P&PS

A couple of years ago when I first heard about Ann Morgan's resolution to read one book from every country, I thought it was a nice idea, an exercise too impossible for me to bother with. Lately though, with the growing momentum behind the various reading diversely campaigns I've started to see how dismissive I was. Even now, it certainly isn't an easy goal but it's not impossible. Not to mention with the (slowly) growing attention being paid to the lack of international and translated literature, projects like this are just as important now as they have been. Part of the reason I started to read more diversely was to draw attention to diverse literature, to seek it out and learn about it and to share it with others. To ignore the larger global scope of the problem is, at best, foolish. Because I already have my 2016 reading goals in place, I'm not making this a challenge for 2016, but I am making this part of my resolutions; I want to read more diversely on an i...

As I was putting together the list of books I wanted to read for the 2016 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge I thought it would be nice to compile a list of recommendations. I've tried to include as many books and categories as possible, but the numbers are a bit unequal given my reading preferences and my weariness of particular categories (mainly due to assigned reading). I've also tried to stay away from as many massively popular books as possible, so that you can hopefully find something new. Watch this space if you're interested in mini reviews for any of these books. As before, the categories listed are abbreviated, to see the full descriptions check out the challenge post linked above. Horror Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix Night Film by Marisha Pessl The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma Syndrome E (Franck Sharko #3) by Franck Thilliez (can be read as a stand-alone) Science Nonfiction General Notes; I've read a lot of environmental science nonfiction that I...

One of my 101 in 1,001 goals was to complete a reading challenge. I started out working on a couple of my own devising, picking my way through a couple of top 100 and recommended favorites list, without much success. I was getting pretty discouraged until the Book Riot Read Harder challenge popped up at the end of last year. This was something I could do; twenty four books in a year and a half was more than doable, even with the couple of categories I had added. It started out so well in fact I decided to try and finish it within the year. Things slowed down a bit midsummer, and ultimately I've discovered I like projects a little more open ended like the Seasonal Reading challenge on Goodreads, but I finished and I'm so glad I did. I read a lot of books I wouldn't have read otherwise. I picked up books I ended up loving instead of watching them fall to the bottom of my TBR list. Much like my 100 book goal for the year (something else I'm planning on revising), it ...

I know I've said I was going to skip Book Riot's 2016 Read Harder Challenge . I know I said I loved 2015's but I wanted a bit of a break to be free and read all the things, and that's true, but I love that the challenge makes me read new things and I love that it motivates me to read when I don't feel like it and I love that it's an attainable goal for me. 2016's challenge has some great categories and the NYPL's list of recommendations is beautiful, so as you might have suspected I can't resist. It's not even 2016 yet and I'm already jumping on the bandwagon. This year I made the mistake of making a list of books that fit the categories and trying to stick to it. That didn't work for me. I need to be able to pick up a book on a whim, not necessarily spontaneously, but it has to appeal to me in the moment, and having a pre-set list doesn't allow that to happen. So instead, this year I'm making a list of books by challenge categ...

I'm a sucker for challenges, particularly those involving lists or books. Generally they end up half finished at the end of the year, but I have a lot of fun trying, so I thought this year I would go ahead and pledge my commitment to the Book Riot Read Harder challenge. This challenge in particular caught my eye since it's focused on encouraging diversity in reading. The challenge itself is pretty open ended, so I'm setting a couple of additional rules for myself. To start I'm counting one book for one task, unless the book is over 500 pages and fits in two different subcategories (e.g. genre and author, i.e. a scifi novel written by an African author). I've also added a couple of extra tasks: a book by a disabled author or about a disabled character, a nonfiction book, a book from my TBR bookshelf, and a TBR ebook. I've also divided up the National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade task into three separate tasks which...

I've downloaded a copy of Jekyll and Hyde onto every electronic device I own. It's time to start my Classics Retold journey, but I thought before I did that, I should share with you a couple of the other books I had considered taking on for this project. The Scarlet Letter by    Nathaniel Hawthorn The first time I read this book was for an English class in high school.  I remember most of the class disliking the book.  I don't know if it was because of the book itself, the language and the subject matter, or if it was the tedious questions and halfhearted discussions that followed, but a lot of the class was downright miserable during the unit.  I, on the other hand, was in love.  Hester's strength inspired me, Prim fascinated me, and both Dimmsdale and Chillingworth fascinated me. While I haven't seen any strict adaptions of the text, I have seen other more liberal interpretations, my favorite of which is Easy A , one of my favorite movies. ...

Classics Retold works like this: stare agonized at the list of awesome books you could choose from because coming up with something on your own could potentially kill you, complain to all your friends that this is worse than playing 'Last Book Standing', take the plunge, pick a book, sign up before you can change your mind. After that, it's easy, read the book, then read or watch as many adaptions and as much related material as possible, and post reviews and thoughts throughout the month of September. Sign ups are open through the 25th of May *wink wink nudge nudge* I'm planning on doing a post covering a couple of the books I didn't pick because there's too many amazing books on the list not to mention at least a few of them. This post though, it's all about The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde . I picked Jekyll and Hyde for a couple of reasons, primarily because it's on my TBR list for this year, but also because while I'm somewhat...

My love for awesome-thing-related bingo is no secret- bingos make for all sorts of fun achievements and crazy goals, and books. well those don't need an explanation- so my glee over discovering Random House's reading bingo ?  Flailtastic, so much so I got up first thing this morning and made this card, before breakfast, before checking my email... I may be in love, just a wee bit.