This is going to be short and sweet because I have another post coming a little later that outlines my plans for 2013. I can’t WAIT for you to see it. Essjay and I are doing SOMETHING SPECIAL with our reading in 2013. If you just can’t wait for my post to go up, well, I guess you could read her post first. Hee! I am so very excited about our plans. I ALMOST CAN’T CONTAIN MYSELF.

This is what I accomplished in December:

Number of books finished: 10
YTD: 147

Books read:

• NW, Zadie Smith
• Good Bones and Simple Murders, Margaret Atwood
• Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, D.T. Max
• The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace
• Wishin’ and Hopin’, Wally Lamb
• American Dervish, Ayad Akhtar
• The Memory Palace, Mira Bartok
• The City and the City, China Mieville
• Faitheist, Chris Stedman (SO GOOD)
• Wizard and Glass, Stephen King

Number of books in progress: 2

• The Campaign of the Century, Greg Mitchell
• Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin

Number of pages read: 3,623 (not including the books I’m halfway through)
YTD: 51,048

Books reviewed:

• Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
• Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Robert Maturin
• Kindred, Octavia Butler

**I used the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats in 2012, so you can see everything by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

I GIVE UP ON ALL THE CHALLENGES. I finished reading all of the books for the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Chunkster Challenge, but I didn’t review them all. I didn’t write all the posts I needed to for the November’s Autumn Classics Challenge. I failed miserably at the Mount TBR Challenge. And last, but certainly not least, I threw in the towel for the Insatiable Booksluts’ End of the World Challenge; I wasn’t going to win anyway, and I am behind on SO MANY reviews. I had fun trying, though! Needless to say, I am not joining any challenges next year, but I will explain that in my next post.

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Ashley (my 12-year-old daughter) participated in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She failed both, but she had so much fun participating. She only had one more book to read for the Back to the Classics Challenge (which she is ALMOST finished with), and she failed more miserably than I on the Mount TBR challenge. Haha! But she’s totally okay with it. She just likes to read. She doesn’t care about the rest. Yay!

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in December:

Number of books read: 16
YTD: 117

• The Danger Box, Blue Balliet
• The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
• Confectionately Yours #2: Taking the Cake, Lisa Papademetriou
• Skinny, Donna Cooner
• Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So-Smart Miss Know-It-All, Rachel Renee Russell
• The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies, David Lubar
• The Royal Diaries: Marie Antoinette, Katherine Lasky
• There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, Louis Sachar
• A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
• Sailor Moon Vol. 1, Naoko Takeuchi
• The Allegra Biscotti Collection, Olivia Bennet
• Who What Wear, Olivia Bennet
• Wonder, R.J. Palacio
• Choke, Diana Lopez
• The Teashop Girls, Laura Schaefer

Number of pages read: 3,736
YTD: 30,834

I wish you all the best in 2013!

I don’t remember how long ago it was (I would say six months, at least), but Eric’s computer took a crap. He creates digital artwork as a hobby, and he burned out his computer doing stuff on it that it wasn’t really made to do. So over the past several months, he has been doing a bunch of research on how to build his own computer from the ground up, and has been buying the parts for it. Last Sunday he sat down and built a new computer for himself, and yesterday we went through the process of setting it up and installing all of the software to get it running. Everything went smoothly, amazingly enough, and I am now blogging from a super-duper-built-by-Eric computer. I’m very proud of him, and this PC is pretty awesome.

I did lots of reading in November, and not a lot of blogging (again). I really need to catch up on some reviews, although I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to catch up on all of them. This means that I am probably out of the running for the Insatiable Booksluts’ End of the World Challenge, but I’m good with that. SJ was kicking my ass anyway. Hahaha! I realized this year that I am not really the short-term challenge type, so I won’t be joining any of these challenges next year. SJ and I have decided that 2013 will be the year of Reading Whatever the F*ck We Want, so stay tuned for more information on that.

(I have finished the reading for two of the challenges I joined this year: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Chunkster Reading Challenge are complete, aside from reviewing some of the books.)

