The Reading Challenge Group discussion
Personal Challenges - 2016
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Chase's 2016 Challenge
2016 Books ReadJanuary
1. The Diviners
2. The Scorch Trials
3. The Cuckoo's Calling
4. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
5. Agnes Grey
6. The 5th Wave
7. The Wide Window
8. A Darker Shade of Magic
9. Yes Please
10. The Miserable Mill
11. The Austere Academy
12. The Ersatz Elevator
13. The Ghost Bride
14. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
15. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
16. Me Before You
17. The Graveyard Book Volume 1
February
18. Red Rising
19. The Kite Runner
20. Titus Andronicus
21. Death of the Mad Hatter
22. Confessions of a Shopaholic
23. Fahrenheit 451
24. The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
25. You're Never Weird on the Internet
26. The Other Boleyn Girl
27. One Hundred Years of Solitude
28. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
29. The Sleeper and the Spindle
30. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
March
31. Breakfast at Tiffany's
32. Atonement
33. And Then There Were None
34. The Paying Guests
35. Pet Sematary
36. An Abundance of Katherines
37. Sophie's Choice
38. The Wind in the Willows
39. The Grownup
40. The Queen of the Night
41. The Nightmare Affair
April
42. Naked in Death
43. The Knife of Never Letting Go
44. Ali's Pretty Little Lies
45. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
46. Uprooted
47. Pretty Little Liars
48. Cruel Beauty
49. The Glass Castle
50. Boy Meets Girl
51. The Marriage Plot
52. Fangirl
May
53. What Alice Forgot
54. Breakfast of Champions
55. Sleepy Hollow
56. Shakespeare's Sonnets
57. Life After Life
58. Tell the Wolves I'm Home
59. The Darkest Minds
60. Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career
61. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
62. American Gods
63. Salt to the Sea
June
64. The Time Machine
65. Everything Is Illuminated
66. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
67. The Stepford Wives
68. Catch-22
69. The Rape of Lucrece
70. The Blood of Olympus
71. The Storyteller
72. Masque of the Red Death
73. The Tempest
74. The Princess Bride
75. Fingersmith
76. Interview with the Vampire
July
77. A Clockwork Orange
78. The Vile Village
79. Murder on the Orient Express
80. The Hostile Hospital
81. The Valley of Amazement
82. Giovanni's Room
83. 11/22/63
84. The Carnivorous Carnival
85. The Secret Life of Bees
86. The Turn of the Screw
87. Her Dark Curiosity
88. Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
August
89. This Dark Endeavor
90. Passenger
91. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two
92. The Outlaw Demon Wails
93. Blindness
94. The Woman in Cabin 10
95. The Dinner
96. American Psycho
97. After Alice
98. Twelfth Night
September
99. The Alchemist
100. Unnatural Creatures
101. The Day the Crayons Quit
102. Cress
103. Beauty Queens
104. Mansfield Park
105. Northanger Abbey
106. Gulliver's Travels
107. The Book of Strange New Things
108. Eligible
October
109. The Couple Next Door
110. The Girl In The Ice
111. The Boleyn Inheritance
112. The Fall Guy
113. The Woman in Black
114. The Devil Wears Prada
115. The Slippery Slope
116. Lucky Jim
November
117. The Ringmaster's Wife
118. Dragonbreath
119. The Year of the Flood
120. MaddAddam
121. The Fireman
122. The Enchanted
123. Cat's Eye
124. This Side of Paradise
125. A Gambler's Anatomy: A Novel
December
126. White Teeth
127. All the Missing Girls
128. The Buried Giant
129. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
130. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
131. The Angel's Game
132. Swimming Lessons
133. 1Q84
Genre Challenge/Group ReadsJanuary: Contemporary/Literary Merit - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
February: Romance/Chick Lit - Confessions of a Shopaholic
March: Mysteries And Then There Were None
April: Fantasy Uprooted
May: Historical Fiction Life After Life
June: Minority Studies/LGBT Fingersmith
July: Science-Fiction/Dystopian A Clockwork Orange
August: Poetry/Plays - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
September: Travel - The Alchemist
October: Horror/Thriller - The Couple Next Door
November: Manga/Graphic Novels - Dragonbreath
December: Humour - Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Winter BingoN1: Classic - Agnes Grey
N2: Made into a Movie - The Scorch Trials
N3: FREE - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
N4: Science Fiction - The 5th Wave
N5: Humor - Yes Please
Accomplishment Badges
3 - The Cuckoo's Calling - A solid 3.5 stars. I found the story interesting, although I didn't like that most of the story was told through explaining rather than showing. You can figure out who-done-it before the ending though.
4 - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - I was torn by this one. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the interactions between all of the characters. On the other hand, I felt like some of the main points of the plot were just lightly glazed over, leaving the plot scattered overall.
5 - Agnes Grey - Glad to see that Anne Bronte keeps me as interested in her novels as her sisters have.
Chase wrote: "5 - Agnes Grey - Glad to see that Anne Bronte keeps me as interested in her novels as her sisters have."I love this book! :-)
6 - The 5th Wave - This really wasn't the book I thought it was going to be. I didn't expect the teen romance that makes up a large amount of this book. That's my fault because I didn't do the research.
