Lara Posted December 20, 2015 Share Posted December 20, 2015 (edited) I've decided that since I'm doing this log I may as well try to challenge myself! In the past few years I've really just been sticking with what I know I like, so I've set myself a few goals.Main goal - read 100 booksOther goals:-Read a graphic novel-Read a Shakespeare play-Read a biography-Read a mystery novel*Goals are crossed off as they are reached* All books rated out of 5Books read in 2016:Total so far:January:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime- Mark Haddon (5/5)David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell (3/5)Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (5/5)Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (4/5)The Crucible - Arthur Miller (4/5)Freakonomics - Steven J. Dubner & Steven D. Levitt (3/5)February:Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (3.5/5)A Fighting Chance - Elizabeth Warren (4/5)March:World War Z - Max Brooks (4/5)Micro Terrors - Tony Hart (3.5/5)Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs (4/5)April:Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee (4.5/5)To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (5/5) Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff (5/5)May:June:July:August:September:October:November:December: Edited May 3, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 20, 2015 Author Share Posted December 20, 2015 (edited) To read list: *Continually added to, books read are crossed off A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare An Ordinary Man - Paul Rusesabagina A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving A Room with a View - E.M. Forster Beloved - Toni Morrison David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Hollow City - Ransom Riggs I am Malala - Malala Yousafza In Cold Blood - Truman Capote Jacob Have I Loved - Katherine Paterson Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Lord of the Flies - William Golding Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Luna - Julie Anne Peters Men Explain Things to Me - Rebecca Solnit Men Without Women - Ernest Hemingway Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie My Grandfather's Gallery - Anne Sinclair None of the Above - I. W. Gregorio One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson Prayers for the Stolen - Jennifer Clement Psychoanalysis: the Impossible Profession - Janet Malcolm Reckless - Cornelia Funke Redefining Realness - Janet Mock Seed - Lisa Heathfield The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger The Color of Christ - Edward J. Bloom The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood The Future of Us - Jay Asher The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman The Hope We Seek - Rick Sharpero The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe The Other Wes Moore - Wes Moore The Prince and the Pauper - Mark Twain The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd The Sociopath Next Door - Martha Stout The Thing About December - Donal Ryan The Walls Around Us - Nova Ren Suma Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell Wise Children - Angela Carter Edited June 26, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 20, 2015 Author Share Posted December 20, 2015 (edited) Harvard Bookstore's Top 100 Books: *Books read are crossed off 1). Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 2). Pride and Predjudice - Jane Austen 3). Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut 4). 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 5). The Wind-Up Bird Chronical - Haruki Murakami 6). To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf 7). Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 8). The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolken 9). Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison 10). Beloved - Toni Morrison 11). Ficciones - Jorge Louis Borges 12). The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri 13). The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 14). The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon 15). Mrs. Dalloway - Virgina Woolf 16). The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bugakov 17). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 18). Middlemarch - Georg Elliot 19). A Wrinkle in Time - Madeliene L'Engle 20). A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 21). Slouching Towards Bethleham - Joan Didion 22). If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino 23). To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 24). Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 25). Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling 26). Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 27). Dubliners - James Joyce 28). Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie 29). Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh 30). White Noise - Don DeLillo 31). Mountains Beyond Mountains - Tracy Kidder 32). Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 33). Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 34). His Dark Materials series - Philip Pullman 35). The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 36). Little Women - Louisa May Alcott 37). A Wizard of Earth Sea - Ursula K. Le Guin 38). A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway 39). Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut 40). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 41). The Histories - Herodotus 42). The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner 43). A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami 44). The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 45). Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston 46). The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster 47). Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson 48). Dealing with Dragons - Patricia C. Wrede 49). The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 50). Cannery Row - John Steinbeck 51). Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami 52). Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - J.D. Salinger 53). Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolf 54). The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 55). Watchmen - Alan Moore 56). The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor 57). Orlando: A Biography - Virginia Woolf 58). Moby Dick - Herman Melville 59). High Fidelity - Nick Hornby 60). Watership Down - Richard Adams 61). Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 62). The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz 63). The Stanger - Albert Camus 64). Pale Fire - Vladimir Nobokov 65). Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank 66). Good Omens - Neil Gaiman 67). The Chronicles of Narnia series - C.S. Lewis 68). For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway 69). Enormous Changes at the Last Minute - Grace Paley 70). Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie 71). You Shall Know our Velocity - Dave Eggers 72). Baudolino - Umberto Eco 73). Been Down so Long it Looks Like Up to Me - Richard Farina 74). Dead Souls - Nickolai Gogol 75). I, Claudius - Robert Graves 76). In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway 77). Jayber Crow - Wendel Berry 78). Little, Big - John Crowley 79). Popol Vuh - Dennis Tedlock 80). The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin 81). The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle 82). The Razor's Edge - W. Somerset Maugham 83). The Sea, the Sea - Iris Murdoch 84). The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera 85). The Bone People - Keri Hulme 86). Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger 87). Drown - Junot Diaz 88). Hamlet - William Shakespeare 89). Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 90). The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton 91). The Blue Sword - Robin McKinley 92). The Odyssey - Homer 93). Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison 94). Gilead - Marilynne Robinson 95). A Little Princess - Francis Hodgson Burnett 96). A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn 97). Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 98). Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey 99). Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 100). Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman Edited May 3, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 20, 2015 Author Share Posted December 20, 2015 (edited) Books Acquired in 2016: *Including books given to me during the holidays because that's when the year starts over in my head Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins The Republic - Plato Collection - Oscar Wilde David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell Dame Agatha Abroad (Collection) - Agatha Christie Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski Speeches that Changed the World (Collection) - Multiple A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith The Long March - Robert Kimball The French Revolution - Owen Connelly and Fred Hembree The Illusion of Peace - Sally Marks Environmental Overkill - Dixy Lee Ray Henry VIII - M.D. Palmer In the Name of God - Paula Jolin The Crucible - Arthur Miller Anthony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare The Elephant Man - Bernard Pomerance Founding Myths - Ray Raphael Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik Frankenstein - Mary Shelley World War Z - Max Brooks Contending Forces - Pauline E. Hopkins Monsters - Andrew J. Hoffman Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee Edited March 13, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 20, 2015 Author Share Posted December 20, 2015 (edited) Statistics: ***Updated for March****Updated monthly2016 total number of books read so far: 13Number of books read for school: 3Number of books read for pleasure: 10Number of non-fiction: 5Number of fiction: 8Number of audiobooks: 0Number of graphic novels: 0Number of plays: 1Number of new authors: 9Number of known authors: 4Number of books with male authors: 10Number of books with female authors: 3Nationality of authors:Unknown - 1U.S. - 9U.K. - 2South Africa - 1Number of books not originally in English: 0Number of books not in English: 0Time period written:-Pre 1700: 0-18th century: 0-19th century: 1-1900 to 1950: 0-1951 to 1980: 3-1981 to 1999: 0-21st century: 9Longest book: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (390)Shortest book: The Crucible by Arthur Miller (152)Average number of pages: 304Number of books acquired: 32Books purchased: 7Books received as gifts: 15Books acquired for free (other than gifts): 9Number of books borrowed from the library: 2Average rating: 4.4Five stars: 3Four stars: 6Three stars: 4Two stars: 0One stars: 0 Edited May 3, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 27, 2015 Author Share Posted December 27, 2015 Reserved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 27, 2015 Author Share Posted December 27, 2015 Reserved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 (edited) After much thought and deliberation, I believe I am done. Happy reading in 2016, everybody! (This thread is officially open for business ) Edited December 30, 2015 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 I wish you a happy reading year in 2016, Lara !! I haven't read most of the books on your 'to read' list, but I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I hope you enjoy it too . