Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)

[Tr1sha]

The challenge is to read one or more classics where the title, author’s surname, or author’s first name start with any letter from your own Goodreads name. (You may ignore “The” or “A” at the start of a title.)

For example, Jazzy might choose “J” & read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth or any book by Jane Austen.
Using my name Trisha, I could choose “H” & read The Haunting of Hill House or any book by Thomas Hardy.

If you want to read more than one book, you may choose the same letter more than once or choose different letters for each book.

[Jazzy]

Another fabulous game show inspired challenge, Trisha!
Can I have a P please, Bob?
And for those of you not familiar with this show, you can watch it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_QkK...







Here's your template:

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23
0/1

N
A
M
E

N A M E (Bookcovers go here)

And the contestants are...
Cosmic
✅ Jazzy
✅ Kathy
✅ Lynn
✅ Nike
Pam
✅ Rosemarie
✅ Shaina
✅ Trisha
✅ Vit

[Jazzy]

Blockbusters host and former Kent schoolboy, Bob Holness

✅ Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23
5/5

✅ J : Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) - Jules Verne
✅ A : The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil - Machado de Assis (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908)
✅ Z : Zen (1952) - Jerome Bixby
✅ Z : Zen (1952) - Jerome Bixby
✅ Y : You Can't Go Home Again (1940) - Thomas Wolfe

Zen

[Tr1sha]

🌸Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)🌸
1/4/23-30/4/23
3/3

🌸T Effi Briest, Theodor Fontane
R Rob Roy?
I
S Walter Scott?
🌸H The Hundred and One Dalmatians - Dodie Smith
🌸A The Golden Rendezvous, Alistair MacLean

T R I S H A

[Kathy]

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23

3/3

K - Death in Zanzibar - M.M. Kaye (1959)
✅A - An Academic Question - Barbara Pym (written early 1970s, pub. 1986)
✅T - Theater Shoes - Noel Streatfeild (1944)
✅H - At the Sign of the Cat and Racket - Honoré de Balzac (1832)
Y - Jenny Wren - E.H. Young (1932)

[Rosemarie]

I like this!
April Challenge: ROSEMARIE
April 1 to 30

R- A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins✅
O - Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout✅
S- The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout✅
E- Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar Allan Poe ✅
M - The Beetle by Richard Marsh✅
A - Karma: A Reincarnation Play In Prologue, Epilogue And Three Acts by Algernon Blackwood ✅
R - Rosemary In Search Of A Father by Charles Norris Williamson ✅
I - In the Best Families by Rex Stout✅
E - Electra and Other Plays by Sophocles ✅

[Cosmic]

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23
0/1

C The Chouans byHonoré de Balzac
O History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
S Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
M Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
I The Island of Dr. Moreau H.G. Wells
C The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger


C O S M I C

[Cosmic]

Loved working on this list. Not sure how many will get read but making a list is often the first step!

[Nike]

Template:

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23

0/4

N
I I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison Publ 1968
K Kyoto eller De unga älskande i den gamla kejsarstaden/The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata Publ 1962
E The Capital of the World by Ernest Hemingway Publ 1936


N I K E

[Nike]

I'm in!

[Tr1sha]

Thank you for the great introduction, Jazzy. It’s a lovely surprise to find members signing up so quickly & already choosing books. Remember you don’t have to read books for your whole name - especially those with longer names like Rosemarie! Anyone can complete the challenge with just one book.

[Jazzy]

Thank you Trisha! Thanks for joining us Kathy, Rosemarie, Cosmic, and Nike - everyone is linked to here!

[Jazzy]

and i love making the lists too, Cosmic!

[Lynn]

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23
2/1

L The Life of a Good-For-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff (1826) 4*
April 8, 2023

Y Life of a Counterfeiter by Yasushi Inoue (1949) 4* April 29, 2023

N

N

N N

[Lynn]

Jazzy wrote: "and i love making the lists too, Cosmic!"

Wow Jazzy the letters in your name will be a challenge!

[Pam]

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
I plan to read at least 1, maybe 2, with any luck!

P: The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist or something by Pushkin
A: The Snail on the Slope by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
M: Julius by Daphne du Maurier or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[Jazzy]

Lynn wrote: "Wow Jazzy the letters in your name will be a challenge!"

Good thing I already picked out the books!

