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2021 December Reading Challenge
I will be reading bittersweet by Sarah ockler for the themed challenge.
Perfect! I have had the Snowed in For Christmas Series on my list for a while. I am planning on reading Snowed In at the Castle by Lucy McConnell for this prompt.
Always interested in chuildren's books, I was dismayed that, under the subject "snow", the vast majority of the picture books I found were themed to the film Frozen. I decided a re-read of a Caldecott medal winner or honor medal recipient would be good. But which one? For others who might like to choose from the list of the ones I've read, they are:- The Big Snow by Berta Hader
- Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
- The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
- Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
- White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt
- Snow by Uri Shulevitz
- Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell
Mod
Did you try searching under the subject keyword "winter"? That might give you more options.
Elizabeth wrote: "Did you try searching under the subject keyword "winter"? That might give you more options. "No, I pretty much knew what I wanted to read I was just unsure of the title. I never expected to have screen after screen after screen devoted to books about Olaf. Just Olaf. With a couple of Frosty books thrown in.
Dang. My family watched Frozen together, and the kids hated it.As a children's book, I was considering The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. I don't know if it's still in print. Also The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Not children's books, but I searched the Gr Lists for 'snow', 'winter', 'solstice' and 'christmas'.
I am going to read The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, the first book in the Winternight Trilogy.If anyone is looking for a good adult fiction book, I loved The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.
Both of these books are based on Russian fairytales.
Two books by Kristin Hannah that I can recommend highly and meet this challenge are Winter Garden and The Great Alone. The relevance of the first is clear, the second is about Alaska. Both are wonderfully rich stories.
I read Miracle and Other Stories by Connie Willis. I highly recommend it. Snow features rather prominently in a couple of the stories.
Maybe all our snow reading helped change the weather! I read Light on Snow, a beautiful little book, somewhat melancholy but I really liked the characters.
Assuming I can get it in in time (#1 in line for the hold at the moment) I will read Snow by John Banville. If that does not pan out, I will pull out one of the winter-themed children's books from my (now grown) sons' collection of books I could not stand to part with, and relive fond memories of bedtime stories with them so that I can check off COMPLETE ALL LIBRARY CHALLENGES FOR 2021. UPDATE: 12/21: "Snow" completed. Not sure the topic would work for most of you, but it sure did feature some snow storms during a murder investigation. I, too, succeeded in completing all challenges for the year. Hooray! Thank you, Elizabeth, and SL County library for all you do!
you are soooo sentimental...and that's a wonderful trait. ♥
Mod
I have read Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin about the first person to ever photograph snowflakes and who made the study of snow his life's work. WA Bently was the first to demonstrate that no two snowflakes are alike and to identify the large number of variables that came into play as a snowflake developed, creating that unique entity that is each separate snowflake.
Mod
Don't forget to let us know what snow books you've finished to get entered into the drawing!
I have read mostly picture booksThe Mitten
Olive, the Other Reindeer
Hanukkah in Alaska
The Christmas Promise
I read Snowed In at the Castle for this challenge. It was a cute hallmark-like romance. That makes 10/10 for me as well!
10/10. I chuckle. I think of, and track it, as 14/14 counting books rather than challenges. Funny how some folks, like me, see it differently. In fact, when I saw the 10/10, it puzzled me. No wonder police get so frustrated with eye witnesses! And conservatives and liberals confuse one another!
Mod
Debbie wrote: "10/10. I chuckle. I think of, and track it, as 14/14 counting books rather than challenges. Funny how some folks, like me, see it differently. In fact, when I saw the 10/10, it puzzled me. No wonde..." I actually have it as 14/14 in my own tracking...but since there were only 10 prompts...I wasn't sure what the official number was.
Mod
I just hope everyone will participate in as many challenges as they would like.
Debbie wrote: "10/10. I chuckle. I think of, and track it, as 14/14 counting books rather than challenges. Funny how some folks, like me, see it differently. In fact, when I saw the 10/10, it puzzled me. No wonde..."I definitely get that. The thing is, I often read more than one book for a challenge. For instance, for the 'True Crime' challenge, this year, I read Molly's Game , Billion Dollar Whale , and Mindhunter. For the Summer Tales and Tails 5-book challenge, I actually read 18 books. But for November's Native American Author challenge, I barely got through 1 book (because of busy-ness, not the challenge itself).
With such randomness in my counts, it's hard to tell by counts if I've completed multiple challenges, or if I've completed some challenges multiple times while missing others. So I tend to track by challenges completed, instead of numbers of books.
If anyone is interested, I actually have a book-board that shows my reading lists and challenges, including a sibling challenge that my sister (a SL City librarian) diabolically crafts for me each year (I return the favor, believe me!). That site is here: https://gregmplatt.wixsite.com/bookbo... (I'm behind on that sibling challenge, but hoping to finish by the end of the year!)