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 Happy reading in 2016, Lara! You have some great books on your TBR pile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 I hope you have a great reading year in 2016, and that you enjoy keeping a reading log! I love how eclectic your TBR pile is I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, I hope you will enjoy it, too! And I'm soo jealous you've got a copy of The Sociopath Next Door Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it when you get to it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 Happy reading Lara! (I stole parts of your stats post to make my own stats post, hope that's okay! ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaliepud Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 Happy reading in 2016 Lara, I'm envious that you still have The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns to look forward to! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted December 31, 2015 Author Share Posted December 31, 2015 Thank you everybody! Happy reading Lara! (I stole parts of your stats post to make my own stats post, hope that's okay! ) It's fine! I stole part of it from Athena, so it all goes around haha Happy reading in 2016 Lara, I'm envious that you still have The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns to look forward to! I'm so excited to read them! My mother just gave me copies of both of them for Christmas, so they're sitting on my bookshelf very tantalizingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted January 1, 2016 Author Share Posted January 1, 2016 Just finished my first book of 2016, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I started it a couple days ago, but finished today so I say it counts! It was excellent, as a few of you seem to agree with here Happy new year everyone, and happy reading in 2016! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted January 1, 2016 Share Posted January 1, 2016 Awww yay, glad you enjoyed it so much! A brilliant way to start a new reading year Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chesilbeach Posted January 1, 2016 Share Posted January 1, 2016 Happy new reading year Lara! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted January 2, 2016 Author Share Posted January 2, 2016 (edited) What is the English counties challenge? I keep seeing references to it on these blogs but have no clue what it is! Just curious. I felt like these question wasn't worthy of its own thread so I just stuck it here with the hope that one of you will see it Edited January 2, 2016 by Lara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 The English Countries Challenge is a challenge some of our forum members thought up, where they read the most famous book of each county of the United Kingdom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chesilbeach Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 The English Countries Challenge is a challenge some of our forum members thought up, where they read the most famous book of each county of the United Kingdom. Actually, it's from each county in England, not the UK. The UK includes the countries Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but we've stuck specifically to England counties only at this stage. We came up with it after a discussion about a similar challenge for all the states in the USA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted January 2, 2016 Author Share Posted January 2, 2016 Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna Begins Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 I totally forgot about Zen and the Motorcycle Man! We have a lot of books in common, I hope you have a good reading year and welcome BTW- Just noticed you were from the US- hello from California! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Actually, it's from each county in England, not the UK. The UK includes the countries Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but we've stuck specifically to England counties only at this stage. We came up with it after a discussion about a similar challenge for all the states in the USA. Whoops! Sorry . I totally forgot about Zen and the Motorcycle Man! We have a lot of books in common, I hope you have a good reading year and welcome BTW- Just noticed you were from the US- hello from California! Is that a good book? I've been curious about it, but I'm not sure if it's my thing or not. Actually right now I can't even remember the synopsis but I was curious about it last year at one point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lara Posted January 4, 2016 Author Share Posted January 4, 2016 Last night I finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It took quite awhile, though it's pretty short. My boyfriend and I have been reading it out loud to each other, which is part of the reason for the slow pace. It's worth it though, reading together is so cozy. We have a whole list of books we want to read together when we get the time. The book itself was excellent. I've only read one other book of Vonnegut's, but enjoyed it very much, and Slaughterhouse lived up to that. I thought the pacing was a little slow at the beginning, but by about halfway through it sped up quite a bit. I love Vonnegut's casual voice in his writing. He is a great satirist, and a great writer of tragedy, really. I also felt quite attached to the protagonist, Billy, which is why I'm giving it a 5/5 despite the slow beginning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Glad you enjoyed Slaughterhouse Five. It's not one of my favourite books, but I love its refrain, 'so it goes', so much that I have it tattooed on my foot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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