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My current side-read is A Game of Thrones. I'm about 40% of the way done and hope to finish it within the next week.After I finish GoT, I have a feeling that I'm going to end up reading The Way of Kings slowly throughout the next few weeks. I've heard so many great things about it and I just want to jump into it already.
Britteny wrote: "And then there's those of us who can't read more than one book at a time. hee hee. I find those that can, amazing. I'm a pretty fast reader but my mind can't switch back and forth easily."Ha, yeah, I tend to overextend myself and get mixed up too. But yet, I do it anyway.
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Side read? Any free short story I can find!
Elizabeth wrote: "Ooh, I'll need your recommendations for week 12 then Jessica - I'm struggling to find a book of short stories!"Michael McClung has a few out there (I read one of his today and was blown away). For week 12 I may read the Grimm Brothers, though. I have a weak spot for original fairy tales.
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So currently, I'm reading 3 'bad/boring' books, I'll finish them today or tomorrow as I'm at more than 80% and, since yesterday, I'm treating myself with the 1st How to train your dragon and I'll finish it today because I'm liking it a lot :D
I've no problems switching worlds, characters and stories. I can take the 'switch every chapter' road without getting lost :)
I try to read one book at a time though I'm doing a chapter by chapter review of The Series of Unfortunate Events for my blog so technically I do have two on the go.I'm trying to read non-challenge books in between the weekly ones so next on my list is the first Gervais Fenn book.
My current side-read is Reamde, by Neal Stephenson. I had put it aside for a while, but now I'm back at it ... instead of starting my 500+ pages book.
I'm confortable reading 3 or 4 books at the same time. I don't have any troubles switching book and don't mix the stories. I'm like a moody reader, i need to read what i feel like reading. So my trick is to keep different types of books, like one mistery, one very sad, one funny, etc... Some of them takes me months to finish and some takes me days. It depends...Zaz - i love the how to train your dragon series!! It is so funny!! I already read the first and the second. :) It is so cute!
Well I read a lot of articles online on Yahoo, MSN, NPR and sometimes I will find something that I must research and hit Google and Wikipedia LOL On Audio I'm listening to The Constant Princess. I swear audio helps me keep my sanity while walking through a grocery store or mall.
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Zaz, that is impressive! Wow! I don't know how you guys do it. I get so invested in the world, as I'm reading, switching back and forth for me feels like being suddenly ripped from a dream. I envy your ability to move seamlessly between stories. :)
Zaz wrote: "I think I'm currently reading 5 books. When I read a non interesting one, I start a new book to cheer me up (I read for pleasure and 2-3 stars books really don't fit in this category but I'm trying..."I don't bother slogging through "non-interesting" books. If I have tried a book once or twice and can't get into it after a few days, I'll give up. Too many interesting things to read to waste time on boring or bad! :)
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All I can say is that with Goodreads and other review websites, I choose carefully what I read, so there is always a story I like in the book. But sometimes, the pace is too slow, the characters boring or the writing not so good, so it's challenging to reach the end even if I'm interested in the story.
Before having a smartphone, I did my choices only on cover and summary and I ended giving some books because I failed to read more than 50 pages. Same for the books family or friends lent me, if I don't enjoy them, I don't finish them ;)
Michelle > Maybe reading many books at the same time is my superpower? :D
Luisa > Yey, Hiccup is
Okay, so I just finished one of my side books (the sequel comes out in time for 'a book released this year). It was The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley (sorry, the mobile app doesn't let me link /sigh).Anyways...read it. Seriously. A great fantasy debut. It does have some swearing but not bad. I could hardly put it down.
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I wasn't planning on doing any side reads this week because of my little hiccup with my first book. But I'm breezing through The Book Thief (OMG!SO!GOOD!), I think I'll have it done tonight. I just got these lovelies in my mailbox today.
They're so beautiful. I want to read them now. So I think I'm going to do just that.
I've only recently been able to read more than one book at a time. Generally I have a contemporary book and a classic on the go, sometimes there's also a non-fiction in there. I try to have 2 or 3 very distinctly different books going so I don't muddle them up. I often also have a short story collection sat on my bedside table which I plod through over the course of a month when I'm not in the mood for committing!Right now I'm reading a book club book (Americanah and The Old Curiosity Shop (for the 500 pages challenge)
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I hit a bit of a plateau on The Book Thief.
I'm about halfway through The Case of the Gilded Fly and I'm worried I won't make it last til Thursday when I'll start on my Week 2 book.I'm not wanting to start reading two at the same time.
