2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Ah February... love is in the air, Cupid is firing off his arrows... Are you one of those people who'd like to tell Cupid where he could stick those darn things? Then this is the challenge for you! (No Reading Necessary).

It's a Love/Hate Thing Mini Challenge:

1. When the Silver Screen is Tarnished: Read a book that has a movie/TV adaptation or tell us about a book you loved that had a movie/TV show you hated.

2. No Way, No How!: Read a book with an impossible obstacle that must be overcome or tell us about a type of book/scenario you love to read about but would hate to actually do/experience.

3. Nobody Loves Me: Read a book that is told all or in part from the bad guy/gal's perspective or tell us all about a literary villain you love to hate.

4. If It Ain't Broke...: Read a book that has a relationship that is formed or broken or tell us about a series or author that you started off loving but wound up hating.

Rules:

1. You can combine reading with the alternate option.
2. Rereads/challenge combining/any format is fine.
3. You can keep track in your member section, but please post here as well so we can all see your answers!
4. Hate is a strong word, we'll happily settle for strongly dislike. ;)

Categories:

All Fired Up!: 4 complete
Moderately Distraught: 3 complete
Slightly Disturbed: 2 complete
Trying to Work Up Steam: 1 complete

***This thread will be opened for comments near the end of January. In the meantime you can think about your books/answers. Enjoy and have fun!***

This topic is now open for comments. Nikki, Sara and myself will be checking in as challenge leaders.

Please note that you do not necessarily have to read any books to participate in this challenge (a new concept which if people seem to enjoy it, we'll continue to offer it monthly).

You may begin deciding on what you will read or how you will answer, but don't start reading or posting answers until February 1st!

Have fun and happy reading! :)

Obviously I should have made a complete crackpot category just for me but I neglected to do so!

Challenge Participants
Sara 2/2 Complete!
Nikki 0/?
Tatum 1/4
SilverRaindrops 1/?
Johanna 4/4 Complete!
Trevor 4/4 Complete!

I am in too but I am not sure how many just yet. I need to plan it out.

I hope you are all thinking about your answers and/or books for this challenge. I have mine ready to go and will complete this without reading one book ;)

I'll join in, but I think I'll try and read them as well as talking about it.
Actually I'm using this challenge as an excuse to force myself to finish A Game of Thrones ;).

I´ll go for all 4 for this! Might have to read at least one. But I have to ask everyone: do you know any (good) books that have the bad guy/girl as narrator? None comes to mind and I would love read one like that!

The most famous one that comes to mind immediately is A Clockwork Orange. Some would certainly say that Lestat is a bad guy, his POV is explored in The Vampire Lestat (second in the series). I could likely think of/research more.

Edit: Grendel (the Beowulf monster POV), American Psycho (though let me say I did not like this).
Edit again!: Good Omens tells part of the book in third person through the demon Crowley. Now it's humour, so if he's really a "bad guy" is debatable, but he's certainly batting for the other team so to speak. (One of my all-time favourite books.)

I am for sure in for 1 book. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It's on my Feb TBR list. It qualifies for #1

I will participate for 4 books here, however a majority of them will just be comments not actual reading!

Got you added Trevor! And I am all in favour of completing the challenge doing a minimum of reading or none at all!

So I will get us started with this challenge by answering Question #1. A book you loved that had a TV show/movie you hated. Just to give everyone an idea of how they might want to give their answers! ;)

I received the first three books in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned) when I was 15. To put this in some context, there weren't all these vampire novels back then. The only other one I'd ever read was Bram Stoker's Dracula. I absolutely loved these books! I read them all twice and when the movie for Interview with the Vampire came out in 1994 I read them all again.

This post is not about the Interview with the Vampire movie. I loved that movie too. I won't admit how many times I went to see it in the $2 theater. I eagerly anticipated the making of the rest of the books in the series (at that point it was up to four).

Well I waited a very long time, all the way until 2002 to be exact. And even before the movie came out, I was a little disappointed that they had chosen to combine two books instead of devoting a whole movie to my favourite character, Lestat. But I was still chomping at the bit to go see Queen of the Damned when it arrived in theaters.

