sharpie to cross out sections of the books. ..."

whoa. where did you go to school?? that..."

I do understand holding back some stories in that sometimes kids just aren't ready to deal with certain things yet, but the thing is that being ready is much more of an individual thing than a being at a certain age thing. I have a friend whose sister had nightmares as a teenager because of the descriptions of German concentration camps in The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom, but I loved that book from the age of about 8 and it never overly upset me. Trying to figure out in a class of 30 or so who's ready for what seems like an impossible job.

Heather wrote: "I'm so jealous of some of the books you were assigned for class! I blame our school board for supporting censorship. We were never going to be allowed to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Catch-22 or T..."

That's crazy! I went to a Catholic school but we still read about a wide range of topics in English Literature class many of which had themes of rebellion, justice etc.

The only thing that I remember that was akin to censorship was when I was in the library once and saw the His Dark Materials books in a pile with a note that said 'redacted'. Since Philip Pullman is a vocal atheist with a particular objection to the Catholic Church who he has said inspired the villains in his series I can see why a Catholic school would not want to support him.

Hi everyone,

Late check in from me, in the one part of the UK that wasn't buried under snow last week. We had a little bit on Tuesday but it was mostly gone by Wednesday.

This week, I finished my microhistory Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing. I found this a really interesting read! I love etymology and learnt a lot. It's not just about swear words, it also covers oaths (hence the 'holy')

I'm still reading Earth Inc but haven't got much further with it. I just keep finding myself picking other things up whenever I have reading time.

I also started Our Man in Havana for a book that's also a stage play. It's a light, amusing read so far.

QOTW
This is an easy one - To Kill a Mockingbird. We only had to read up to a certain point but I finished it the day I got my copy. It's still one of my favourites.

Really late check in, but I finished another three books.

30/50

Finished:
1) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running for a book about or involving a sport - a really interesting read, but it inspired me more as a writer than as a runner. Not a genre I enjoy very much.

2) Red Rising for a book set on a different planet - I really loved this book and plan on reading the rest of the series. It's highly derivative, but very entertaining.

3) The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories for a book about mental health - so relatable and creepy. I really loved this one.

Currently reading:
1) Golden Son
2) Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1 & Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Vol. 2

QOTW:
There were a lot of books that I really loved studying in school - Things Fall Apart, The Handmaid's Tale, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Measure for Measure, and Beowulf to name a few. I went to an arts school with advanced literature classes, so we were always reading very interesting material and were often allowed to choose our own literature to study. They also encouraged students to explore literature from different countries and by non-white and/or female authors.

Things got much less interesting in university. I remember Bridget Jones's Diary being on my first year reading list, along with a prof who made us "draw our Grecian urns." Oh, and a lot of dumb questions like "If Dorian Gray was a woman, how would that change the story?" and "What did the author intend by..."* The only good literature class in university was Russian literature in translation.

*A personal pet peeve of mine - unless you recently sat down to tea with Oscar Wilde and/or he left explicit, detailed documentation about the work in question, you can't possibly know what his true intentions were.

This week I'm reading three books (!): A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens for prompt 3 (next book in a series) and Middlemarch by George Eliot for prompt 11 (female author who uses a male pseudonym) - also I'm about to start reading Hard Times by Charles Dickens for my English Lit degree!

Question of the Week:
My favourite assigned reading was either Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake, or The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Both gorgeous books that opened my eyes to the possibilities of language.

QOTW

I do not remember which book but I do remember that we had to do book reports (this was in the late 1950s). I was reading Not As a Stranger by Morton Thompson. I do remember I had to get the report done and so I read the final pages. I missed the most important part of the book in my report. I was working, had other classes and just was not able to read the complete book.


Today I finished The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

Wow, I almost completely missed this check-in! We're back to sunny days, which is nice, as I'm driving to Denver a lot lately, but the wind is wicked! I had to fight to stay in my lane on I-25 Monday, and at those speeds, tumbleweeds can really pack a punch.

For week 9, I finished only one book, but it was a good one: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. I'm using it for the heist prompt, but it would also work for the "problem facing society today" prompt. Which is really unfortunate, considering it's set in the 1950s.

And that brings me up to 13/42 and 1/10, or (with multi-dipping) 19/42 and 2/10.

QotW:
This is a tough one! I'm not going to count books I got to choose from a list, which is where I found many school-based reads I loved. And the forced reads I hated are so much more memorable! But I think To Kill a Mockingbird in high school wins out here.

Kerry wrote: "I am reading Wuthering Heights and it took me days to get into as I honestly had to google it to understand the first couple chapters. I now know that it is being narrated by a hous..."

I've been struggling with it, too, and this is a RE-read for me! Seriously, I do not remember being so lost when I read it in high school. You'd think it would be the other way around.

Christy wrote: "... Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America [great so far; I'm looking forward to a righteous takedown of Thomas Jefferson]..."

I just bought a copy this weekend and am so looking forward to reading it! I have it earmarked for Penguin's November prompt (a book about the country you live in), but I will probably go ahead and start in now.

Catching up on my check ins

On the 26th feb I finished Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World on audio book. I’m using this for the prompt “a novel abased on a real person’. Not sure this would be considered a novel so it’s probably a bit of a cheat but it’ll do for now. This was a really long book and I’ll be honest if it has been in hard copy rather than audio I might have given up. I joined a bit when there was too much detail on the wars but found it really interesting how much of what we now know in modern life dates back to his legacy. If you are in to history of that era it’s worth a read and it does interest me in reading more of people from around the same time period. Next person I’m interested in reading more about if Marco Polo who is mentioned in this book.

QOTW: my favourite book assigned to read at school is without a doubt Goodnight Mr Tom Book & Tape. It’s a beautiful heartfelt war time book. I first read it at 11 years old and it was the first book to make me cry! One of the few books I have also reread and would read again and again!