Greg wrote: "Debbie wrote: "10/10. I chuckle. I think of, and track it, as 14/14 counting books rather than challenges. Funny how some folks, like me, see it differently. In fact, when I saw the 10/10, it puzzl..."Love it! It looks a lot more professional than my spreadsheet. But I don't know how to do the website thing. If you all are interested here is how I track my reading.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Mod
Deborah wrote: "Love it! It looks a lot more professional than my spreadsheet. But I don't know how to do the website thing. If you all are interested here is how I track my reading."That's a very nice spreadsheet. I actually do my official tracking on a google sheet. Goodreads and my wix site are just for fun. You put a lot more meta data detail on the sheet that I do. Mine is calculation heavy, but maybe not as heavy as yours! I love your charts!
Do you mind if I steal some of your sheet and incorporate it into mine?
I read Eight Perfect Hours, which begins with people trapped on a highway in a snowstorm. Not bad. I always like a cozy romance when it's cold outside, so I enjoyed it.
Greg wrote: "Deborah wrote: "Love it! It looks a lot more professional than my spreadsheet. But I don't know how to do the website thing. If you all are interested here is how I track my reading."That's a ver..."
You are welcome to use what ever parts you want. Enjoy!
Deborah wrote: "You are welcome to use what ever parts you want. Enjoy!"..."
Good. Cuz I've totally spent half the day plagiarizing and tweaking a copy of your sheet to suit my own purposes.
Deborah wrote: "Love it! It looks a lot more professional than my spreadsheet. But I don't know how to do the website thing. If you all are interested here is how I track my reading."I also do a spreadsheet with so many tabs it's truly frightening! But my actual tracking mechanism is a mirror of one I have here on Goodreads that is in the other group of which I'm a member. It has two postings at the top, one for the Group Challenge (which we each define for ourselves) and the other for my Personal Challenge:
The one filled out for 2021:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The one only started for 2022:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Debbie wrote: "Deborah wrote: "Love it! It looks a lot more professional than my spreadsheet. But I don't know how to do the website thing. If you all are interested here is how I track my reading."I also do a ..."
Looks nice. How do you get the little icons (or are they emojis now) in your comments?
I almost forgot to post! I read the True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy-definitely snowy and chilling. A retelling of the classic fairytale set in Nazi occupied Poland.
Whitney wrote: "I almost forgot to post! I read the True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy-definitely snowy and chilling. A retelling of the classic fairytale set in Nazi occupied Poland."That sounds interesting, how was it? I love fairytales retold!
Deborah wrote: "How do you get the little icons (or are they emojis now) in your comments?."They are just a cut and paste I got from someone else. They had gotten them from a freebie, no copyrights website. No HTML coding, easy peasy.
Have you determined the January 2022 challenge?
Selection of this month's booksStanley's Christmas Adventure
Merry Witchmas
Santa's Smelly Socks! The Hilarious TRUE STORY Why We Hang Stockings On the Mantle During the Holidays!: Rhyming Picture Book for Kids Ages 3 - 7
Santa Bruce
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
I am reading Dashing through the Snow by Debbie Macomber. It isn't been my favorite, but if you like a good Hallmark movie you will probably like this. I also read The Belles of Christmas series. It is a collection of Regency Christmas stories. That has been more up my alley.
Debbie wrote: "Have you determined the January 2022 challenge?"I was wondering the same thing. I would like to get a book to read over the weekend.
I finished The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden tonight. I can't wait to start the second book in this series!
Mod
Happy New Year!
Brittany wrote: "I finished The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden tonight. I can't wait to start the second book in this series!"Ohh! That was such a great series!
I read two Christmas romcoms with snowy settings. The Groundhog Day-esque
In a Holidaze
takes place in Park City, Utah, and I thought it was a lot of fun.
The Holiday Swap
is partly set in the fictional California mountain town of Starlight Peak, and I found it delightful. I just realized that, interestingly, the authors of both of these are pseudonyms for a pair of women writers. Fun bit of trivia!
Mod
Also, I apologize for not announcing this more quickly. January got entirely away from me!
The County Library
Books mentioned in this topic
Light on Snow (other topics)In a Holidaze (other topics)
Light on Snow (other topics)
The Holiday Swap (other topics)
In a Holidaze (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Anita Shreve (other topics)Anita Shreve (other topics)
Katherine Arden (other topics)
Katherine Arden (other topics)
Jacqueline Briggs Martin (other topics)
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I can't believe it hasn't really snowed yet in the valley. So, for this challenge Snow is the name of the game.
You can consider it a settings challenge, and read something that takes place where it's snowy like in the mystery novel In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming, or the romance novel Blue Farmhouse Christmas by Teri Harman, or the nonfiction book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer or even the children's classic The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Or, you can treat it like a subject challenge and read a nonfiction book about snow like Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth by Jim Steenburgh, or Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration by Giles Whittell or Dragons in the Snow: Avalanche Detectives and the Race to Beat Death in the Mountains by Ed Power.
Remember to let me know what book you read to complete the challenge before December is over to enter the prize drawing.
Good luck!