Thursday, December 27, 2012

What I'm reading, and upkeep

First, the upkeep: I've been trying to tidy this blog up, getting rid of excess stuff on the sidebar. I've also been editing the tags on my old posts, adding genres and the age groups the books are written for. Yes, that's a lot of posts to go through. Yes, I'm crazy.

And no, the "adult" label does not mean what you think it means.

Now, on to what I'm reading.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
Non fiction

I made an agreement with my brother that I would read one book of his choosing before the end of the year, and he would read one book of my choosing. This is what he chose for me to read.

I'm not sure if I'll manage it though. I got a late start (thanks to bad glasses) and I've found that it's not a book that I can sit down and read over just a few days. I can read several chapters at a time maybe, but then I need to take a break and let it sink in before I can handle any more. It's pretty heavy stuff.

By the way, I've got him reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. le Guin.

Beka Coper: Mastiff
by Tamora Pierce
Fantasy

I've been listening to this some lately. This makes the fourth time I'm reading it since it came out in late 2011. Yes, I know I'm a nut.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

BBC reading list

The BBC came up with a list of 100 books of which they think people will have only read 6. I went over the list in 2010, and am revisiting it since I've read 6 more books on the list. I am happy to say that this brings my total to 21 books on the list. :)

I've put the ones that I've finished in bold, and the those that I started but didn't finish or only read excerpts of in italics.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (I think...it would have been years ago...)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (I THINK I read it...)
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Monday, December 24, 2012

Reading List 2013

I have revised my reading list for 2013. (My tentative list is here.) Because I know I will want to read beyond this list, and as such I don't want a huge number of books on my reading list, I have split the list into two parts. I have also expanded it slightly.

Must read

Narnia series by C.S Lewis -- 7 books
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher -- 15 books
Shadowfell by Juliet Marillier -- 1 book
Pickle Moon by Juliet Marillier -- 1 book
Two books by John Green -- 2 books

 = 26 books

Unlike most of those in the other section of my reading list, I haven't read any of these.

Should try to read

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling -- 7 books
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. tolkien -- 3 books
Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini -- 4 books
*NOTE: read with intent to write about its commentary on how gods are created
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. le Guin -- 1 book
*NOTE: read with intent to write about it on any topic
The Tortall Companion Guide by Tamora Pierce -- 1 book

= 16 books

Witchy reading challenge!

2013 Witches & Witchcraft Reading Challenge

I have been directed towards a Witches & Witchcraft Reading Challenge for 2013, and I just have to participate.

There are different levels a person can aim for depending on how many books they want to read. My aim is for Crone, which is 16-20 witchy books. But I'm sure my reading list will include more than 20 witchy books, so I wonder if that'll make me a goddess...

You can read about it here at Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Reading list for 2013?

I've got the tentative beginnings of a reading list for next year.

Narnia series by C.S Lewis -- 7 books
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher -- 15 books
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling -- 7 books*
Catch up on Juliet Marillier books -- 2 books
Inhertiance cycle by Christopher Paolini -- 4 books*
*NOTE: read with intent to write about its commentary on how gods are created
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien -- 3 books*

This comes up to 38 books. But I've read 82 so far this year, so I think it's doable...and I'll probably get a start on the first of the Dresden Files books before the year is out. My boyfriend is letting me borrow his copy, I just need to read another book first.

I may pare this reading list down a little, since I know I'll pick up other books along the way, and I don't want to get trapped into trying to finish up my reading list (and I won't want to not finish the reading list if I've said I'd complete it) when my attention has wandered to something else.

*I've read these before.

EDIT 12/22/2012: I could write a new post, I'll just add on to this one. I want to add to the list...

A couple of John Green's novels -- 2 books

They have to be books of his I haven't read, and this would take the reading list up to 40 books.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Witchy Books Reading Challenge 2012

As it happens, this reading challenge actually ended earlier this month, so I guess I may as well share what I read now instead of waiting until the end of the year.

This reading challenge was put together by Magaly over at the blog Pagan Culture, and she invited people to participate here. I said I would read a minimum of 13 Witchy books...and wound up reading 42. I guess that says something about how much I love fantasy that contains magic.



1) Bone: Rose by Jeff Smith and Charles Vess
2) Bone: Quest for the Spark by Thomas E. Sniegoski
3) Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
4) Beka Cooper: Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce
5) Inheritance: Inheritance by Christopher Paolini 
6) The New Death and others by James Hutchings
7) Angelic by Kelly Armstrong
8) Discworld: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
9) Daughter of the Lioness: Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce
10) Discworld: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
11) Hexed by Ilona Andrews
12) Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
13) Bone: Out from Boneville by Jeff Smith

GOAL COMPLETED!!!

Extra:

14) Bone: The Great Cow Race by Jeff Smith
15) Bone: The Dragonslayer by Jeff Smith
16) Bone: Eyes of the Storm by Jeff Smith
17) Bone: Treasure Hunters by Jeff Smith
18) Bone: Ghost Circles by Jeff Smith
19) Bone: Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border by Jeff Smith
20) Bone: Old Man's Cave by Jeff Smith
21) Bone: Crown of Horns by Jeff Smith
22) AlmaMia Cienfuegos: a Story of Blood, Scars, and Nightmares by Magaly Guerrero
23) Twixt Firelight and Water: A Tale of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
24) Sevenwaters: Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
25) Songmaster by Orson Scott Card
26) Beka Cooper: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce
27) Song of the Lioness: Alanna: The first Adventure by Tamora Pierce
28) Song of the Lioness: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce
29) Song of the Lioness: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce
30) Song of the Lioness: Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce
31) Immortals: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce
32) The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher
33) Immortals: Wolf Speaker by Tamora Pierce
34) Immortals: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce
35) Immortals: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce
36) Beka Cooper: Terrier by Tamora Pierce
37) Protector of the Small: First Test by Tamora Pierce
38) Protector of the Small: Page by Tamora Pierce
39) Protector of the Small: Squire by Tamora Pierce
40) Protector of the Small: Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce
41) Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales by Tamora Pierce
42) Discworld: Tiffany Aching: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Hullo! Forgot me?

It's been a while since I've written here.

I would just like to mention that I have finished the last two of the reading challenges that I participated in this year: the fantasy and scifi challenges. Since it's so close to the end of the year I won't bother sharing what I've read in a post right now, and instead share that at once the year is over. (I may have one or two books to add to the challenges then.) Though you can take a look at my Reading Challenges page if you so wish to see what I've read. :)

Woman Reading A Book by Petr Kratochvil

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