Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

Judy wrote: "Ok, I'll pick up something else then and worst case I can probably fit one more in - I'm on a roll so far this week!"

That's great to hear!

We need to pick up last week's slack a little ;-)

Not that it is going to change much since the leading team has about a million more points than most of the other teams but still!

All good Judy!

It's taken me three weeks so far (with a couple of days off for Madame Bovary), but the end is in sight! to be honest, I thought it would take me at least two months, so I can't complain, lol.

That is pretty impressive!

Though I think if I didn't keep reading other things, I'd move through it a little quicker as well. There's a BR here in the group for Les Mis, where we're reading the book over the course of the year, in case you haven't found that thread yet. Can't remember who all participates..

I'm spending a couple of hours every day making cards for an upcoming craft fair, which keeps my hands busy, but leaves me free to listen to plenty of audio. It also helps that I listen at 1.5x speed (most of them talk sooooooo slowly, lol!)

I've got the extra time at the moment, as the charity shop I volunteered for was forced to move last month, and I can't get to the new site easily. I'll be looking for a job soon, but decided to take the summer off to spend with my son, who is growing up way too quickly, and will be away to uni in only a couple of years!

My first stop for jobs will be the bookshops in town, lol!

COMPLETION POST



6 August
336 pages

T: Title
A: Allison Remy
Z: Zach

Genre: no

Btw, my other book I will be done tomorrow and it also has a Z character

That's something I like hearing :-)

Completions post:

Title: My Heart and Other Black Holes
Author: Jasmine Warga
Date read: 4 August
Pages: 320
Letters:
A- character: Aysel Leyla Seran
T- character: Tyler


Title: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Author: J.K. Rowling
Date read: 5 August
Pages: 384
Letters:
A-character: Albus Dumbledore
P-character: Percy Weasley


Title: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Author: J.K. Rowling
Date read: 6 August
Pages: 453
Letters:
T- character: Sybil Trelawney
P- character: Peter Pettigrew
A-character: Albus Dumbledore

Completion post

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Date read: 6/8/19
Pages: 554
Letters:
Z - author
T - title
P - character Pfiffikus
A - character Alex Steiner

Completion post

Title: The Fear
Author: Charlie Higson
Date read: 6/8/19
Pages: 496

Letters:
T - title
O - char Olivia
P - char Paul
A - char Al
Genre: no

After finishing The Book Thief, I kinda feel like rereading I Am the Messenger - and I assume another Z won't hurt...

I will finish a Z book tomorrow.

Lots of Zs coming in! :-D

What did you think of The Book Thief, Judy?

I liked it a lot more than I expected! I enjoyed the way it was written (though I don't think it's anything super special) and I quite liked the characters and the story - much better than the thoroughly unappealing blurb 😂 all in all, I'm definitely glad I finally gave it a chance.

Completion post

Title: Les Misérables
Author: Victor Hugo
Date read: 07/08/2019
Pages: 1463 (default for audio)
Letters:

T - Thénardier (ch)
P - Marius Pontmercy (ch)
A - Azelma (ch)


WOOHOO!

Congrats, Sammy! 🎉🎉🎉

Judy wrote: "Congrats, Sammy! 🎉🎉🎉"

Thanks Judy. I'm going to guess that my husband will be thankful I will actually talk to him now, rather than wander about with my headphones on all the time, lol!

I can imagine 😂

I'm still waiting for that burst of motivation that'll get me to finally pick Les Mis back up again - and actually make good progress or even finish...

Judy wrote: "I can imagine 😂

I'm still waiting for that burst of motivation that'll get me to finally pick Les Mis back up again - and actually make good progress or even finish..."

I guess it helps that I regularly read 1000+ page books, so they don't tend to scare me. In fact, if done well, I find them even more rewarding :)

I'm on a mission to get through as many as the 1001 books as I can, and as I'm only a little over 100, I've still a ways to go! lol.