By now I had two children, including an eight month old baby and money was kind of tight. Going to see Queen of the Damned was a big night out for us. Children safely ensconced with mom and our bellies full of dinner courtesy of MacDonald's, we settled into our seats prepared to be blown away. Well... I was blown away by the sheer awfulness of the darn movie! Hubby (who does not read books) was completely lost despite my crash course in Anne Rice/Lestat lore. Heck, I was completely lost and I'd read the books three times! They'd had to cut so much to combine the two books into one huge mash-up of a mess it wasn't even funny.

As an afterward to this, I actually rented Queen of the Damned when it came out on video. I thought perhaps I had been harsh because hubby hadn't been enjoying it. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention because it was the first time we'd left my daughter with anyone... or maybe, as it turned out, I was just deluding myself into hoping it would be good. Still awful the second time around and still to this day the worst movie adaptation of a book I've ever seen.

I'll answer question 4 as my first contribution to this challenge:
4. If It Ain't Broke...: or tell us about a series or author that you started off loving but wound up hating.

After seeing the movie for Inkheart (in 2008), I immediately bought the first book in the series (Inkheart) with my saved up allowance and read the whole thing straight through in two days. So, naturally, the next day I bought the second book (Inkspell) and read that whole thing in two days. I wrote down in my book journal that it was "the best series I've ever read" (bear in mind, I was only 14). I loved these two books.

At this point, I didn't have a job; I couldn't afford the next book (Inkdeath), so I put it on hold for the library. I was the 200th person in line for it. My library allows 3 week checkouts and there were 43 copies available. Doing some math brings me to the conclusion that it took about 14 weeks (almost 4 months) to get the last book. I started reading it the second I got it.

Then I put it down the next day. I think I only got to chapter 3. And I can't quite remember why I didn't get into it. Waiting so long between books might have played a part in my not enjoying the last book.

This was four years ago, and I still remember this experience distinctly. Now I make sure I have access to every book in a series before I start reading the first one.

I had planned to re-read Inkheart and Inkspell and have Inkdeath out of the library (the line right now is nonexistent) but I never have. It's strange. I feel sort of regretful that I didn't finish the series. I think it's the only series I have started and haven't finished. Except The Hunger Games series. But that's a different story.

I'll answer question #4 first as well.
I love Fablehaven and its two follow-ups. Book number four had a few odd things here and there, but I thought it was alright, and I bought the fifth book anyway.
Because I love this series I bought A World Without Heroes - and I gave up after reading about 50 pages. What I loved about Fablehaven was the believability of the characters and the world that was created - then I read this one and I still cannot the believe that Brandon Mull has written both series. The main character and the story felt as unreal as possible and I couldn't imagine anything at all. I resold A World Without Heroes without even finishing it, which was a first for me.
The problem that I have now is that I still need to finish Fablehaven with book five but I'm scared it will turn out the same and I will start to hate the series I love.

Loving the posts so far, keep them coming!

I just realized that the book I just finished, Shadows in Flight, fits the number 2 category!
The impossible obstacle is (view spoiler)[that all four of the main characters (a dad and his three children) in the book have a genetic disease that causes them to be super smart from birth, but it also causes unstoppable growth, starting at puberty. Eventually, at age twenty or so, their heart can't keep up with their growth and they die (the father is over 4 meters tall; if he does any activity it strains his heart and will kill him, so he lays in the cargo bay of the spaceship doing nothing all the time). The subplot is about them trying to find cures for this illness (which is apparently impossible to cure). (hide spoiler)]
I rated this book 4 stars; a spoiler-free review is in my personal goal thread.

Excellent, so you are 2/4 for this challenge. Half way done, keep up the good work! :)

Got it! Good answer by the way :)

Updated. I agree with you (not about Jill Shalvis who I haven't actually read) but about authors who keep trotting out the same old plot etc with just a few differences. They tend to get old pretty quickly.

For my #3 I'll answer #1 - a book I loved that had a movie I hated.

Years ago (I was probably 11 or 12), my dad suggested to me that I read Watership Down by Richard Adams. I did and loved it. It was the first "classic" book I read and I was so thrilled that I liked it. When I heard there was a movie and my dad owned it, I was pumped. My dad said to me "don't watch the movie, it's terrible", but I was undeterred and told him so. He said fine and let me watch it.
Well, if that isn't the worst movie adaptation I do not know what is (actually, there probably are worse adaptations but at the time I didn't know of any). It did not follow the story line at all. I can't remember exactly what points were different from the book or what else I found so bad about it but I still remember how disappointed I was.
So the moral of the story is always listen to your father (about movies). :P

Hmm, I've already answered number 4, but the book I just read fits nicely in that category. I probably can't I double up on it, can I?

