UPDATE: challenges

There seems to be a big bunch of new challenges starting on June 1st, so I have been putting a burn on to finish up some old challenges. The new, shiny challenges look like more fun, so I don't want to have these hanging over my head.



Spring Reading Thing: I completed a good bunch of books I had been wanting to read.

1. Reef by Romesh Gunesekera (completed March 24, 2007)

2. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (completed March 25, 2007)

3. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (completed March 29,2007)

4. History of the World in 10.5 Chapters by Julian Barnes (completed April 6, 2007)

5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides (completed April 13, 2007)

6. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
book 1 The Golden Compass (completed April 26, 2007)
book 2 The Subtle Knife (completed April 29, 2007)
book 3 The Amber Spyglass (completed May 22, 2007)

Other than The Virgin Suicides, I really liked them all. They were an assortment of genres and styles, but I like a variety of topics and styles. I did this challenge, because I really liked the button. Challenge planners: never underestimate the power of a pretty button!

Once Upon a Time Challenge :

I really wasn't sure about this one, mostly because I don't read a lot of this type of book. However, once I was committed to reading His Dark Materials, it seemed a natural to add a few more and get another button! This helped me get a few books on my list of books from 50_books at livejournal:

1. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman


2. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman


3. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman


4. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett


5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


6. Coraline by Neil Gaiman

I think I picked the cream of the crop in this genre of fantasy and folklore. I read American Gods, also by Gaiman just before this challenge started. It was also excellent.

The Chunkster Challenge, along with the Winter Classics, started all this madness for me. I didn't even really blog about the Classics Challenge. The Chunkster was a real challenge for me, because I signed up before all the other fun challenges began, so this one got adapted, a bit. I read:

1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
3. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (will be finished in days - I can't put it down!)

I listed 4 books and hoped to finish 2 of them. Three definately got done. I have some guilt about using His Dark Materials Books for so many challenges. This is how I justify it: I had five other books listed for the Spring Reading Thing, and could have left these off and felt quite accomplished. So if I pretend I used his Dark Materials book 1 and 2 for the Once Upon a Time Challenge and then the third book, which was a Chunkster, over 500 pages, it could have been a chunkster. Then things look more balanced to me and still accomplished. I'm never too clear how 'carved in stone' some of these challenges are. I completed what I said,and also the spirit of the challenges.

Now, bring on

• Nonfiction 5 (one per month)
• Summer Reading Challenge Round 2
• Summer Mystery Reading Challenge
• Southern Reading Challenge

I'll post another update on these newer challenges later.

BOOK: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Last one for the Once Upon a Time Challenge, although I am hoping to read A Midsummer's Night Dream since I found an annoted edition in school to read.

Well, all I have to say after reading this book is Brilliant! Jolly Good! and other assorted terribly British phrases to describe a terribly wonderful book. The boys - Pratchett and Gaiman, must have had a blast writing this. And the reader comes along for the ride, all the way to Armageddon. The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter are the guideposts to witch finders, angels and demons (not by Dan Brown), the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Antichrist. Some of the humorous devices include footnotes, the dramatus Personnae list, and a general irreverence for all things, and making fun of much British things.

I found this book on the of top 50_books compiled at livejournal, which has become my own personal reading list. I can see why people chose this book - just a terribly good adventure, written by terribly British funny guys, and I expect I'll read it again, as I read it quickly, and I know I missed a lot of jokes. There are a lot of details, but I wanted to finish it so quickly I couldn't stop myself. Some day, I'll pick this up again. For now, it gets passed to my husband's side table.

BOOK: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Finishing The Amber Spyglass completes the Spring Reading Thing 2007 Challenge for me. What was I thinking, chosing a trilogy for a challenge? This third book was hard to get through for some reason. Partly because it was over 500 pages (I think I'm counting it as a Chunkster Challenge too!) and partly because it just didn't grab me to get started, and yet I knew I really wanted to finish it. I couldn't leave a trilogy unfinished, but I was tempted at times to put it down. I was bargaining with myself - finish 150 pages, read another book - see The Little Prince, finish 150 pages, read another book. I was gritting my teeth and getting to it. And then, all of a sudden, I couldn't put the book down. I stayed up waaay too late last night to finish the book that I couldn't read two days before.

And I think that is why people rave about this series. Each of the three books have been difficult to get into, at least 150 pages before I was hooked. But the ultimate ending was worth it. It is a children's series to some degree, but with the amount of killing it seems a little intense for preteens. As a children's book, much of it was predictable and that may have led to my disinterest for a while. But the payoff was worth it in the end.

The characters of Lyra and Will were terrific and the allusions to Adam and Eve and temptation, make this book very broad. Religion and science are huge themes and as Armageddon comes, and the angels come down to fight and worlds are literally torn apart with our heroes at the center, poised to save all the worlds.

From the cover:

As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living and the dead - finally comes to depend on two children and the simple truth of one simple story.

There were parts of the story I enjoyed more than others - Mary Malone and the mulefa were my favorite. The mulefa were a people who evolved with a diamond skeleton instead of backbone and lived symbiotically with the pod trees. Other creatures from other worlds like the brave little spies, the Gallivespians, still the idea of daemons and souls, angels and ghosts, the imagination of Pullman and his take on the world were incredible.