This is what I accomplished in November:

Number of books finished: 12
YTD: 137

• The End of Your Life Book Club, Will Schwalbe
• The Bolter, Frances Osborne
• Dark Places, Gillian Flynn
• Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
• The Trial, Franz Kafka
• The Waste Lands (DT #3), Stephen King
• Both Flesh and Not, David Foster Wallace
• Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
• Silver Sparrow, Tayari Jones
• Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

Number of books in progress:

• American Dervish, Ayad Akhtar
• The City & The City, China Miéville
• Wishin’ and Hopin’, Wally Lamb
• The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace

Number of pages read: 4,144
YTD: 47,425

Books reviewed:

• A Train in Winter, Caroline Moorehead
• The End of Your Life Book Club, Will Schwalbe

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 2/9  (YTD: 9/9) DONE! (…aside from reviewing a few of the books.)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 2/40  (YTD: 20/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 3/14  (YTD: 20/14) DONE! (Technically, I am finished with this challenge aside from writing some reviews. I still have more chunksters to read this year, though.)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 3,666  (YTD: 38,990)
• The Classics Club: 17/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 18/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my almost-12-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in November:

Number of books read: 6
YTD: 102

• Greetings from Nowhere, Barbara O’Connor
• Cirque du Freak #5: Trials of Death, Darren Shan
• Dear Austin, Elvira Woodruff
• The Celery Stalks at Midnight, James Howe
• Banner in the Sky, James Ramsey Ullman
• The Brain Finds a Leg, Martin Chatterton

Number of pages read: 1,166
YTD: 27,098

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 8/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 18/50)

I feel like some of the seasonal depression I was feeling has lifted, and I’ll be posting lots of reviews in November. I have a lot to catch up on. There are so many good books I want to tell you all about.

Onward.

This is what I accomplished in October:

Number of books finished: 18  (WHOA!)
YTD: 125

• A Garden of Earthly Delights, Joyce Carol Oates
• Annabel, Kathleen Winter
• Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
• Maurice, E.M. Forster
• The Passage, Justin Cronin
• A Son Called Gabriel, Damian McNicholl
• Falling Together, Marisa de los Santos
• The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling
• This is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz
• The Twelve, Justin Cronin
• The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
• Bodily Harm, Margaret Atwood
• Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
• A Train in Winter, Caroline Moorehead
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
• How to Get Into the Twin Palms, Karolina Waclawiak

Number of books in progress: 2

• The Bolter, Frances Osborne
• Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness (audiobook; didn’t listen to any of it in October; maybe I’m just not in the right mood)

Number of pages read: 6,061
YTD: 43,281

Books reviewed:

• Out of True, Amy Durant
• Falling Together, Marisa de los Santos

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 7/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 2/40  (YTD: 18/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 3/14  (YTD: 20/14) DONE! (Technically, I am finished with this challenge aside from writing some reviews. I still have more chunksters to read this year, though.)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 5,617  (YTD: 35,324)
• The Classics Club: 15/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 15/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in October:

Number of books read: 12
YTD: 96

• Close to Famous, Joan Bauer
• The House With a Clock In Its Walls, John Bellairs
• In the Face of Danger, Joan Lowery Nixon
• Daphne’s Book, Mary Downing Hahn
• Brady, Jean Fritz
• Confectionately Yours #1, Lisa Papademetriou
• Moonwalking With Einstein, Joshua Foer
• Chasing Redbird, Sharon Creech
• Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech
• The Wanderer, Sharon Creech
• Ben & Me, Cameron Gunn
• Anastasia Again, Lois Lowery

Number of pages read: 2,848
YTD: 25,932

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 8/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 18/50)

On a lighter note, because I’ve been reading so much, I have a lot of great books to review (if I can ever catch up now). I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on everything I’ve been reading lately.

I have given up on Ulysses for now–I just can’t stay interested in it, so I’m going to put it down and try again next year.

I unofficially participated in Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-Thon last Saturday and did pretty well: I read 476 pages between 10am and 1am, which included finishing one book and getting halfway through another. Not bad for not having planned to do it in the first place!

Today I went to Barnes & Noble (against my better judgment because they always piss me off lately), and I bought Junot Díaz’s new book, as well as the new DFW biography written by D.T. Max. I can’t wait to dive into those two.

