Happy New Year (or better late than never)!

I have had so many New Year posts half written out and then scrapped. I was even going to take part in a hosted post. However, it would seem I have been lazy in my posting the last few weeks and not quite satisfied with what I had written. I am back at uni tomorrow and so have decided just to go ahead and post something before my blog dies away.

So 2011 I read 132 books and 2012 I read a measley 99. Well, not really measley since it was a lot more than I expected. My initial challenge for myself was 60 books and when it looked like it wasn't challenging enough I upped it to 80. That's this years challenge too. It sounds as though this term is going to be busier than ever. This of course is followed by a summer of placement before I move into my final year. Basically I will be lucky if I read 80.

Enough of that though. Here are some of my favourite books from last year;

I've picked just one from each month although that was difficult. There were some months I read very little and then others where there were too many good ones to choose from. These I think represent a rounded selection.

The book I disliked the most isn't actually that difficult to choose. It is of course Fifty Shades of Grey. Bad writing and very little story. What there was of it was extremely dull. Mind you I had a couple of unfinished books last year too. One of which was Posession by A. S. Byatt. Far superior in it's writing but bogged down in prose when I just wanted it to get on with the story.

2011 I failed at the only challenge I signed up for. 2012 was a big success as I managed all four (granted one of those just lasted the one month). I was quite proud of myself of that since I thought I was going to fail the last two in December.

The year ahead I am just planning on working on my tbr pile. I have got it under 20 but they are mostly rather chunky books. So the only challenge for me this year is to finish those. I think I can manage that. I will still read classics but not sure if I will read them on a monthly basis. I am hoping to discover more authors and read more of my favourites through not signing up for set challenges.

Hope everyone had as good a year as I did and hope everyone has an even better 2013.

Classics Challenge Overview

For the last 6 months of 2011 I had already been challenging myself to read a classic a month. I was enjoying it and knew I would continue into 2012. So when I saw this challenge being set up I felt I had to join in. Instead of just reviewing the books we were given some questions each month. The challenge was to do at least 7 of those prompts. I managed 12 books and 9 prompts so I am quite pleased with myself. I actually read more classics than that but I read 12 specifically for the challenge.

So here is what I had planned to read;

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - John Steinbeck
The Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas
Villette  - Charlotte Bronte
Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima
The Leopard - Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Bell - Iris Murdoch
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

And here is what I actually read;

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - John Steinbeck
The Bell - Iris Murdoch
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
The Leopard - Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Villette - Charlotte Bronte
A Connecticuit Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - Victor Hugo

The Spring Snow is the only one on the list I originally put together that I decided against. I will read it eventually but there were quite a few that I saw reviewed and then felt I had to pick up. Thanks to not completely sticking to a pre-arranged list I read quite a few unexpected surprises. There are a few authors here I will be returning to. I'm not going into which was my favourite and which wasn't as I mentioned all this in the last prompt.

Anyway, thanks to Katherine of November's Autumn for organising. It was another fun challenge and I particularly enjoyed the unusual way it was organised. These prompts made an interesting change to just reviewing.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Victor Hugo

It's 1482 in Paris and a young Gypsy girl has stolen the hearts of most of it's citizens. She entertains the crowd with her dancing and her pet goat. Several men in particular are enthralled. One has stolen Esmeralda's heart. The second is torn by his love and loathes both himself and Esmeralda because of it. The third is the famous Quasimodo, bell ringer of Notre-Dame. He is devoted to the beautiful gypsy after she shows him more kindness than anyone else has. As a result he is devoted to her. When Esmeralsa's love is found dead she herself is blamed. Only Quasimodo saves her from a hanging as he hides her away in his beloved towers.

I am sure I picked this up before and didn't get very far. Determined this time I forced myself through the first 50 pages which seemed to have nothing to do with the main story whatsoever. It took time for any of the main characters to turn up. However, it does make sense eventually and it's worth sticking to. Even as I was annoyed at what seemed to be unimportant description I was impressed by the beautiful writing.

The story is actually slow paced. It spands over 500 pages and nothing much happens in most of it. Instead we are given back ground information to some to the characters. We are also seemingly given unimportant detail of other people but it all connects up and even if it hadn't I was too mesmerised by the writing to care.

I loved each of the characters. Esmeralda's story was just as sad as that of Quasimodo's (well, almost). I even felt sorry for the villan of the book who was so torn by his own beliefs. I'm speaking of course of the Archdeacon who had lived a celibate life and belonged to the church. Esmeralda was everything he couldn't have and yet everything he wanted. The only character I had little sympathy with was that of Esmeralda's love, Captain Phoebus. He seems typical of a lot of classic books. The vain and lazy military man who has no money and so has to marry well. Wants his bit on the side too. I am sure there is one of him in a lot of classic literature.

Over all I loved the book and it was a good last choice for the classics challenge. Since the December prompt for this one is a wrap up I am going to do that separate from this review. If you want to see what others did you can see it here on Katherine's blog, November Autumn.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! Hope Santa brings you much book goodness.

Sci Fi Challenge Overview!

Ellie from Curiosity Killed the Bookworm set this challenge up last year in order to encourage more people to give the genre ago. For me it was a genre I was familiar with but one I had abandoned for a few years. When I realised I had only read three sci fi books last year (which is shocking since I went through a phase of reading it almost exclusively) I decided to join the challenge. The plan was to read some sci fi that I had been wanting to read for years but never got around to. I think I succeeded and got to read some great books. I even joined in one or two of the group choices. I stuck with just one book a month. Here is my list and a link to each of my reviews.

