CHALLENGE: Countdown Challenge 2010

Michelle from 1MoreChapter is hosting another version of the Countdown Challenge, but adding in the 2010 books. It runs from 9/9/9 til 10/10/10. Last year week I completed the challenge and read the required 45 books so I decided to sign up again. The idea is to read ten books published in 2010, nine published in 2009, eight in 2008, and so on all the way back to one book published in 2001. This is how she suckers us into doing the In the Pub '10 with her!
I'm making a list of potential books, so I won't forget what I hope to read. This list is subject to change.

total so far: 55/55!

2010 - read 10 books

• Snow Angels - James Thompson
• Deloume Road - Matthew Hooton
• Every Last One - Anna Quindlan
• The Unnamed - Joshua Ferris
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson
• The Swimming Pool - Holly LeCraw
• The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton
• Motorcycles and Sweetgrass - Drew Hayden Taylor
• Truth - Peter Temple
  
• The Nobodies Album - Carolyn Parkhurst

2009 - read 9 books

• Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
• Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
• Small Wars - Sadie Jones
• Nobody Move - Denis Johnson
• The Incident Report - Martha Baillie
• Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - Alan Bradley
• The Prophesy of the Sisters - Michelle Zink
• Hypothermia - Arnaldur Indridason
• Wife of the Gods - Kwei Quartey
  

2008 - read 8 books

• The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
• The Tenth Gift - Jane Johnson
• Let it Snow: Three Holiday Romances - Green, Johnson, Myracle
• Good to a Fault - Marina Endicott
• La's Orchestra Saves the World - Alexander McCall Smith
• Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden
• Nellie McClung - Charlotte Gray
• Paper Towns - John Green
  

2007 - read 7 books

• Nefertiti - Michelle Moran
• The Book of Negroes - Laurence Hill
• Red Mandarin Dress - Qiu Xiaolong
• Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List - Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
  
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick
• The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor - Sally Armstrong
• The Spellman Files - Lisa Lutz

2006 - read 6 books

• She Got Up Off the Couch - Haven Kimmel
• Zero - Diane Tullson
  
• Poppy Shakespeare - Clare Allen
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
• Dead Cold - Louise Penny
• I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron

2005 - read 5 books

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson (original Swedish publication)
• The Paper Moon - Andrea Camilleri (original Italian publication)
• The Girls - Lori Lansens
• Nikolski - Nicolas Dickner (original French publication)
• Crossfire - Miyuki Miyabe (translated publication)

2004 - read 4 books

• Broken For You - Stephanie Kallos
• How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
• Sky Burial - Xinran
• The Art of Mending - Elizabeth Berg

2003 - read 3 books

• Vinyl Cafe Diaries - Stuart McLean
• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - Guy Delisle
  

2002 - read 2 books

• Lamb - Christopher Moore
• Souvenir of Canada - Douglas Coupland

2001 - read 1 book

• Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
  

BOOK: Love and Summer by William Trevor

Love and Summer by William Trevor, 212 pages

Man Booker Longlist 2009; Published in 2009

opening line:
On a June evening some years after the middle of the last century Mrs Eileen Connulty passed through the town of Rathmoye: from Number 4 The Square to Magennis Street, into Hurley Lane, along Irish Street, across Cloughjordan Road to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. Her night was spent there.

Mrs Connulty may have died as the book begins, but her reach travels all through the book, and her presence is still in the town. Her two children are inheriting her positions in town. A stranger arrives in town, taking pictures at the funeral, and makes friends with a young married girl. The back story on all the characters was well done, and enlightening as to their choices and decisions. Trevor allows us to meet the people and get an impression, and then he lets us see where they came from and why they are they way they are. As I try to summarize the plot and characters, I realize how much Trevor has packed into this short book, while evoking a time and place of Ireland. A lot of sad lives, but they don't even realize that they are sad for the most part.

Well-written, lots left unsaid, interesting characters - I can understand why this is on the Booker longlist, but I would still prefer to read the same story told by Maeve Binchy. It's just the kind that she would write - small town, nosy and judgemental characters, adultery, and difficult decisions. It is fun to watch all the developments and hope for some characters, but I like a little more expository to the plot. In the end, I am ambivalent to the book - I neither liked nor disliked it; it just didn't match my head.

I expect that there would be many people who would like this, so I don't want to dissuade anyone. I haven't read any William Trevor books before and this doesn't put me off them. I read this just after a historical fiction(In the Company of the Courtesan) and just before an extremely suspenseful, plot driven book(No Time for Goodbye), and it just didn't stand out, but it does a good job of what it is supposed to be - observing, describing, a slice of Irish life.


also reviewed at literary license, jackie at farmlanebooks

CHALLENGE: Countdown Challenge

3m has thought of another original challenge based on dates. She's done the Decades Challenge -for older books, In the Pub - for books published this year, and now, for all the books in the middle, the Countdown. Starting from 8/8/08 until 9/9/09, the goal is to read 9 books published in 2009, 8 books published in 2008, and so on, back until you are reading 1 book published in 2001. This is a great challenge, because it is just reading those books you've been hearing about for the past few years, and have always wanted to read.

I've gone back and determined what books I've already read - cool! a retroactive reading challenge, and then looked at books I have around here and am hoping to read soon, and came up with the following list, all subject to change. If it's linked, it's already been read.

total so far: 45/45!


2009 - read 9 books

• Beat the Reaper - Josh Bazell
• Arctic Chill - Arnaldur Indridason
• Nocturnes - Kazou Ishiguro
• The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa
• Map of the Invisible World - Tash Aw
• The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
• Twenties Girl - Sophie Kinsella
• The Bishop's Man - Linden MacIntyre
  
• Love and Summer - William Trevor
  

2008 - read 8 books

• The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
• Rain Song - Alice J Wisler
• Exit Lines - Joan Barfoot
• Creepers - Joanne Dahme
• Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
• When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
• People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
• Too Close to Home - Linwood Barclay

2007 - read 7 books

• Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict - Karen Joy Fowler
• Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon
• After Dark - Hakuri Murakami
• The Camel Bookmobile - Masha Hamilton
• Voices - Arnaldur Indridason (in English)
• Book of A Thousand Days - Shannon Hale
• The Road Home - Rose Tremain

2006 - read 6 books

• The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin
• Life As We Knew It - Susan Beth Pfeffer
• Three Bags Full - Leonie Swann
• Lisey's Story - Stephen King
• An Abundance of Katherines - John Green
• Just Listen - Sarah Dessen
  

2005 - read 5 books

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
• Sacred Cows - Karen E Olson
  
• Excursion to Tindari - Andrea Camilleri
• Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
  
• Looking for Alaska - John Green
  

2004 - read 4 books

• A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
• Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
• Drive Like Hell - Dallas Hudgens
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

2003 - read 3 books

• Miss Julia Hits the Road - Ann B Ross
• The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan
• Montmorency - Eleanor Updale

2002 - read 2 books

• December Heat - Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
  
• Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
  

2001 - read 1 book

• Bel Canto - Ann Patchett