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2016 Individual Challenges
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Rumpelteazer's 2016 Challenge
July has been a good reading month, mostly due to finishing Stephen King's It and because for the past two weeks I've been house/dog sitting and have more uninterupted reading time. If I don't finish my current book I'll have read 4503 pages this month. I also finished 3 themes of my list.I did learn that if I'm going to do the theme of reading books bought prior to that month I will need to do better planning of buying books ahead of time, I also shouldn't do it in a period when a lot of books I'm interested in are released.
The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury.Okay. The middle bit was a bit slow to my taste and more could have been done with the actual Last Templar. I don't think I'll be continuing with this series.
On another note:
The new GR design is IMHO a big pile of poo. I want my discussion groups back on my homepage! (yes, I've alredy given feedback during the beta trials)
Belgravia by Julian Fellowes.Not really my thing this type of novel. I found it very predictable, but I could see it would work better for me as a tv series (this book was first published in installments).
I'm healing up from an eye infection. I got lots of reading done...and none of it was really worth the time, lol. You've been getting some good stuff read though!
Bianca wrote: "On another note:The new GR design is IMHO a big pile of poo. I want my discussion groups back on my homepage! (yes, I've alredy given feedback during the beta trials)"
There's another feedback survey asking about the discussion pages.
Eye infections suck. Hope it heals well.This week is a bust when it comes to reading. Probably a combination of having read a lot when house/dog sitting, going home (packing, cleaning, unpacking), a craft project for the shop window and a new computer game. However, I am enjoying The Stiletto immensely.
I filled out the survey about the discussion pages, too.
Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley.Great sequel to The Rook; lots of action, great humour and great characters. Hopefully the third book won't take as long to write as this one.
Bianca wrote: "Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley.Great sequel to The Rook; lots of action, great humour and great characters. Hopefully the third book won't take as long to write as this one."
Woot! Good to know! I have this already and just haven't gotten to it yet.
Transmission by Ambrose Ibsen.An okay horror story. My only two gripes were that some sentences didn't flow and had to be reread to fully understand them. Second, I think the author's got a thesaurus just before writing this book. Several times he used complicated words where the simple alternative would have been better. He used "surcease" three times, where "stop" would have been less jarring. It's a horror story about two university students and a war veteran, not about the queen of England.
lol
I saw that I have another book by Ibsen on my Kindle. Luckily, they aren't long books and hopefully it was written before the thesaurus or when it has lost its newness and feeling he needed to use it.
snicker
If it will make you feel any better...I had to DNF a book recently (KU) that used underlines instead of italics.O_O
And it was JUST as painful as it sounds.
Luckily it wasn't as bad as warranting a DNF. It was at most mildly annoying. I'll try the other book (first of a series) and see how that one goes.
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)A great second book. I love this series, although it's a bit of a norm to have the main character in crime and/or mystery series to have a problem Cormoran Strike's problem of having half his leg blown off is a bit different than the standard alcoholic, divorced, bad relationship problems you find in most of these types of books.
I do seem to have slowed down a bit this month. Luckily I should be at least a month ahead of my page count challenge at the end of this month so it isn't a problem. Next month I'm going to Belgium for a couple of days with my sister. The train ride is about 4 hours and since my sister has travel narcolepsy I will get a lot of reading time.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by Jack Thorne & J.K. Rowling.Normally I don't read two books by the same author back to back, but I only realised my previous book was by Rowling when I had already started this one. I loved this script, now I really want to go see the plays and see how they've incorporated all the effects described in the script.
Bianca wrote: "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by Jack Thorne & J.K. Rowling.Normally I don't read two books by the same author back to back, but I only realised my previous..."
I have seem opinions of this one range all over the place.
You need to keep in mind it's a script, not a novel. You get stage directions, short desriptions of sets, effects and emotions, very different from a novel. I think you need to be able to convert all this into a film in your own mind, if that makes any sense.
Bianca wrote: "You need to keep in mind it's a script, not a novel. You get stage directions, short desriptions of sets, effects and emotions, very different from a novel. I think you need to be able to convert a..."Yeah, I used to do theatre. But even one of my harry potter-crazed theatre friends gave this only 1 star.
