At the end of the year, it’s time for a final report on how reading challenges went!

I wanted to do more rereading, and have definitely done that…  In the last quarter of the year, I finished rereading the Betsy-Tacy series, and reread a few beloved favorites like If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt and The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig.  I also reread Andre Norton’s wonderful Gryphon trilogy, and started into A Series of Unfortunate Events on audiobook.  It’s been a fun time revisiting some old friends this year!

Then we have the random-criteria-challenge…

Out of 50, I had 15 left for the final quarter of the year.  Here are the results:

• A book written by someone under 30: Y Negative by Kelly Haworth
• A Pulitzer Prize-winning book: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• A book based on a true story: I tried not to put rereads on this challenge, but I’ll make an exception here and list both the Little House series and the Betsy-Tacy series…each one modeled after the author’s childhood.
• A book based entirely on its cover: The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone
• A memoir: Home by Julie Andrews
• A book that came out the year you were born: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Frannie Flagg
• A book with bad reviews: Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang
• A trilogy: His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
• A book that takes place in your hometown: Loose Changeling by A. G. Stewart…I think.  It’s a little vague, but there’s a reference to a local freeway, and the author is local, so…
• A book that was originally written in a different language: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• A book set during Christmas: The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A book written by an author with your same initials: The Boy Who Spoke Dog by Clay Morgan

That leaves just three I didn’t complete, and those were consciously skipped.  One is a book I was supposed to read in school but didn’t and, well, there aren’t any like that…I was a conscientious student!  Second, a book that scares me–part of what I like about being out of school is that I don’t have to read books that scare me!  And finally, a book that made me cry…no book has ever made me actually shed tears.  Books have been sad or heart-wrenching, but I mostly only cry when I’m frustrated or feeling misunderstood–and that’s one of the things I love about books.  They never make me feel that way.

I don’t know that this challenge really pushed me to read a lot of books different from what I’d normally read…but it was fun to look at my reading differently, and it was a good laid-back challenge for a busy year. 🙂

Let me know if you’re curious to know more about any of these books…and I’d love to hear if you have any reading challenges going on for the year too.  I’ll have an update about my 2016 reading challenges soon!

Continuing my brief updates on some challenge-read books, today I have a seasonal book, and a book I always meant to get around to–but might not have if it hadn’t happened to be written in German.

A book that was originally written in a different language: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

I had heard of this one, but never actually picked it up–and I don’t think I ever realized it was originally written in German until I was looking at a list of books written, well, not in English, in order to fulfill this item.  So it seemed like the perfect opportunity!  And it turned out to be a pretty good book too.

The premise centers around a fascinating magical idea–certain people, including 12-year-old Meggie’s father, Mo, can read things out of books.  When they read aloud, objects and even people can appear from within the text, emerging in the reader’s world.  But there’s a cost, as something must be taken into the book to replace what comes out–and the magic is all the more dangerous because the reader has very little control over what comes out.  Mo accidentally read the terrible villain Capricorn out of the book Inkheart, and now, years later, Capricorn wants Mo to read for him again.

This was a fun book that I liked and probably would have loved if not for two things that weren’t at all the book’s fault.  For one, this is just close enough to the magic system in Libriomancer, which I love, to feel, well, not quite as cool by comparison.  For two, the book-within-the-book, the fictional Inkheart, seemed even more my kind of story than the actual Inkheart…if that’s not getting too meta!  But considering Meggie and other characters go into the fictional Inkheart in the sequel, I’m definitely planning to read that one.

So how about that translation element?  I don’t know if it’s a sign of good translation or not that I…couldn’t really tell it was a translation.  Apart from one moment when the characters spoke of Italy as a few hours drive away and I remembered, right, this is in Germany…it didn’t actually feel significantly different than an English-written book!

A book set during Christmas: The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien

I stumbled on the existence of this book while looking at a list of Christmas-themed books for this item–and how could I resist that author? Tolkien wrote letters for his children each Christmas from Father Christmas, spanning from 1925 to 1939, relating the latest events at the North Pole that year.  Mostly it’s the unfortunate escapades of the North Polar Bear, but there were also some pitched battles with Goblins, and occasionally a word chimed in from Father Christmas’ elvish secretary.

These are quite adorable, almost a picture book considering each letter comes illustrated as well, and very charming.  The edition I got includes the Goblin alphabet at the back–which is just so Tolkien to have created it.  And one line in a letter written in Elvish does look a bit familiar…

This is a much, much faster read than Lord of the Rings, rather more character-focused but not nearly as deep or complex.  🙂  A fun read for the Christmas season!

I’ll have a complete challenge update at the end of the month…only a few days away now!

Continuing my challenge updates, I’m looking at two more books I read with odd criteria. I picked these up at the library the same day, because they were the kind of criteria I felt I could only fulfill by literally going to the library and pulling something off the shelf more or less at random!

A Book Based Only On Its Cover: The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

I decided if I was going to read by cover alone, I’d be better off in the kids section…and I decided that cover included title and any words on said-cover. So when I found a cover that appeared to show a girl being lifted into a room by a giant hand, with an intriguing title and a tagline about unlocking the secret of the Thorne rooms, I figured it was worth a go.

It turned out to be a story about Ruthie and Jack, who find a magic key that lets them shrink down in size and enter a series of tiny rooms on display at a museum—and eventually to travel into the past through the rooms. Which, I have to say, is a pretty great premise to stumble into by chance! Continue reading “Challenge Update: Judging by a Cover—or By Initials” →