Linked Lynn and Pam xx

[Shaina]

Blockbusters (April 2023 Challenge)
1/4/23-30/4/23
5/4

✅S - Maj Sjöwall - The Man on the Balcony
✅H - Billie Houston - Twice Round the Clock
✅A - Catherine Aird - Henrietta Who?
✅I - Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives
N -
✅A - Agatha Christie - Five Little Pigs

[Lynn]

Jazzy wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Wow Jazzy the letters in your name will be a challenge!"

Good thing I already picked out the books!

Linked Lynn and Pam xx"

I was trying to think and all I could come up with was Zola and Henry James LOL.

[Vit]

B is a second letter in the alphabet…
It was hard to choose from so many…
Wolfgang Borchert - The Sad Geraniums 1962
Miodrag Bulatović - The Red Cockerel 1959
Emmanuel Bove - Henri Duchemin and His Shadows 1928
Andrei Bely - The Symphonies 1908
Samuel Beckett - How It Is 1961

[Jazzy]

[Jazzy]

Many thanks Vit, I've added you! x

[Tr1sha]

I read my first book, for H: The Hundred and One Dalmatians - Dodie Smith.
I hadn’t read this before, but thought it was very sweet.

[Jazzy]

Trisha I love that book too! x

[Lynn]

I heard of a book today The Life of a Good-For-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff. The life of a Good-For-Nothing is a light-hearted little book that is said to be a classic of German Romanticism. It is a book I learned about on Goodreads and was able to read in an afternoon. It was very pleasant. So I've read one. Maybe there will be more this month.

[Shaina]

I finished! I planned to read 4 and managed 5.

[Tr1sha]

Shaina wrote: "I finished! I planned to read 4 and managed 5."

Well done Shaina!

[Shaina]

Thank you, Trisha!

[Jazzy]

Sounds like a great little book, Lynn! ooh Super, Shaina! xx
And still time for one more!

[Nike]

I'm so glad to find a few Swedish authors among your choices. 🙂

[Vit]

B is a second letter in the alphabet…
All are the first letter of my surname…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Wolfgang Borchert - The Sad Geraniums 1962
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Miodrag Bulatović - The Red Cockerel 1959
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Emmanuel Bove - Henri Duchemin and His Shadows 1928
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Andrei Bely - The Symphonies 1908
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Samuel Beckett - How It Is 1961
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Thomas Bernhard - Gargoyles 1967

[Rosemarie]

Way to go, Vit!

[Jazzy]

Beautiful, Vit! xx

[Rosemarie]

I finished the challenge! It was fun.

[Tr1sha]

Rosemarie wrote: "I finished the challenge! It was fun."

Congratulations, I’m very impressed that you read books for your whole name!

[Rosemarie]

Thank you, Trisha! I'm glad that one of my favourite American mystery authors, Rex Stout, had titles that fit!

[Jazzy]

Well done Rosemarie!! xx

[Rosemarie]

Thank you, dear Jazzy!

[Kathy]

Excellent reading, Rosemarie!

[Rosemarie]

Thanks, Kathy!

[Lynn]

The month has ended, and once again I have run out of time for what I would have liked to have read. My second book was

Life of a Counterfeiter by Yasushi Inoue (1949) 4* April 29, 2023

By coincidence both little books I used for this challenge have "life" in the title. Yasushi Inoue is an author I like very much. The title story was a novella, and it was followed by two short stories. Inoue will have some emotional connection to the thread he weaves through his stories. Usually he speaks in the first person as an observer of other people's lives. He will meander through several seemingly unrelated events and memories, but in the end they all connect as they strike the same emotional note. One thing that makes this meandering journey so fascinating is that for him the present is post- WW2 Japan. He does things like visit a cemetery in Nagasaki that was partially damaged by the bomb. While there he reminisces about his adopted grandmother who raised him for about 7 seven years. She was a geisha who was the "second wife" of his great grandfather. These little tid bits of history are merely the prelude for the actual short story.

Michael Emmerich is the translator. I have now read three books by the Emmerich/Inoue team and think they are all very good.

[Nike]

I think I forgot - I did pursue the challenge in good time but only with one of the reads I had planned.

[Rosemarie]

Was it a good one, Nike?

[Nike]

Rosemarie wrote: "Was it a good one, Nike?"

No, maybe it would have been but I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream showed an appalling misogyny.

[Rosemarie]

A lot of science fiction books from that era have that tendency, sadly.

[Jazzy]

You have to look at those books without the eyes of today.