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Alexi

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  1. Hi @Ben, I’d like to challenge you to The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. It came onto my TBR highly recommended but has languished there for a few years now. Hope this pushes both of us to read it and we enjoy it!
  2. Reading review January 5 - 14 I have been on holiday this week, but not with much time to read! I completed my first (full) book of the year - Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra. It's also my first non fiction read of the year. It's putting our current (global) politics in the context of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, from the Enlightenment onwards. I found it very interesting given it covers the likes of India, Turkey and Iran as well as the UK and US, and covers how and why people feel the way they do about politics and have felt down the years. I also read the next short story in the Chronicles of St Mary's Series by Jodi Taylor - Christmas Present. I do love this series - not as much the later books as the first three - but it remains a series I love coming back to and the short story was a perfect holiday read for the airport. Now onto my first Round Robin Challenge book - Joyland by Stephen King. In the spirt of the New Year, I do not intend to fully review the two books I have just finished, but this one will get one. I am 15% of the way through and thoroughly enjoying it, even if it is a departure of King's usual style (or feels like it to someone who has only read three of his books so far!).
  3. Following this discussion, I have updated the list to reflect the actual status of the challenge! I have replaced four books and I will now read: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (Georgia) The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum (Kansas) Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (Oregon) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (New York) That takes me down to four out the 51 books completed. It's a really varied and interesting list and I'm looking forward to tackling more of it. A lot of the books on the list I hadn't even heard of before beginning the challenge.
  4. This keeps getting recommended to me on Amazon - think I might drop it down the priority list a tad after your review!
  5. Good haul there Willoyd! The very idea of giving away books someone else has got me for Christmas makes me shudder, but at least they have been rehomed to an appreciative individual.
  6. Happy 2018! You’ve made a great start on the Round Robin challenge already. I like the sound of the Pop Sugar challenge but I think it might be one too many this year. Maybe next!
  7. Happy 2018 Kylie! I remain in awe of your library. Hope to see more of you around here this year.
  8. Thank you! I have read three King books, but only discovered him relatively recently. A great excuse to make sure I read more in 2018.
  9. The quality and the variety of books made it a fantastic challenge - even if we do say so ourselves, given BCF created the list I enjoyed your review and it’s reminded me of more thoughts too! The Day of the Triffids was possibly my biggest surprise and I thoroughly enjoyed it - raced through it in fact. Totally agree on the disappointment of Cider with Rosie, and the dirge that was The Well of Loneliness! As for the US States challenge, I think I started with your list and then began making some changes. That’s also why the list is misleading! Four of the books “ticked off”, I’m searching for alternatives as I read them before the challenge began (New York, Oregon, Georgia and Kansas). I did the same with South Carolina. The original was The Secret Life of Bees, which I had ticked off, but have now removed in place of another book by the same author - which beats it by my reckoning! - but my completed number stayed the same. So I haven’t started at quite the advertised lick I’m not sure how many I will read this year but there are a few on the TBR now so let’s see.
  10. Wow - my local Waterstones is terribly boring compared with those!
  11. English Counties Challenge - 48 books in review Well, what a fantastic challenge! I joined to expand my experience of English literature (and bizarrely, it helped me win a pub quiz about a year ago!) and it certainly ticked that box. But there were so many books I might not otherwise have read that proved an absolute joy. I reread one (Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome for Cumbria) that I haven't read since childhood but the rest were all new reads. The best: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett (Not necessarily in that order by the way!) I think my biggest surprise was Mansfield Park. Although I had read and enjoyed P and P and Emma, they took me a while to get through. I raced through MP, with what felt like an eminently easier style. Maybe just getting used to Austen? This felt like a comparatively hidden jem, when considered next to the total fame of the other two novels. Now must read the other three Austens! Biggest disappointments: An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (just awful) Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence Another World by Pat Barker (just because of the let down ending) But on the whole, what a list! Consistently good, highly rated books. A resounding success and thanks to fellow participants Claire, Janet and Willoyd!
