Book Challenge 2017: My Picks

In her thank you card after Christmas, my Auntie included a sheet of A4 describing the 2017 Book Challenge, which had been circulated by one of her colleagues.

I'm not sure who originally put the list together, but I'm taking up the challenge and reading a book per month, each based on one of the twelve categories. I do read a lot more than one book a month, but this will be a great way to get me picking some things I might not normally have come across.

The best way to kick this off seemed to be to choose my twelve books. I won't necessarily read them in the order shown below, but I thought I'd share them to hold myself accountable. I'll then share my thoughts each month on whichever book it is I've read.




My choices:

A book written by an author with the same initials as you
The Sorrows of an American, Siri Hustvedt

A book recommended by a friend (by my friend Jenny, in fact)
American Gods, Neil Gaiman

A non-fiction book based on a popular or topical subject
The Little Book of Hygge, Meik Wiking

A book that has previously been banned
Beloved, Toni Morrison

A collection of short stories
Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro

A book with more than 400 pages
Don Quixote, Cervantes, translated by J M Cohen

A book with an unusual setting
The Book of Strange New Things, Michael Faber

A book by a writer from a minority group
Passing, Nella Larson

A book that's set in another country
City of Joy, Dominique Lapierre

A book by a female author
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

A book with a plot set around books, a library or bookshop
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

A book you chose based on its cover
Wicked, Gregory Maguire


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing fiction as a way to move forwards.

Image
Last week I shared a bit about the writing course that led to me writing my short story, Aftershock. Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it. I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given. In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off. I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood. I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London. It h...
Read more

The Reading List #7

Image
The weekend seemed to fly by and I didn’t get around to finishing my reading list post, so here it is now. I’m still going through my period of pulling lots of books off shelves that I haven’t read yet, so the wide mixture of books continues… The Sea, John Banville I read two Banville novels at university and was more than impressed, so was excited to find this gem on my parents’ bookshelf. In ‘The Sea’, art historian Max returns to a place he holidayed as a child, following a personal loss. The novels flits between two periods of his life - the then and the now - leading to themes of childhood discoveries, maturing, and loss. The time periods almost blend into one another, yet there is something distinctly separate about them too, so it is not confusing. It reads almost like poetry, and is utterly beautiful. Any literature fans, or fans of superb writing and narrative, need to give it a go. A Small Part of Me, Noelle Harrison Christina’s mother, Greta,...
Read more

The Reading List # 5

Image
Weekends are the perfect time to catch up on reading, so here’s the latest instalment of things I’ve been reading recently. Fatherland, Robert Harris It is 1964, and Hitler is nearing his 75 th birthday, having been victorious in the Second World War. Detective March finds a naked dead man in a lake, and this begins to unravel a huge conspiracy. The premise of this book was so interesting, and it certainly delivered. There is enough fact weaved in to make the events believable, and the atmosphere and architecture of this 1960s Germany is conjured up well. The book is realistic in that there is still plenty of discontent in the country, so it was a rounded picture, and then in amongst it all was a gripping detective story. This is well worth a try. Revenge Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger Ten years after The Devil Wears Prada ended, Andy is co-running her own successful wedding magazine. Her life has changed a lot, and is the usual rollercoaster of emotio...
Read more