I’m not sure I have anything exciting to catch you up on (not that I would remember now, anyway–haha!), so let’s just get to the stats:

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in September:

Number of books finished: 13
YTD: 107

• Before the Rain, Luisita López Torregrosa
• The Midwife of Hope River, Patricia Harman
• Elegantly Wasted, Elizabeth C. Vescio
• The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Skeleton Women, Mingmei Yip
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare
• Revolutionary Suicide, Huey P. Newton
• Bullie, Carrie Goldman
• The Bookie’s Son, Andrew Goldstein
• Life Before Man, Margaret Atwood
• Kindred, Octavia Butler (which I was supposed to review on Sept. 26th, so review coming soon)
• The Gunslinger, Stephen King
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz

Number of books in progress: 4

• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
• The Twelve, Justin Cronin
• Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness

Number of pages read: 4,084
YTD: 37,220

Books reviewed:

• Breed, Chase Novak
• Sharp, David Fitzpatrick
• Before the Rain, Luisita López Torregrosa
• The Midwife of Hope River, Patricia Harman
• Skeleton Women, Mingmei Yip
• Bullied, Carrie Goldman
• The Bookie’s Son, Andrew Goldstein

I will forever be behind on reviews, unless I take a week off from reading. So I will forever be behind on reviews.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 7/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 2/40  (YTD: 16/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 1/14  (YTD: 17/14) DONE! (Technically, I am finished with this challenge aside from writing some reviews. I still have more chunksters to read this year, though.)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 3,466  (YTD: 29,707)
• The Classics Club: 12/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 14/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in September:

Number of books read: 10
YTD: 84

• Letters from Camp, Kate Klise
• The House of a Million Pets, Ann Hodgman
• Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Absolutely Normal Chaos, Sharon Creech
• The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander
• Eleven, Patricia Reilly Giff
• Charlie’s Raven, Jean Craighead George
• Babe: The Gallant Pig, Dick King-Smith
• Indigo, Alice Hoffman
• Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Marguerite Henry

Number of pages read: 2,134
YTD: 23,084

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 8/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 1/50  (YTD: 18/50)

And because my birthday has caused this BIG HOLIDAY WEEKEND, I got my first gift in the mail today. WOO! My parents are the best. Want to know why? Because I’m going to be 36 years old, and they are still helping me buy TOYS. How many 36-year-olds can say their parents still help them buy toys? (If there are lots of you who can say this, then you have the most awesome parents, too!) Look what I got:

My parents are a hoot.

I have been given the gift of signal!  *does the Verizon gift card dougie*  See, my current smartphone is over two years old, and it’s starting to show its age, so I have decided to buy the new iPhone when it comes out at the end of September. When my mom asked what I’d like for my birthday, instead of giving her my usual, “Oh, you’re so good at giving gifts. If you get me something, make it a surprise,” I told her, “I want the new iPhone. It will be expensive. A gift card from Verizon to help me pay for it would be great.” Now, I won’t tell you how much this little gift card is for, but let’s just say that I really wasn’t expecting what I received. AT ALL. My parents really are phenomenal people in many ways. Thank you, oh wonderful parents of mine! YOU ROCK.

Are you sick of hearing about the big birthday holiday weekend yet? Okay, okay…on to the books…

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in August:

Number of books finished: 14
YTD: 94

• Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Robert Maturin
• Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
• At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O’Neill
• The Good Muslim, Tahmima Anam
• The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Dancing Girls, Margaret Atwood
• A Golden Age, Tahmima Anam
• And When She Was Good, Laura Lippman
• Out of True, Amy Durant
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Sharp: A Memoir, David Fitzpatrick
• How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran
• Breed, Chase Novak
• The Cider House Rules, John Irving

Number of books in progress: 5

• The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love & Revolution, Luisita López Torregrosa
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
• Ulysses, James Joyce
• Ulysses Annotated, Don Gifford

Number of pages read: 5,040
YTD: 33,136

Books reviewed:

• Dare Me, Megan Abbott
• A Golden Age, Tahmima Anam
• The Good Muslim, Tahmima Anam
• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (wrap-up of readalong / watchalong)
• And When She Was Good, Laura Lippman

I will forever be behind on reviews, unless I take a week off from reading. So I will forever be behind on reviews.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 2/9  (YTD: 7/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 2/40  (YTD: 14/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 3/14  (YTD: 16/14) DONE! (Technically, I am finished with this challenge aside from writing some reviews. I still have more chunksters to read this year, though.)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 4,389  (YTD: 26,241)
• The Classics Club: 12/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 10/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in August:

Number of books read: 10
YTD: 74

• The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
• Heartbeat, Sharon Creech
• Replay, Sharon Creech
• The 7th Garfield Treasury, Jim Davis
• The 8th Garfield Treasury, Jim Davis
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor
• The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
• Willow, Wayland Drew
• Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
• The “What’s Happening To My Body?” Book For Girls, Lynda Madaras

Number of pages read: 2,124
YTD: 20,950

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 4/9  (YTD: 8/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 1/50  (YTD: 17/50)

Happy Heather’s Birthday Weekend! Have fun celebrating, but be safe!