I stopped read HP after book...3? IDK. I read Mercedes Lackey and she did the whole magic school thing when I was a kid.
I thought about it and I think people might not like it because it isn't the typical HP novel. There is an adventure and a foe to battle, but this story is more about relationships (friends, family). And although Hogwarts is one of the places featured in the play it isn't the most important place.
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware.In the beginning I was afraid this book would turn out like The Girl on the Train, where I would feel like slapping some sense into the main character. But the main character in this book got herself together. An okay book, though more could have been done with the burglary at the beginning of the book.
Since I'm three categories ahead of schedule I've decided to take a month off in September, so I can read whatever I feel like. One of the categories I still want to do is the full month of reading only stand alone books, but that'll take a bit of preparation of deciding which books I want to read.
I officially am in the midst of a reading slump. It isn't that I'm not enjoying the books I pick, I just don't read as much as I normally do.To try and get out of the slump I'm splurging on a bunch of (shortish) horror books. Hopefully they can get me back on track again.
I've almost finished my current book, hopefully tonight. But since we're going away for a couple of days the next book I'll pick will also be the book I'm starting the journey with. And I like to pick something special for trips and vacations.It doesn't help that lately I've gone a bit wild with buying new thrillers and horrors, plus I don't have a theme this month so that doesn't help either.
I hate vacation book stress.
I found another book with a ridiculous subtitle:I spy, I Saw Her Die: a gripping, page-turning murder mystery conspiracy crime thriller.:
I especially like the period just before the colon. And to top it off, the description on Amazon begins with "Is this the Crime Thriller of the year?".
Seriously, who thinks a book would sell better with a silly subtitle like this?
LOLIsn't it sort of an unspoken rule that you can't (or shouldn't) describe your own book as a "gripping, page-turning" book?
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.Very well written, but very slow with a disappointing ending.
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz.
An okay detective story. For a Sherlock Holmes story it was too easy a mystery and I figured it out early on in the book.
I've decided that in October I'll be reading only stand alone books. I've put a lot of them on my Kindle and will just see what strikes my fancy.
Gideon's Corpse by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.Nice adventure thriller fluff. Just what I needed.
I'm considering what to do for my reading challenge in 2017. I really like the challenge I set myself this year. However, I do notice that it has led me to neglect my ongoing series in favour of new books or series.I though about adding the rule that I also read at least two book from my ongoing series list. But, that takes my "required reading" up to six books a month. And I know I don't do when I feel restricted in what I'm allowed to read.
At the moment I'm considering just free wheeling it next year and to try and focus on my series. If I feel like it I might dedicate a month to a certain genre, length of book or what ever else I can think of.
This book description on Amazon must be the worst I've ever read. The one on GR is actually different and good, it might even be an interesting read. Why on earth the writer/publisher allowed the one on Amazon is a mystery to me.
Bianca wrote: "This book description on Amazon must be the worst I've ever read. The one on GR is actually different and good, it might even be an interesting read. Why on earth the writer/publisher allowed the o..."Good heavens. That's awful. LOL
The White Night by Desmond Doane.I really liked the first book in this series. But this one was just about okay. Too much of the two main male character acting as "men being men" and following a certain body part. Hopefully the next instalment will be better.
Well, well, well...I got some notifications!
Bianca wrote: "This book description on Amazon must be the worst I've ever read. The one on GR is actually different and good, it might even be an interesting read. Why on earth the writer/publisher allowed the o..."O_O
lolol
The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood.Good story. A bit slow and more could have been done with certain story lines, but a good read nonetheless.
I've started HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. A very Dutch sounding name, which is because he is Dutch and this is the translation of the Dutch version. Apparently the original is set in the Netherlands, the English version in the US (plus I assume names have been changed). It's a very good translation, I can usually spot those from a mile away, but for this one I only found out when I read some reviews after I'd already read 50 pages. Very gripping so far and after reading about 40 pages last night I did dream of the HEX, even if nothing really spooky has happened yet!
