Pocki’s Comments (group member since Jan 24, 2016)

Pocki’s comments from the A challenge of relative ease and merriment group.

Hi Cathrin, and welcome!
I think the group shelves will be very useful when looking for books in genres you're find tricky. Click "view activity" on the rightmost side for a book in the list and you can see if the person who entered it left a comment. Maybe they hated it and then it might not be a good book for that genre for you.

Yeah it's quite a new genre for me too, but I really like the sound of it, which is why I included it in the challenge. I'm almost done with my first microhistory of the year, which is this:

Hi Laura! Welcome :D
When I wrote mystery I thought of it as a kind of catch all for crime related stuff. But calling it "crime" makes people thing only of hard boiled police or forensic scientists you know? Maybe I should just change it to mystery/crime to make that more clear? Or maybe just keep it mystery and have you all interpret it however you want ;)

I think I will probably read a cozy mystery. Cause a series I read has a new book coming out in summer so that will be an easy one for me.

I mean... wikipedia says "Microhistory is the intensive historical investigation of a well defined smaller unit of research (most often a single event, the community of a village, a family or a person)."

I think for the most famous microhistory books are about the history of a thing - like a specific foodstuff, a specific disease, a specific concept (I once started a book on virginity for example, but was distracted. I'll probably go back to it as some point though) etc. Cause wouldn't the history of a person be a biography?

Aaanyways, I think the history of beanie babies and the economic cray bubble in which they existed would count as microhistory for sure! It is very specific after all. And like I said somewhere: you can always change your mind later if you feel like counting something else. For microhistories there's always the overlap with non-fiction (since it's a sub genre of non-fiction) after all.

That blog is magnificent! You should challenge yourself to make the romance book come from there! :P
I'm totally reading this right now just cause you linked me to the cover Sofie and it's... not great

Sofie, I think I told you when you picked it up that I found Wheel of Time beyond boring when I read it in my teens. Glad we can agree on that one ;) And so looooong.

These are all books to be released this year that I want to read or at least check out. All possible to fit into other categories as well:

By all means, shelve away!
I will have a lot for some categories too. I mean last year I read something like 27 non-fiction books (of all kinds). And fantastical and YA tend to sneak in in decently high numbers too. And really, it's super easy to read a whole bunch of children's books!


Okay I'm going to say that as of yet I have finished:

a book for children (Leo: A Ghost Story by Mac Barnett)
a collection of short stories (The Heart of Aces by a bunch of people. I do not really recommend it)
fantastical fiction (Star Wars: Before The Awakening by Greg Rucka)

Welcome Tom! Maybe if you're lucky there'll be a new military history book released this year ;)

It can be either. Books can be banned in one single country, by some part of the church, by schools in another country, etc etc. It's all up to you!

I find that pretty much any interesting book as been banned somewhere, and there are so many awards out there. I am curious about a book my mother is reading that won a Swedish book award last year, so might pick that one up. I'm also going to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo and that has definitely won awards, and all his books are banned in Iran XD I'm really just going to leave those categories and kinda see what falls in by accident.

As for microhistories I highly suggest looking at this list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1... and just picking whatever strikes your fancy. I have the first five already lined up actually.

Well done Sofie! You're off to a splendid start! :D

I'm going to wait to add some of mine I think. Cause I'm not sure what I want where. At least I have contenders for short stories, non-fiction, children's, fantastical, and I suppose romance too. And I definitely have both male and female authors down.

Hi everyone! I'm Rebecka (or Pocki) and I started this whole thing. I decided I wanted to make a challenge for myself that was broad enough that I could make it without hating parts of it, but still pushing myself to diversify my reading a bit. And I thought hey, why not bring my friends into this trap too?

I don't think I have dark secrets. I'm the one who literally has skeletons in her closet (although maybe not right now cause I moved them, and also most are on display) but happily speaks about them.

I'm not actually sure what my my favourite genre is right now. I like some fantastical aspect to things though. Be it fantasy, sci fi, some ghosts or witches, a classic post apocalyptic YA thing, etc. As such, I think contemporary fiction will be the one that will be the trickiest one for me. Easiest will probably be short stories cause I already checked that box and non-fiction cause I always end up reading a bunch of that and already have at least one behind me and two ongoing. Microhistory is on the list cause I personally want to make this my year of microhistories. I'm currently trying to get through one about seeds, but I want to read a bunch more.

Who are you? Tell us EVERYTHING! Your darkest secrets and desires... or you know, whatever you want. Maybe something about what you like to read and what you think will be easy and/or hard with this challenge?

Did you read a great book for this challenge? Do you want help finding something for a specific category? Did you really hate what you just read?

What have you read so far that fit the categories? There's no doubling up, but you can totally change categories and/or later if you want.

When you've read a book you want to count towards the challenge, feel free to add it to the group shelf. As I understand it you can't add a custom shelf without adding a book. So if you're the first one to finish a book for a specific category, make a shelf! It doesn't have to have the exact name as is on the list in the description, and you can shorten it if you want (like "female author" or "YA" etc).

Do you have any questions?