For some time now I have wanted to start keeping track of my physical home library. I have a lot of books and before last weekend, although they were shelved, they were in no kind of order at all. My type-A personality was starting to get a little twitchy, so I buckled down and bought a program called Book Collector (this program does so many things that instead of listing everything here, I’ll just let you click that link and read about it on the developer’s website if you’re interested). One of the things I love about the program is that I can scan my books using an app on my smartphone, and it sends the books’ information directly to Book Collector. I have 630 books, and I only needed to enter about 30 or 40 of them manually, either because they didn’t have a barcode, or because the edition I own is so old that it wasn’t in the Book Collector database. It took me about five or six hours spanned over two days to scan all 630 books and make sure that all of their information was correct. That’s not bad at all. I also culled about 30 books that I didn’t really care about that I will donate to our local library.

As I mentioned, there were a few books that didn’t have barcodes and I had to get their ISBN numbers from their copyright pages. This is where the most exciting news comes in. As I was flipping to the copyright page in one of the barcode-less books, I found this:

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. Although my name isn’t Betty, I have a signed edition of bell hooks’ Remembered Rapture! I already posted photos of this on Twitter and Instagram, but I am so excited about this that I felt the need to post it here, too. HOW GREAT IS THIS??? I originally thought that I purchased this book from our library’s book sale last October, but then I remembered that it came from Better World Books. I can’t believe someone gave this up, but I’m glad they did so I could own it. Thank you, Betty! Hahaha!

Moving on. Once I had all of the books scanned and accounted for, I decided to unshelve them, sort them, and reshelve them alphabetically by author. Oh my goodness, that ended up being a lot of work (but totally worth it). I have bookcases on two floors in this house, so rearranging meant doing a lot of walking up and down the stairs while carrying heavy piles of books. WHAT A WORKOUT. It took me about eight hours between Monday and Tuesday to get it accomplished, and my body is still recovering. Ha! I’m glad I did it, though–it looks great and my OCD got a much-needed outlet.

On to the stats…

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in July:

Number of books finished: 14
YTD: 80

• The Absolutist, John Boyne
• Domestic Violets, Matthew Norman
• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
• Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
• Zazen, Vanessa Veselka
• A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
• Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood
• Shadow Show, Sam Weller and Mort Castle (editors)
• Dare Me, Megan Abbott
• The Magicians, Lev Grossman
• Graceling, Kristin Cashore
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
• The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

Number of books in progress: 4

• Ulysses, James Joyce (slow going, but so worth it)
• Ulysses Annotated, Don Gifford
• The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Robert Maturin

Number of pages read: 4,904
YTD: 28,096

Books reviewed:

• The Absolutist, John Boyne
• Graceling, Kristin Cashore
• The Yard, Alex Grecian
• Zazen, Vanessa Veselka
• The Magicians, Lev Grossman
• Shadow Show, Sam Weller and Mort Castle (editors)

I’m reading so much faster than I can review, so I have quite a few reviews to catch up on. Sigh.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 5/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 1/40  (YTD: 12/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 2/14  (YTD: 13/14)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 4,049  (YTD: 21,852)
• The Classics Club: 9/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 8/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in July:

Number of books read: 12
YTD: 64

• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Clue in the Crumbling Wall (Nancy Drew), Carolyn Keene
• The Mystery of the Tolling Bell (Nancy Drew), Carolyn Keene
• The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (Nancy Drew), Carolyn Keene
• The Mystery of the Ivory Charm (Nancy Drew), Carolyn Keene
• Cirque du Freak (Manga #1), Darren Shan
• School of Fear, Gitty Daneshvari
• Theo Boone: Kid Lawyer, John Grisham
• The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
• The Hero For Wondla, Tony DiTerlizzi
• The Borrowers, Mary Norton
• The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School, Candace Fleming

Number of pages read: 3,052
YTD: 18,826

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 5/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 16/50)

Happy reading!