Congrats, Sammy!! :-DD


Sunday is Les Mis day for me. Unless I fall into the tv show trap haha. I'm hoping to use the rest of the month to finally, finally get on track with this book. Maaaaybe even get a little headstart on the coming parts for the next months.

Sammy wrote: "Judy wrote: "I can imagine 😂

I'm still waiting for that burst of motivation that'll get me to finally pick Les Mis back up again - and actually make good progress or even finish..."

I guess it h..."

Which list are you using for this?

I've got one of those lying around as well that I printed out years ago but can't remember where I got it from.. BBC? Maybe?

I think I'm not per se scared of big books, it's just that they take so long and I'm used to finishing a book at least every other day! I think now that I've got the audiobook (and am finally free to read whatever again after this challenge), I'll make a lot more progress.

I'm also planning to get back on track this month, but I'm leaving on a 3 week trip on the 23rd and we'll see how much time I can dedicate to that (and if I really want to bring that chunkster with me) while travelling.

Completion post

Title: If I'm Being Honest
Author: Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka
Date read: 7/8/19
Pages: 362
Genre: yes (56 people)
Letters:

O - character Owen
P - character Paige
A - author

Eldarwen wrote: "Which list are you using for this?"

I've got a physical copy from a couple of years ago, but I'm also using this to yick them off as I go...

https://www.listchallenges.com/1001-b...

I looooooove these lists, off to check how many I've read!

Judy wrote: "I think I'm not per se scared of big books, it's just that they take so long and I'm used to finishing a book at least every other day! I think now that I've got the audiobook (and am finally free ..."

The way I look at it, is that it doesn't really matter to me how long a book is. If I read 1000 pages, it makes no difference if they're in one book, or in three. In fact, all my favourite books are close to 1000 or over, so given the choice, I'd probably go for the chunkier ones, unless I'm doing a challenge where it's all about amount of books read, and pages don't matter, lol.

Judy wrote: "I looooooove these lists, off to check how many I've read!"

hehe, you and me both!

61 - not too bad, not amazing either.

The good news: Like 20 of those are on my TBR & I own copies of, just need to get to them! The bad news: This was a reminder that I've barely read anything by German authors outside of what we were forced to read for school. Random thought: It happened a lot more often than I expected that I have actually read another book by an author, just not the one on the list.

Sammy wrote: "The way I look at it, is that it doesn't really matter to me how long a book is. If I read 1000 pages, it makes no difference if they're in one book, or in three. In fact, all my favourite books are close to 1000 or over, so given the choice, I'd probably go for the chunkier ones, unless I'm doing a challenge where it's all about amount of books read, and pages don't matter, lol."

That's definitely true! Some irrational part of my brain disagrees though - I know reading 1000 pages doesn't actually take me that long, but if it's in one book, it just seems so much. Definitely trying to get rid of that mindset though - part of my reading goals for the year is to have a higher page count average (over 350 pages for sure, the closer to 400 the better) and I consciously read more big books so far this year than in a long time!

Completion post

Title: Sing You Home
Author: Jodi Picoult
Date read: 7/8/19
Pages: I listened to the audio, default is 466 pages

Letters:
P - author
Z - char Zoe

Genre: no

I'm on 105 on that list, and have another 100 or so on my shelves. If I keep reading the way I have this year, and stick mostly to books on the list, I'll be done with them all in a decade or so, lol!

Unlikely, as I have hundreds of books not on the list sitting waiting to be read too, but hey, I'm sure I'll get there eventually :)


My average page count for the year so far is 367, although the audio books really bring that down! most of them are listed as 4-12 pages!

Part of why I'm looking forward to two weeks off work (starting next Wednesday evening!!) is that I can finally grab some of my bigger books to read - the ones that are too chunky to take to work with me, or the chunky ones I really do not want to damage in my bag because oh so pretty haha.

I've had a time where I barely read any chunksters but this year I find myself grabbing them more often over the smaller ones.

