The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

Donna Jo wrote: "I just had a whole new batch of books come in for me at the library--I now have 22 books checked out, five of which are due on the 13th. And I have unread books on the Sony Reader. Must.stop.gett..."

I have been having similar problems with the library too lately ;-)

Some of you read a book a day? GEEZ!

I'm currently reading three fates by Nora Roberts

I am almost finished with the FDR book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which I have enjoyed tremendously, even though it's super long. I've also started reading The Help, which is excellent so far.

Just finished The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I don't know how I've managed to miss reading this before. I loved it. Am starting Beloved by Toni Morrison next.

I'm thinking of reading The Color Purple soon for the Color by Numbers Task. Glad to hear you enjoy it. I feel the same way; I'm amazed I haven't managed to read it yet.

Still reading Ulysses. It's an incredibly well written book but slow to get through the first time.
I started Dreamers of the Day: A Novel. I love the cover with the Egyptian pyramids on it.

Finally finished "prince Caspian"

I am currently reading "Her Fearful Symmetry." I don't like it so far, but I need to push along and finish it. Then I'm going to read "Firefly Lane" which was recommended by a friend.

Okay, I finished "Moon Called" last night. I am on Behind The Mask: The Life of Queen Elizabeth.

I am now reading Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. It was recommended by a friend. She loved it.

I am reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Finished Ulysses. I'm glad I read it and, with reservations (as any first time reader would have, I think), I rather enjoyed it. It was work, I must say, but good work. Taken slowly, this book is "do-able".
I'm glad I read it but reading it took a toll on my Challenge points. LOL!

About 1/3 of the way thru for Sandra's task about an epidemic. When I need a break from all the gloom-and-doom in two different centuries, I pick up , which I hope will work for Abigail's Odd Man Out task

I'm about 1/2 way through Sacajawea. It is super long- 1400 pages and is actually the longest book I've ever read. It's been sitting on my shelf for a long time and I'm really enjoying the story. I'll be proud of myself when I finish this one!

Jayme wrote: "I'm about 1/2 way through Sacajawea. It is super long- 1400 pages and is actually the longest book I've ever read. It's been sitting on my shelf for a long time and I'm really enjoy..."

Good for you, Jayme. Extra long books always are satisfying personal challenge. I can no longer read them in bed--I fall asleep and the weight of the book when it falls about does me in.

Finished Behind The Mask book, I am not typing out that long title again. I will be starting "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan".

Well I have about 50 pages in Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. While I waite for my taxi to take me to work (the airport as I am an air hostess) I just started A Single Thread byMarie Bostwick. I am about to start The 5th Horseman by James Patterson.

Donna Jo wrote: "Jayme wrote: "I'm about 1/2 way through Sacajawea. It is super long- 1400 pages and is actually the longest book I've ever read. It's been sitting on my shelf for a long time and I'..."

Thanks Donna Jo- I totally understand the bed thing- last night I fell asleep with it and wound up getting hit in the face!

I'm reading Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits, which is an interesting look at some classics. The author is quite humerous. I've added a few new books/authors to my TBR list. There's only 2 things to distract from this book: he spends a bit too much time with the Ancient Writers (Homer, Virgil, etc) ....and he likes Anna Karenina. LOL!
I'm listening to Travels with Charley: In Search of America. I haven't read Steinbeck in years and should reread some of his books. The descriptions and thoughts in this book are awesome so far.
I hope to be starting Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal today, which I hope will be a light read.

I just finished The Color Purple and now I'm starting The Art of Racing in the Rain. I have seven library books piled up on my nightstand right now. Yikes! I'm hoping to finish all of them by the end of the challenge, but a couple of them are long ones.

Now about 2/3 of the way thru - but have to take a breather every few chapters, so I'm also reading , which I'll use for one part of Lisa's task on Turning Back Time

Just finished The Tale of Murasaki: A Novel and will be starting A Season for the Dead. I am also listening to The Golden Compass.

I will be starting "Istanbul" today.

I am starting Running With Scissors. Three chapters in and I can tell it's going to be a crazy ride.

Reading Ice Skating: Steps to Success and listening to The Silver Chair, both for Roseann's 50-point task

I am slowing working through The Man with the Golden Arm, but it's too big for my work bag so I started Tender Is the Night for my subway reading.

Listening to for #20.1 and reading for #5.7 Year of the Tiger

BJ Rose wrote: "Listening to for #20.1 and reading for #5.7 Year of the Tiger"

I LOVE Heyer's books. I have a tendency to judge all other historical romances against them (usually to the others' detriment.) She so often balances the forceful male and the strong heroine just right, so that neither becomes obnoxious.

Another Heyer lover here! I read a lot of them many years ago, but mostly they were library books, so now I'm adding them to my personal library, and rereading them as I do.

I am still reading The Screwtape Letters. I am also reading Life of Pi.

How is the Screwtape Letters coming along?

OK. It is for my Sunday school class, so I am only reading two letters a week. That way the letters we are discussing for that week are fresh in my head.

ah.....

It is very interesting. It is kind of a strange twist on humanity, but that's C.S. Lewis's style.

I have just started reading "The Time Traveler's Wife"

I love C.S. Lewis Cat.

Finished listening to The Golden Compass and started reading The Help which is for my local book club.

I am currently reading Walk Two Moons and The Screwtape Letters.

Well I finished Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell while I was in Los Angeles. I am back in Israel and I strted two: The Bear Went Over the Mountain: A Novel by William Kotzwinkle & Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

I've started After the Quake and am listening to The Year of the Flood during my commutes.

I finished "Istanbul" and I am now reading "Frozen In Time: The Enduring Legacy of the 1961 US Figure Skating Team"

I finished After the Quake, which was an interesting mix of short stories, all set in Japan just after the Kobe earthquake. The characters all go through a personal shaking up of their own.
I'm still listening to The Year of the Flood during my commute to/from work and have started Lolita (for the Russian author task) and Ender's Game (to finish the Sci Fi task).

Working on The Stone Diaries for part of #25.1

I thought this was interesting...a list published by the BBC as the top 100 books that have been published. According to the article, the average person has actually only read six of the books. How do you fair?
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird
- Harper Lee
6 The Bible (just parts, not in entirety)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some titles, not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X,
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair
- William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 71 of them... and parts of several others. Never heard of a couple of them. Guess it's time to start reading.

I read about 41 of them and parts of some others. So far we seem to be fairing pretty well compared to average people according to the article.

I've read 40 of these and others are on my TBR list.

I read 27 of them and all the Jane Austen and Memoirs of a Geisha are on my TBR list. I don't know if I should include Adventures of Sherlock Holmes because I read many of those stories in other books. Btw, I finished "Frozen In Time: The Enduring Legacy of the 1961 US. Figure Skating Team" last night. I am starting "The Silver Chair" today.

I've read 56 and have a bunch on my shelf to read and I'm currently reading Persuasion. I'm not sure why, but I just do not have the Austen bug- I've never liked anything by her, no matter how hard I try.

I finally finished Sacajawea at 1328 pages!! It took me a long time but it was worth it. I highly recommend it- I learned a lot!

I started Marley and Me for a bit of a change. I love it so far. My 15 year old lab was just put down last summer, and these stories are so close to what it was like to raise her it's amazing. It's bringing up lots of great memories!