  12. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Synopsis: Winner of the 1933 Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, COLD COMFORT FARM is a wickedly funny portrait of British rural life in the 1930s. Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora manages to set things right. (From Goodreads) Thoughts: I appear to be in the minority here. I wanted to love it, but I couldn't. I left it to the last book of my English Counties challenge hoping to finish on a high, but preferred my second to last one (Mansfield Park) by a considerable distance! I just didn't find it very funny, and I found a lot of the characters to be closer to caricatures than I prefer - even when that is designed for humour. Flora Poste is fun, with her common sense to the nth degree, and Aunt Ada Doom was brilliant. The scene with the counting was my favourite, but elsewhere the book felt like it dragged a bit. The story was enough to keep me reading, and bizarrely I found myself seriously rooting for Reuben by the end. I liked the book enough to give it a 3, but that is relatively disappointing by the standards of the rest of the challenge. General thoughts on that to follow. 3/5 (I liked it)
  13. Thank you Lara! Thank you - same to you Thanks J! I loved The Day of the Triffids, much to my surprise actually, but like you I have tried to largely read new books for the challenge (I think there was one exception, which I struggle to remember right now... ah yes, Cumbria!). The round robin challenge proved too intriguing for me to pass up, and looking at my final list (I now have 14 out of 16 books set) it has sufficient variation that I shouldn't get too bogged down - although I inadvertently appear to have challenged several people to door stoppers! So we will see how I get on.
  14. Happy 2018 Janet! I think ink it’s a great idea to simply spreadsheets if it’s all getting too much. I have a few now but (other than the round robin challenge) I’m not setting targets to get them done, just ticking them off as and when. I think I read one (maybe 2?) of the Round the World one last year so I’m definitely not on course to complete it before I die! I’ve been doing really well with the 1001 list recently but largely by accident because so many of the English counties books are on it. But I think removing them all entirely is a great thing to do and I hope you have a great year as a result. I absolutely love the Waterstones challenge!! It’s definitely a long term one but sound like a fantastic way to see much more of the UK beyond the usual tourist spots
  15. Great news! Sounds like I have a good read coming up then. Ooh great challenge - thank you! That has been on my TBR for a while for no good reason, so this gives me extra motivation to get stuck in.
  16. I'm now going to attempt to challenge everyone who I haven't yet challenged... If I have duplicated a book someone else has suggested, apologies and please shout up! Madeleine - If I have understood your system (and I think there is a good chance I haven't ) I would like to challenge you to The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett because it has been languishing on my TBR for ages and yet comes very highly recommended. More reading time required - I'd like to challenge you to Skagboys, by Irvine Welsh if I may. I have read Trainspotting (as I expect you have?) but neither to the prequel or sequel! And as I intend to read those books I challenge others to, this is completely different to anything else on my list. Frankie - I'd like to make an exception and challenge you to something I've already read! Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth. It was one of my favourite books I read as a teenager and I'd love an excuse to reread it. The author grew up in my home city, and partly because of that I found it a really powerful read then. I hope you feel the same (and I feel the same now I'm 15 years older! )
  17. Happy New Year and here's to lots of great reads in 2018 for you, Athena!
  18. Happy New Year Brian. Sorry your first read was a let down! I read a reasonable amount of non fiction history but tend to stay away from battles -for fearing this exact thing, lists of statistics rather than 'human' experiences. I put human in inverted commas because battles are inhuman experiences IMO.
  19. Ha, I did not do this. One reason means I can extend my challenge to those I challenge others to (to make it a 16 read challenge)... and the other is that I cannot be blamed for any horror reads Happy 2018 Karen! I will enjoy following your reading exploits!
  20. Happy reading in 2018 Claire! You’re off to a good start already. Looking forward to following your reading adventures.
  21. Thanks Athena! Couldnt agree with you more! It’s really nice to be able to compare notes and see how everyone is getting on. I am going to try and read the 14 books - those I have challenged others to as well as those that have been challenged to me. Looking like some crackers in the list! And to you!
  22. Hi Karen, I'd like to challenge you to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - I've heard lots of great things through the years! And Little Pixie, I'd like to challenge you to Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver.
  23. Happy New Year Lara! I will enjoy following your progress. You've got a varied TBR but it looks like you have some crackers in your future!
  24. Happy 2018 Willoyd! I'm hoping the Round Robin challenge will get me reading some of the titles that have been languishing the longest on my TBR - and like you I plan to read all 14 of them, those handed out by me as well as to me. My growing TBR has lots of recommendations from you and no doubt that will be the case this year too
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