Oh wow, Morvern Callar is on that list! I'm impressed :-) Pretty good book, if very odd!

And Nervous Conditions - don't often see that mentioned either. Good read.

I've read 56 of these books and I've got 20-30 books lying around that are also on the list. But there are a lot on there I would never pick up (Dickens....) so I'd never finish haha.

Eldarwen wrote: "I've read 56 of these books and I've got 20-30 books lying around that are also on the list. But there are a lot on there I would never pick up (Dickens....) so I'd never finish haha."

Not a fan of Dickens? I'm quite partial myself, but there are some others I'm going to struggle with. I find Virginia Woolf irritating, and Joseph Conrad is a boring, boring, booooooring man. Gonna be a fight to get past the ones of theirs I haven't read yet!

Heart of Darkness, teeeeeeerrible read.
The first Dickens I read was Hard Times and I struggled with it a lot. And I didn't like the writing in A Christmas Carol, so I've decided not to pick up a Dickens again. He writes too much block text for my liking as well.

Virginia Woolf is.. well.. I've only read To The Lighthouse and that was a bit of a struggle as well. It was however also required reading, as were the Conrad and the Dickens, so that may have tainted my experience a little bit as well.

This is it!

The Final Countdown ;-)

I've never been interested in Dickens but early this year the editions I like were suddenly all around 4€ on Amazon and I was like .......why not so now I've got Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities & Oliver Twist waiting for me to read them. I actually plan to pick up GE next week - let's see where this goes!

I've only read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and I actually quite liked it! Though it definitely was an exhausting reading experience.

I've been quite lucky in a way, as I was only assigned The Water Babies (which I dutifully detested), Robert Burns poems (which I had already read and loved) and some dreadful book about neanderthals I can't even remember the title of, lol.

The only other book I was "forced" to read in school was Momo in German, and I LOVED it!

My favourite Dickens is David Copperfield. There is also a fantastic audio version of it with Richard Armitage narrating.

I was curious, so asked Google what the neanderthal book could have been. Turns out it was The Inheritors by William Golding. I thought Lord of the Flies was ok, but then, I was never forced to read that one, lol.

Completion post

Title: Yellow Brick War
Author: Danielle Paige
Date: 7/8
Pages: 270
Letters:
O - Ozma
P - Author

Retelling MPG

Title: Scorched Treachery
Author: Rebecca Ethington
Date: 5/8
Pages: 376
Letters:
T - Thom
O - Ovailia

Title: Soul of Flame
Author: Rebecca Ethington
Date: 8/8
Pages: 391
Letters:
T - Thom
O - Ovailia

Sammy wrote: "My favourite Dickens is David Copperfield. There is also a fantastic audio version of it with Richard Armitage narrating."

That's sounds really good! Added it to my Audible wishlist 😉

Momo is fantastic! 😍

The only thing about Momo I vaguely remember is seeing the movie when I was little and for some reason being scared shitless. My mum didn't understand haha.

Eldarwen wrote: "The only thing about Momo I vaguely remember is seeing the movie when I was little and for some reason being scared shitless. My mum didn't understand haha."

I watched the TV show when I was a kid and me and my sister were so scared of the Men in Grey when they first showed up!

Completion post

Title: Alien Artifacts
Author: Joshua Palmatier
Date read: 8/8/19
Pages: 304 pages

Letters:
T - char Tad
O - char Sophia Odwele
P - editor (? does this count?)
A - title

Genre: no

Judy wrote: "Sammy wrote: "My favourite Dickens is David Copperfield. There is also a fantastic audio version of it with Richard Armitage narrating."

That's sounds really good! Ad..."

It's my opinion that Richard Armitage should narrate all audio books. so he'd better learn to read faster, lol.

I've never seen a tv or film version of momo. Just read it that once in class, but it really stuck with me.

I think it was a German only production. So I'm not sure you'd even be able to find a subbed or dubbed version somewhere online.