So I'm a really bad side reader. Books I'm reading:Ghost Rider by Neil Peart - Nightstand
Space Inc. edited by Julie Czernda - BathroomIn the company of Sherlock Holmes edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger - Library
Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young - TV
Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters - TV
Deadly Heat by Richard Castle - Nook 1
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorw - Nook 2
Stlas of the Galilean Satellites by P. Schenk - Bar
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Installation Guide - Red Hat - Work
Richard wrote: "So I'm a really bad side reader. Books I'm reading:Ghost Rider by Neil Peart - Nightstand
Space Inc. edited by Julie Czernda - BathroomIn the company of Sherlock Holmes edited by Laurie R. King a..."
I had never been a huge Rush fan, but Neil Peart's Ghost Rider was SO moving. Hoping to read more of his books in the future.
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Michelle > congrats, I hope you're enjoying reading 2 books ;) (I'll try The Wicked+The Divine, I never heard of them before and they seem unusual).
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I'm currently experiencing a slight dilemma. I've got my books organised on my bookshelves in the order I intend to read them and so I'm alternating a challenge book with one from each shelf. (I normally read a Kindle book, then a book-book, so the book-books don't feel neglected). ;-)The next book on my shelf is Clan of the Cave Bear and I'm not sure I'll be able to get it read before starting Week 3. Though my Week 3 book is The Book Thief which I know I'll read quickly.
I know the rules are more like guidelines but now I'm trying to decide whether or not to skip a bookshelf, drag out Pride and Prejudice so it lasts me til Thursday or possibly go against my book monogamy policy and read two books at once, hehe.
I just want to read all all the books!
My side reads are usually short stories. I'm also getting back to reading the complete novels and stories of Sherlock Holmes and A Song of Ice And Fire. I have the Franz Kafka diaries as a side read for awhile now but I usually just read them when I'm feeling gloomy.
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I'm currently reading 7 books, although two of them less actively. One of the seven is an audiobook that I listen to during commuting to work. I always need to have several books on hand, as I have found that I am able to read more when I switch between books. I also am always in the middle of both Finnish and English books, as it is more variation that way. Short stories are good to have as one option, as they are easy to abandon for a while.
I've got The Thought Readers by Anne Zaires going now, along with The No-Cry Potty Training Solution LOL. And this is of course because Gone With The Wind just isn't enough..
Zaz, please let me know about what you thought of the second one! I love those colourful, unrealistic children books that when you grown up it seems like you just read someone describing their LSD trip ahahah.
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Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are all time favorite stories of mine, right along with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I don't own any of those yet so I have the perfect excuse to buy some hardcover beautiful edition with amazing charcoal illustrations (there's got to be something out there like I'm picturing it, right?) :P I'll start following your reviews so I can know all about it!
I've always read many books at once. I have 7 side reads listed on Goodreads, and at least two others. I'm constantly in the middle of a book for fun, a classic on my list, a book for Sunday school/Bible Study, a chapter book or two with my kids, and some nonfiction reads. I just finished my week 2 challenge read, so tonight I'll read an assigned chapter of a Philip Yancy book on prayer, then read a bit more of "The Silver Chair" by CS Lewis, since I'm reading the Narnia series with my kids. I think it's just further evidence that I'm a high functioning scatter brain!
Adriana wrote: "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are all time favorite stories of mine, right along with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I don't own any of those yet so I have the perfect excuse to bu..."I'm reading through the Wizard of Oz series with my son. We're on the 5th book now. We found a beautiful, barely touched set of the series at an Estate Sake a couple years ago. It has wonderful illustrations, full-color and black and white. We're also going to see the movie on the big screen tomorrow!
Like a lot of you, I can't come to terms with reading multiple books at once. When I do, I either mix the worlds together and get confused or enjoy one far more than the other so I binge read one and forget what's happened in the other, causing me to be lost when I return and ultimately not finish it. This year, with the discovery of this Reading Challenge I've decided that I'll keep a book journal of sorts, a pretty unconventional one in some aspects but one that'll help me keep motivated and keep track of the books I've read in the Challenge as well as all of the books that I want to read this year that haven't recieved a place in my Challenge or are represented by the first of the series. There's so many though! Wish me luck, I'm sure there's many of you out there that probably have encountered the same issue, hopefully this helps!