It’s hot. That’s all I have to say about June.

I had to adjust the number of pages I’ve read for the Insatiable Booksluts’ End of the World Challenge; I have a huge slight case of OCD, so I was physically counting the pages I’ve read (as opposed to going by official page counts on Amazon). Well, Susie reminded me that not everyone is as anal as I am about this stuff, and that everyone else is going by official page counts, so I had to adjust my page counts accordingly. I have adjusted my numbers below, and on my Daytum profile.

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in June:

Number of books finished: 9
YTD: 66

• Brand New Human Being, Emily Jeanne Miller
• With My Body, Nikki Gemmell
• The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna
• The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
• The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
• Surfacing, Margaret Atwood
• Middlemarch, George Eliot
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Number of books in progress: 7

• Johnson’s Life of London, by Boris Johnson (this one is just not keeping my attention)
• Ulysses, James Joyce (slow going, but so worth it)
• Ulysses Annotated, Don Gifford
• Graceling, Kristin Cashore (#TuesBookTalk)
• The Absolutist, John Boyne (BOOK CLUB)
• A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving / The Magicians, Lev Grossman (these are both being read for #1book140 in July, so I will be starting these soon)

Number of pages read: 4,107
YTD: 23,192

Books reviewed:

• Brand New Human Being, Emily Jeanne Miller
• With My Body, Nikki Gemmell
• We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
• The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, Benjamin Hale
• A Sense of Direction, Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Reviews in progress: Yes.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 1/9  (YTD: 5/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/40  (YTD: 11/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 3/14  (YTD: 11/14)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 2,983  (YTD: 17,803)
• The Classics Club: 7/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 6/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in June:

Number of books read: 10
YTD: 52

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
• The Scarlet Slipper Mystery (Nancy Drew), Carolyn Keene
• Nancy’s Mysterious Letter, Carolyn Keene
• The Popularity in Papers (Book Two), Amy Ignatov
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

Books in progress: 3

• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery

Number of pages read: 4,942
YTD: 15,774

This is the third time Ash has read the Harry Potter series–I think she rereads them every year, and she devours them.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 1/9  (YTD: 5/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 16/50)

What was/were the best book/s you read in June?

One.

Yep, in three months, I read ONE book from my TBR pile. That brings my total to eleven for the year, with twenty-nine TBR books left to read in order to complete the challenge.

Reading twenty-nine books over six months is easy-peasy for me, so I’m not really worried…yet…that I won’t make it to the top of Mount Ararat. I think I’m going to need some help in order to make it by December 31st, though. Here’s what I have in mind:

I’m going to need all the authors of the world to stop writing new books for the next six months so I can catch up.

Can you do that for me? No? Oh.

You can click here to see the list of books I’m working with–the titles linked in blue are the books I have read and reviewed.

Of the books I’ve read so far this year (from that list), my favorite is The Warmth of Other Suns, written by Isabel Wilkerson. I knew it was going to be good, but it was even better than I expected it to be. The narrative nonfiction form is perfect for the story Wilkerson tells about the Great Migration, and I got really attached to the people she writes about. I learned quite a bit, too.

So this quarter was a bust, but I’m going to work hard to finish the challenge before the end of the year. Onward and upward!

I got a ton of reading done in May, although not so much of it counted towards the challenges I’m participating in. I have been doing a lot of re-reading–I finished re-reading all of Toni Morrison’s fiction, and now I’m re-reading all of Margaret Atwood’s fiction as part of a project started by Dog Ear Discs.

June is going to be a busy reading month–I’m reading a bunch of books for book clubs, and I’m going to be joining O of Délaissé for her Bloomsday read-along of Ulysses on June 16th (official sign-up post coming soon). I’m also going to join sj of Snobbery for her annual re-read of the Lord of the Rings series (starting with The Hobbit) on June 23rd. Fun, fun!