So, I thought I wouldn't give this a very good rating, but the ending did it for me and I will be thinking of how he tied things up, and the consequenses and sacrifices made for a long time.

BOOK: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

Cute little fairy tale from the top 50_books list and part of my Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge. I looked up the SparkNotes because there was certainly more to the story. I see that it is cute, I liked the moral, and after I looked up the notes it more made sense, but I don't think I would ever remember to list it as one of my favorite books.

The Little Prince leaves his tiny planet and travels through space, landing on other tiny planets, meeting caricatures of adults and all the bad qualities adults can have with all their silly rules. Eventually he lands on Earth and meets the narrator, a pilot whose plane has crashed. The Prince has a profound effect on the pilot, but the Prince also learns some lessons about love from a fox and life from a snake.

Some notes from Sparks that I liked:

The Little Prince can be read as a metaphor of the process of introspection itself, wherein two halves of the same person meet and learn from each other.

Saint-Exupéry urges his readers to participate actively in the reading process, using their imaginations to assign deeper meaning to deceptively simple prose and poetry

His constant questioning also indicates that one’s search for answers can be more important than the answers themselves.

I read this in about an hour or so, and I might read it again with the Sparks notes in mind.

BOOK: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Well, this wasn't on my May reading list. I was at the library yesterday to get a school physics video, under strick self-imposed rules not to browse for books. Then my nine year old son wanted to go look for a book. This doesn't happen too often, so of course we go. There I spotted this Neil Gaiman book on a display. I hadn't realized that Coraline was a children's book. I gobbled it up tonight: swimming lessons meant a solid three quarters of an hour of uninterupted reading, and the book isn't terribly long anyway.

This was really creepy. It almost scary, because books don't really scare me - I've read all Stephen King, but this would be a super scary movie. I was picturing a Tim Burton type computer animated scare-fest while I was reading it. Spiders, rats, slugs, possessed hands, unknown things! This book has every creepy thing you can imagine.

Here's the book jacket summary:

In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it's different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to
change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages

The main character Coraline was such a great character, such a kid. The black cat was an excellent supporting character. It was many of the details I really enjoyed - Coraline hates recipe food, the parents were somewhat distracted, and Coraline faced some fears and was brave - doing something even when you are afraid. This is a great story for kids, and now I have to try to convince my son to read it. However, the book he picked out was "The Day My Butt Went Crazy" or something like that. Could be a tough sell.

BOOK: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

Book 2 : His Dark Materials Trilogy

Well I didn't plan to read this right away, but something made me pick it up and then I read it all day. Lyra and Will are travelling back and forth between worlds, dealing with new things, like a knife, Spectors, and mean kids. This series is fantastic, I love the physics in it, the dark matter or Dust and just confirms my view that physics and philosophy and religion are all tied up, just like this series. Great adventure, great characters and what an imaginiation to view our world like this, as part of a bigger universe. I hope to take a break before I finish this series, with The Amber Spyglass. But it may draw me to it, like the characters are drawn to their fate in these books.

CHALLENGE: Once upon a Time

I really didn't think I would do this challenge hosted by Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings. Fantasy, folklore, and fairy tales are not the type of books I look for or read very often. Of course I've read all the Harry Potters, but fantasy isn't usually what I've read. But I loved the idea of the challenge, especially the option to read one book from each of four subgenres. But when the challenge came out, I didn't feel I'd be able to pick enough books that I would read, even though I had just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman, an amazing book.
Last week however, I started reading His Dark Materials trilogy and realized I may as well join up, because that series puts me half way done of the Once Upon a Time 2007 reading challenge. There are four or five quests you can choose from:

Quest One: Read at least 5 books from any of the 4 genres. This is set up more along the lines of the R.I.P. Challenge. Given the time frame it may not seem to be a big deal to commit to 5 books, but we all know how time, and reading, can get away from us.
Quest Two: Read at least one book from each of the four genres of story-Mythology, Folklore, Fairytale, and Fantasy.
Quest Three: Read at least one book from each of the four genres of story, and finish up the challenge with a June reading of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
or
Quest Four: Read at least one book from the four genres. This is for those who don’t read much, or those who feel that this type of story is so far out of the realm of what they normally read that committing to anything beyond one story is asking too much. (In other words, this is only a one book commitment)
I'm picking quest number 1, a big sister version to quest number four. The books I plan to read between March 22 and June 21st would be:

1. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
2. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
3. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
4. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchert
5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
6. Great. I just found Coraline by Neil Gaiman at the library. It looks short, so I'll probably try to read it. It looks really good. *I really didn't need another book*

I've actually got a few extra that I might read as well, depending on how my other challenges go. Maybe do The Midsummer's Night Dream on the last night; Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley a fairy tale telling of Beauty and the Beast which I just saw as the musical: excellent!; and I found a collection of fairy tales from around the world in the children's section of the library that I might take out to read as a selection. I also want to read Inkheart and The Eyre Affair, but I fear that won't happen before June 21st.