I don't have a big problem with doubling up actually, you satisfied both conditions of one of the options.

Therefore congrats Trevor on completing the challenge! (You can still do the remaining number if you happen to find time/a book before month's end).

Tatum wrote: "I don't have a big problem with doubling up actually, you satisfied both conditions of one of the options.

Therefore congrats Trevor on completing the challenge! (You can still do the remaining nu..."

woot! Well, the book I read for #4: If It Ain't Broke...: Read a book that has a relationship that is formed or broken is Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers. The main character in the book, Johnny, breaks old relationships when (view spoiler)[he is sent to a rehab center for alcoholism (hide spoiler)] and also forms a new romantic relationship later on in the book.

It's a Love/Hate Thing Mini Challenge:

1. When the Silver Screen is Tarnished:
I read

2. No Way, No How!:
I like triangles in books! The love kinds! When the girl has two guys she doesn´t really now how to choose.. but I would not want to be that girl! :)

3. Nobody Loves Me: Literary villain I love to hate must be from Harry Potter -> Snape. He is just so wonderfully annoying, even after reading ALL the Potter books, I just love to hate him, no matter what :)

4. If It Ain't Broke...:
I read .

Woohoo Johanna! And thanks for reminding me that I need to answer these still myself ;)

I almost forgot but at least for me it´s still 29th for a couple of hours ;)

2. No Way, No How!: Read a book with an impossible obstacle that must be overcome or tell us about a type of book/scenario you love to read about but would hate to actually do/experience.

Answer: I love reading ghost stories, both real and fictional. In reality I am one of the jumpiest night time chickens you'd ever want to meet (maybe from reading all those ghost stories!). Whatever the case, I would totally never go to one of these haunted locations and if weird things were going on in my house I'd freak.

3. Nobody Loves Me: Read a book that is told all or in part from the bad guy/gal's perspective or tell us all about a literary villain you love to hate.

Answer: I actually admit to liking a number of fictional villains. I've applauded the cunning of Professor Moriarty and I've been known to cheer on Draco (shh, don't tell my kids that!). But the one villain I truly can't stand is Count Olaf from the Unfortunate Events series. I first encountered him when I bought Book One a way back in the day to read to my son. I am reading aloud and I am totally hating this guy, squinting furiously at the print to make sure I am reading the right stuff. Still can't stand him, still haven't read more than the first book... though the kids have and I hear he gets worse!

4. If It Ain't Broke...: Read a book that has a relationship that is formed or broken or tell us about a series or author that you started off loving but wound up hating.

Answer: Anne Rice with The Vampire Chronicles. Well, to begin with I was never fussy for anything else that Anne Rice wrote but for her vampire books. I still say the first five books of the series are the best vampire books I've read to date, bar none. That said, from Book 6 onward they went downhill. Still I faithfully read on, it was Anne Rice, it was the Vampire Chronicles. Then Blackwood Farm came out and that was it for me... bad, bad book. Weird amalgam of a bunch of things from all her books with a flat plot. I didn't even bother to get the 10th (and as it turned out to be last) book of the series.

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I know I am 45mins late, even if I use California time (which I am not on btw) but oh well, it was a hectic day, I'm a procrastinator and Goodreads was down for a long time earlier!

End Of February Wrap-Up:

Challenge Participants
Sara 2/2 Complete!
Trevor 4/4 Complete!
Johanna 4/4 Complete!
Tatum 4/4 Complete!
SilverRaindrops 1/1 Complete!
Nikki 0/?

Well, here you have it, the final tally for our first monthly you don't have to read a book challenge.

Big congratulations to Sara, Trevor and Johanna for completing it in time :)

I admit that I myself may have answered the questions after midnight, but hey, what the heck!

SilverRaindrops, I am not sure how many you intended to do and you haven't updated, so I figure you only meant to do 1 and completed the challenge, congrats! :) (If there's some other one you did, feel free to list).

Nikki, I know this was a lousy month for you, here's hoping for a better March!