Have fun with the book journal, Sean. This is my fifth year of recording my books in one and it's great to look back at how your tastes and opinions have changed. :-)
Have fun with the book journal, Sean. This is my fifth year of recording my books in one and it's great to look back at how your tastes and opinions have changed. :-)
I usually have more than one book going on at the same time, for example one ebook, one on my iphone and audiobook in my car. With this challenge I'll try to be more focused to be able to read a book a week, because normally it takes me longer than that
This is a great term for it! I am an inveterate side-reader, though I never had encountered a term for this (or others who seem to do this, too). Part of it is that I will often start a book, read a hundred pages or so, and encounter something else that I simply *must* start immediately. So the first book goes on hold for a bit. But what's this? Two days later, I encounter a new book and *must* read that right now... and so on. A week or two goes by and I see the first book on the shelf (or in "recent" on the Kindle), and I cycle back to it for a bit.Like Luisa said above, these also tend to be drawn from different genres or moods. Like, I'll usually have one of each of the following going most of the time and alternate among them as mood and time dictate:
1. Sci Fi
2. "dry" non-fiction (e.g., something I feel I "should" read for professional development or something)
3. "fun" non-fiction (some curious topic, a humorous memoir, etc.
4. Fantasy (tend to be long, so it's easy to get side-tracked even if the book is interesting)
5. Classic (tend to both be long and to require significant comprehension, so easiest to get side-tracked on)
6. Literary fiction
And two other modes of reading that it should be immediately apparent why they do not count as my "only" book:
7. Librivox audiobook I'm listening to *only* while alone in the car on longer drives – currently Triplanetary, by E.E. "Doc" Smith
8. Book I'm reading aloud to my wife
I don't find I get plot details mixed up among the books, probably because theyr'e usually dramatically different. I do find that for the "read-aloud" book, I find it much easier to lose my place of exactly where we left off than I do for books I read normally, but that's another matter.
I clearly need to get a handle on this to get adequate progress made on the Challenge, though! (I may simply have to resign myself to reading entirely "out of order" from the Challenge otherwise.)
My current "side-reads" are books I started before the challenge and am trying to finish: "The Bully Pulpit," "Contents May Have Shifted," "A Sudden Light," and "The Cuckoo's Calling." It is going to make it difficult to keep up with the weekly "assignments" but like you, I almost always have more than one book going at once. I like the variety.
I also love that you're reading a book aloud to your wife--I had a boyfriend years ago who enjoyed reading out loud to each other. Haven't met anyone since who enjoys that.
Ellen wrote: "I also love that you're reading a book aloud to your wife--I had a boyfriend years ago who enjoyed reading out loud to each other. Haven't met anyone since who enjoys that."Thanks, Ellen – yeah, we've quite enjoyed this practice. It started with Harry Potter, actually, which she had stubbornly refused to read. I read them all to her, out loud, with voices (naturally!), and she was converted. Which was thrilling for all her grad school friends, who also got to relive the series a decade or so after they had all read them.
It also started an ongoing tradition for the last 7 years (4.5 of which we've been married for) with me reading aloud to her, and occasionally, the other way around.
I think loads of people enjoy it, or could, if only encouraged to do so. Lots of people listen to audiobooks, don't they? This is like having a live version in your home!
I've always had more than one book going. At the moment I'm reading:1. "Pride and Prejudice" from week 2, which I haven't finished because it's not grabbing me.
2. "The Hobbit" for week 3.
3. "Substitute Teaching from A to Z" because I'm a fairly new substitute teacher and wanted to learn something about teaching and education.
4. "Christian Doctrine" by Shirley Guthrie, because I'm an on-call chaplain at a hospital and often feel that my theology is lacking, despite my degree.
5. "The Cupcake Murders" (heehee) -- one of the free fluff books that came from BookBub or Pixel of Ink or one of those places. This is the book that I don't have to think about at all. lol
I also have an on-going -- as in FOREVER -- book that I've started. That's the first in the Game of Thrones series. ugh. I'm quite sure that this will be my book for the category "a book you never finished". Problem is, will I remember who everyone is? doubtful...
2015 Reading Challenge [Closed]
Books mentioned in this topic
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (other topics)Lock In (other topics)
The Tyrant's Daughter (other topics)
The Book Thief (other topics)
The Old Curiosity Shop (other topics)
More...
Along with Life After Life, I'm going to get started on Limbo as well. It was in the new release section of the library and looked interesting. Originally published in Italian, it is a look at war in a more contemporary sense. Seemed like a good parallel with LaL, which looks at wars in times past.