8 - A Darker Shade of Magic - I liked the uniqueness idea of the multiple Londons and the characters, but I just couldn't get into the story for some reason.
9 - Yes Please - As far as these types of books go, this one was not my favorite. When I read Bossypants, I walked away feeling like I really learned something about Tina Fey. When I read Lets Pretend This Never Happened, I developed an obsession with Jenny Lawson and all that she stood for. With this one, I don't feel like the book contributed anything. that I didn't already deduce from watching Amy Poehler on television.
11 - The Austere Academy - Taking advantage of a Lemony Snickett 3-pack of the books 4-6 in the series. On the plus side, it makes for quick reading.
13 - The Ghost Bride - The beginning of this book showed some promise and was painted beautifully, and then it descended into popping into dreams and the spirit world and it just spiraled from there.
14 - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Another book where the beginning starts out interesting and spirals into a mess. The concept of Coldtown just didn't make any sense.
15 - The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - I was going through the motions with this book. It bored me. I didnt have any interest in the characters, or the plot, or the setting. There is an overabundance of descriptive writing and too little plot that makes for slow reading. Despite all that, I would be interested in reading future books from the author. I think she has promise.
16 - Me Before You - This is one of those books that I pushed off forever thinking it wouldn't be my type of book. I'm glad I finally decided to try it because I really liked it.
17 - The Graveyard Book Volume 1 - Not a graphic novel reader but it's on the Popsugar reading challenge. I think that The Graveyard Book was a good choice as a graphic novel because you get to see all of the fantasy elements.
18 - Red Rising - I had a difficult time getting over the first hump of this book, but I was much more engaged later. Regardless, it gets a little Lord of the Flies meets The Hunger Games which I thought detracted too much from the overall plot.
19 - The Kite Runner - I liked this one a lot. I can see why it was a hit. The only issue I had with this is that there wasn't as much depth as it could have had. The good guys are obviously good and the bad guys are obviously bad.
24. The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun - I feel like this was less a "happiness project" and more a "self-improvement project". Sure, self-improvement would lead to some happiness, but I didn't get the impression that she enjoyed doing some of the challenges she gave herself. But, it really took me 9 chapters to figure out why I hated this book. When I hit the chapter on "writing her novel" it became clear; the author just seemed so smug and un-relatable to me. Specifically, there was a section where she mentions that writing a novel in a month's time will take too much time away from "reading newspapers and magazines and having coffee with people" which is part of her full time job of being a writer.
Hi Chase, I really admire the way you're able to convey how you feel about what you read with your comments. (For example, I can completely understand what you mean about The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun)Happy reading!
25. You're Never Weird on the Internet - Truth be told, I don't know much about Felicia Day or her career other than the few tidbits from shows I've seen her on. Honestly, I'm not even sure what drew me to this book; title, maybe? That being said, I actually liked this book a lot for its genre. I think she tells an interesting story and I'm more interested in learning about her after reading about her life.
26. The Other Boleyn Girl - I am so glad to not have been a woman in the 1500s based on the way women are depicted in this book.
27. One Hundred Years of Solitude - I quite liked this one although I feel like I need to read it again to really understand all of the characters and the symbolism in this book.
28. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie - I really liked how the author uses the children of Hattie to tell a story about Hattie's life. You really gain a sense of her life through their struggles.29. The Sleeper and the Spindle - A nice retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
30. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban - I always consider a good memoir to be one where I want to know more about the person afterwards and I really found this to be an enlightening memoir.
32. Atonement - I really liked this one, although I found it a bit rambling at times. The language is very eloquently written.
33. And Then There Were None - I devoured this book in a day. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
34. The Paying Guests - I was a bit worried about how slow this book started, but it gets a lot more interesting after the first 100 pages or so.
36. An Abundance of Katherines - This one is okay. I enjoyed it more than some of the other John Green books I've read.
37. Sophie's Choice - It was really hard to get into this book. I found the first person narrator very pretentious. There was a lot of detractors away from the story line.
38. The Wind in the Willows - For a children's book, this one wasn't my favorite. Maybe if I had read it when I was younger.
39. The Grownup - Gillian Flynn has a knack for writing. Her short story was no exception although it was a tad predictable.
40. The Queen of the Night - A beautifully written book, except for the lack of quotation marks around speech. That drove me crazy.
41. The Nightmare Affair - It had a better plot than expected, but then of course it has the love triangle that is a requisite in all young adult books nowadays.
42. Naked in Death - Not my type of novel but I tolerated it nonetheless. Some of the scenes were a bit too graphic.
The Reading Challenge Group
Books mentioned in this topic
1Q84 (other topics)1Q84 (other topics)
Swimming Lessons (other topics)
Swimming Lessons (other topics)
The Angel's Game (other topics)
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Reading Goals for 2016:
1) Read the oldest book on my Goodreads TBR list each month. (I may skip some sequel books where I'm considering re-reading some of the series first)
2) Chip away at some of the Boxall Books