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.Very, very good horror thriller. So good, in fact, that I'm probably going to read the Dutch version at some point in time, to see what the differences were.
The Haunting of Ashburn House by Darcy Coates.Great little horror. My favourite type: a haunted house story. With the added bonus that there is no romantic storyline in sight.
My cousin just read a horror series that she said she had to take a break from. While she has become more conservative as we've gotten older, my cousin is a horror reader from waaaaaay back. So she's mostly "seen and read" it all.Want a rec? I can ask her.
Yes, please. This year year I seem to enjoy horror most.
Thanks for the recommendations. I've put them on my Amazon wishlist.I'm annoyed I can't go on an ebook buying spree at the moment. Due to a change in European laws my pre-paid credit card has stopped and the replacement credit card service is taking longer than expected to set up. On Monday I can finally sign up for a new card, at the end of the month I can change it to a card with more options.
It's a shame I can't do a no-spend month twice in a year.
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben.My first Coben book, I liked it...until the end. I didn't like the end, I hate finding out it's an unreliable narrator at the end of the story without having gotten any clue during the rest of the story. I think it's lazy writing, either the author doesn't know how to end the story or the author wants to end it quickly.
I have found a solution for my reading slump: I stopped playing SimCity on my tablet. I loved that game, but it had gotten to be a chore to fulfil all challenges and every level another challenge was added (or so it felt). I had a whole daily schedule to get those tasks done and there was no time to actually have fun building the city. So I quit cold turkey and now I have a lot more time to read again.
I've also decided on my last two categories for the year. It'll be mysteries and non-fiction. However, because most non-fiction books are slow reads for me I've decided to spread that category out over two months. Otherwise there is a chance that those four non-fiction books are the only books I will read in a month and this way I can read something else in between.I'm also itching to wipe my Kindle and start afresh. I usually do that once a year, when there are too many books on it. I'll try to hold off until the end of the year, so I can start 2017 with a clean Kindle.
Bianca wrote: "Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben.My first Coben book, I liked it...until the end. I didn't like the end, I hate finding out it's an unreliable narrator at the end of the story without ..."
My husband read Coben book - mostly he hated it: Six Years
Hubby's Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I play SimCity BuildIt on my iPhone.
OMG. I haven't opened a book in 2 days, lol. Sometimes it just takes over. But its also starting to irritate me so...
Charnel House by Graham Masterton.One of his earlier books and that's noticeable. It the "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" in book form. Masterton could have easily added 100 or more pages for building up tension and building up characters and the atmosphere. I'm not saying it's bad, it's entertaining and easy to read.
Someone in the House by Barbara Michaels.
The opposite of the previous book. It's mostly building up and hinting that something horrible will happen. Which is doesn't really do, at least not like it normally would in these types of stories. It's more a psychological horror, where the influences may or may not exist.
My first DNF of the year:The Sunbird by Wilbur Smith.
I've had the book for a while and when I read a Facebook post by James Rollins this weekend proclaiming this to be one of his favourite books I though it might be time to read it. I didn't even manage to read 60 pages before giving up. It was written in 1972 and is set in Africa where they are going to dig up an ancient city (or so I presume, I didn't get that far). The archaeologists are, of course, white and feel supreme to the native people. One of the characters, just having arrived in Africa throws pennies at the "pickaninnies" (sp?) because she thinks it's fun to see them scramble and there is also a hint of that hunting wild animals is the proper thing to do. It really disgusted me, I don't care how good the rest of the story is, it just isn't for me.
It did make me realize I was in the mood for an archaeological adventure thriller (always fun when my mood gets that specific), most of which seem to be serialized and are a no-no this month, but I did manage to find some, even a couple in my own collection.
But since I didn't have one on my Kindle and I had turned off my computer for the night I read Dead Lake by Darcy Coates. Another nice, little horror. Quick but nice and creepy.
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My least favourite book in the Body Farm series so far. Set in the early 90s when the body farm got set up. It took a while to get the story set up and started. It's also getting a bit old that the main character is in danger of criminal and is, at some point, implicated to be the criminal. Just one more book and I'm up to date with this series.