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in May:

Number of books finished: 15
YTD: 57

• What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes (started in April for #hpbookclub)
• Volcano, by Shusaku Endo
• Paradise, by Toni Morrison
• Love, by Toni Morrison
• A Mercy, by Toni Morrison
• The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, edited by Justine Tally (started in February)
• Lizz Free or Die, by Lizz Winstead
• When I Whistle, by Shusaku Endo
• Naples Declared, by Benjamin Taylor
• Overseas, by Beatriz Williams
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll (for #TuesBookTalk)
• The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain (for #1book140)
• A Sense of Direction, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus
• The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood
• The Yard, by Alex Grecian

Number of books in progress: 8

• The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (#hpbookclub)
• The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (#1book140)
• With My Body, by Nikki Gemmell (BOOK CLUB)
• The Memory of Love, by Aminatta Forna (Chunky Book Club)
• Middlemarch, by George Eliot (#TuesBookTalk)
• Johnson’s Life of London, by Boris Johnson
• Brand New Human Being, by Emily Jeanne Miller (TLC Book Tours)
• Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood

Number of pages read: 3,900
YTD: 19,085

Books reviewed:

• In One Person, by John Irving
• Lizz Free or Die, by Lizz Winstead
• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Naples Declared, by Benjamin Taylor
• Volcano and When I Whistle, by Shusaku Endo
• Overseas, by Beatriz Williams

Reviews in progress: Yes.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/40  (YTD: 11/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 1/14  (YTD: 8/14)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 2,698 pages  (YTD: 14,566)
• The Classics Club: 5/100 (Total)
• A Non-Fiction Adventure: 6/130 (Total)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in May:

Number of books read: 7
YTD: 42

• Chomp, by Carl Hiaasen
• March Toward the Thunder, by Joseph Bruchac
• The Vampire Prince,  by Darren Shan
• Just as Long as We’re Together, Judy Blume
• The Little Red Guard, by Wenguang Huang
• Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub, by Jamie Gilson
• Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, by E.L. Konigsburg

She also read three chapters of My Bondage and My Freedom, written by Frederick Douglass, and she’s currently reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs.

Number of pages read: 1,652
YTD: 10,832

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 0/50  (YTD: 16/50)

My favorite books in May (not including re-reads) were Lizz Free or Die, A Sense of Direction, and The Yard.

What was/were the best book/s you read in May?

On the downside, I spent the ENTIRE MONTH reading Vanity Fair. A 750-page book has never taken me so long to read (when reading at my own pace, as opposed to reading for a book club or read-along)…what a time suck. I will be blogging about that experience very soon.

April was National Poetry Month, and while I planned to blog about some of my favorite poems, Vanity Fair took up so much of my time (and I just…wanted…to get it…done), that I only ended up writing about two of them. If you missed those posts, you can check them out here and here.

SO…

Here’s a look at the reading I accomplished in April:

Number of books read: 7
YTD: 42

• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (started in March)
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers
• Jazz, by Toni Morrison
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
• The Little Red Guard, by Wenguang Huang
• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

Number of books in progress: 4

• What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes
• The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, edited by Justine Tally
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll
• Volcano, by Shusaku Endo

Number of pages read: 2,244
YTD: 15,185

Books reviewed:

• The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye
• Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers

Reviews in progress: Quite a few, still.

My rereading of Toni Morrison’s backlist came to a temporary halt, but I’m planning on starting Paradise sometime this week. I’m still reading The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison; when I finish a book, I read its corresponding section in the Companion.

**I’m using the Daytum website to keep track of my reading stats this year, so you can follow my progress at any time by visiting my Daytum profile.

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 1/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 1/40  (YTD: 11/40)
• Chunkster Reading Challenge: 2/14  (YTD: 7/14)
• End of the World Reading Challenge: 1,493 pages  (YTD: 11,868)

**You can follow my progress and learn more about each challenge under the Challenges tab in my menu bar.

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Ashley (my 11-year-old daughter) is participating in two of the challenges with me: the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge. She doesn’t have a place to review the books she’s read, so she’s just doing the reading and keeping track of her progress in a notebook.

Here’s a look at what Ashley accomplished in April:

Number of books read: 7
YTD: 37

• Moon Over Manifest, by Clare Vanderpool
• You Have to Stop This, by Pseudonymous Bosch
• The Supernaturalist, by Eion Colfer
• Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie
• Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, by Judy Blume
• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, by Trenton Lee Stewart
• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, by Trenton Lee Stewart

Number of pages read: 2,282
YTD: 9,180

Reading Challenges progress:

• Back to the Classics Challenge: 0/9  (YTD: 4/9)
• Mount TBR Reading Challenge: 4/50  (YTD: 16/50)

Did you do anything exciting in April? How did you do concerning your reading goals or other goals you made for the month?