OK, so since I started this book blog in September I have been scouting around searching the net for other book blogs. And me oh mi,but there are many! Sad to say, that most of them are not South African, from what I can gather, most of them seem to be American and English. Anyhoo, on my scouting around I have picked up that ‘challenges’ are quite the in thing. Not that I mind, in fact I have joined a few. I like the idea of challenging myself in the books that I read. I tend to get stuck in ‘one author’ ruts and once I have finished all possible related books, I bemoan the fact that I have nothing to read! So, I have four reading challenges I have joined.
The first one, I joined last year,and it is finishing up on the 31 January. My challenge was to read one book of Japanese origin. Now, you wouldn’t think that would be at all difficult, would you? Alas, it is a short story book and I find it terribly difficult to read it all in one go (when I review it,more will be revealed as to why) and then once I have put it down, finding the right moment to pick it up again just never seems to come along. Hence this challenge: The Japanese Literature Challenge 3 as I had a Haruki Marukami sitting in my bookshelf begging to be read. I still have 25 days to go.
The second one I joined was the 451 Friday reading challenge, and you can read my post about it here.
The third one I have joined is the GLBT reading challenge. The basic idea of this challenge is to read books about GLBT topics and/or by GLBT authors.
And the fourth one I have joined is the Themed Quest reading challenge. With this one, you have to choose a word and find at least 4 books (1 non fiction) about your particular theme. My theme and word is Laughter.
So, that should keep me in books for a while. I am looking forward to my next library visit which is coming up next week and I’ll let you know what books I have discovered for all the challenges.
(Today was the library visit and I found one book for the GLBT challenge: Armistead Maupins’ -‘Michael Tolliver Lives’. I read all the Tales of the City books and loved them and even though this one is not, strictly speaking, a continuation of those books, a reassuring number of familiar faces appear along the way.)
For the 451 challenge, while I was doing Christmas book shopping a couple of weeks ago, I managed to find ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ – Lionel Shriver. I think this one will wait a little while as it seems rather heavy and I’m not in ‘heavy’ mode just yet.
How about you? Are any of you up for challenging yourself in your reading? If so, wander over and have a look at the ones I have chosen, maybe you will find something which tickles your fancy. And if you do end up joining anything, let me know!
Just an aside,please visit In the now, as his post today is all about books and which ones were life changing for you. I would love to know, so head on over or leave a comment here, Have fun!
As most of you know, I joined in the GLBT reading challenge for this year. I am doing the Lamda level which is to read 4 books. So far, I have read one. I know you would think I could of managed more than one, considering we are officially almost a quarter way through this year already. Ah well, it will happen… but back to what I read.