Zoo by Lauren Beukes
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
Empire State by Adam Christopher
Cities In Flight by James Blish
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Manhattan In Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton
The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
Ringworld by Larry Niven
The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

A bit of a mixed bag I think. Some new authors, some classics and a couple of old favourites. I think I didn't do too badly. There are still some books out there that I want to read but I think that I read all of the ones that I had set out to. The main one would be Enders Game. I knew as soon as I signed up for this that it was going to be on my list. Getting hold of a coupy proved to be a little difficult. They must be getting ready for a re-print with the new film coming out. As it was it was months of a wait to buy and so I ended up going via the library route. That also meant a wait but it was worth it. A great read and not at all what I had been expecting.

I wish I had taken part in the group choices more but I had promised myself I would cut down on the book buying and I had a few in my tbr pile that I wanted to read. I did read three from the book choices though; Zoo, Do Androids Dream and Flowers For Algernon. Zoo I had been wanting to read since I saw it reviewed and couldn't resist. The other two were on my bucket list.

I don't think there is one book on that list that I completely disliked. The ones that probably will never be a favourite had their good points so I can't say that I disliked them. They were; Cities In Flight, Century Rain and Ringworld. Century Rain was probably the one that I was most disappointed with but only because I loved other books by the author. Again, I didn't completely dislike it.

It's also hard to choose a favourite. There were so many good ones and each of them different. I very much enjoyed going back to Peter F. Hamilton. I was reminded of why I loved this author. Do Androids Dream and Flowers For Algernon were fantastic classic sci fi. They reminded me that I need to go back and try more. Oh, and Wyndham is also an old favourite. The Kraken Wakes wasn't his best book but it was still a good one.

Thanks Ellie for organising this. Hopefully I will keep up with my sci fi reading next year! Oh, and if any of you are interested Ellie is hosting another challenge for next year. This involves reading translated books. Called 2013 Translation Challenge and has another fab lego gif.

The Ship Who Sang - Anne McCaffrey

Helva was born with a body so deformed that she normally wouldn't have survived. However, her brain was perfect and used to eventually become part of a ship. Helva is intelligent, witty and still feels human without a human body. All she needs is the brawn (human counterpart) to team up with and she can visit worlds, save lives and live the next 200/300 years as one big adventure. However, Helva soon discovers that being human also includes loss and loneliness.

I didn't realise it at the time but this is actually a collection of short stories or rather five novella's. Not that it makes any difference since they are all connected. I don't think you could really read one of those stories without reading the ones before it.

I chose this as my last book for this challenge because I wanted a lighter sci fi book. I wanted something that I could read as a distraction and that I could put down and pick up again without any problem. Anne McCaffrey immediately popped in to my head as the perfect choice. Plus I had been meaning to go back and read some more of her work since she passed away last year.

These stories, whilst a little un-PC, were a great read. They were light, full of adventure and just a touch of technology. Well a big touch since the main character was wired in to a ship but it wasn't as hard core as some. You didn't have to necessarily understand the technology to get it. In each story it's Helva who saves the day. She's a little different from the other ships because she can sing. At first this is something she is ridiculed for but eventually becomes part of her legend. A ship who will do what she can to keep those under her care safe no matter what.

The un-PC aspect is a little tough to take in today's world. The fact that Helva's parents had to make a choice. Have their disabled daughter euthanised or wired in to technology. You can see where the un-PC aspect comes in. I have to say I didn't particularly like that part of it. McCaffrey did confront it from the beginning by having characters who believe it to be inhumane to visit the facility and see that all the brain children are happy. Still, it leaves with a bit of bad taste in the mouth.

If you can get over it like I did though you have some fun stories to read.

As I mentioned earlier on I read this as part of the sci fi challenge and this was in fact my last book for it. If you want to see what others read this month you can do so over at Ellie's blog Curiosity Killed the Bookworm. The suggestion was to read a festive-ish sci fi book but once again I went with my own choice. Have enjoyed the challenge overall and I will review it later on in the week.

Mixing It Up Challenge Overview

Before I start with my overview I just wondered if anyone else was having problems with spammers? It's just been recently and maybe my little time away from my blog had something to do with it. It's also only on very old blog posts that require me to moderate the comments anyway. Since it's annoying me though I am no longer allowing anonymous comments. Sorry people.

Okay, so this challenge was hosted by the lovely Ellie of Musings of a Bookshop Girl. Way last year she set a challenge to encourage people to come out of their comfort zone. You could enter at different levels and each level had a certain number of categories to complete. The highest level meant all 16 categories. I chose one of the lower ones and 12 categories so that it would mean one book a month. I've listed the 12 categories I chose and the books I read for them below;

Classics - Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Biography - Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
History - Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
Modern Fiction - Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Graphic Novels & Manga - The Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Crime and Mysetery - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
Horror - Miss Peregrines's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Science Fiction & Fantasy - A Sorcerer's Treason by Sarah Zettel
Travel - A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson
Poetry & Drama - The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Journalism & Humour - Moranthology by Caitlin Moran
Science & Natural History - The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins

As some of these categories weren't much out of my comfort zone I decided that I would only choose books by authors I had never read before. Obviously I completely forgot about my addition to the challenge by the end as I had read Bill Bryson and Caitlin Moran before (in fact Bryson appears on this list twice). The rest of the authors were new to me though so I'll let myself get away with it.

First of all my least favourites of the list would easily be the Preacher and The Greatest Show On Earth. Neither books would stop me from reading from those genres again though. With the Preacher it could have been a good story and it did pick up for me near the end but the constant violence put me off. As I am sure I mentioned in my initial review I am no prude when it comes to a bit of violence in my reading but this was violence for violence sake. Basically I was bored by it and wanted story instead. As for The Greatest Show On Earth I found it to be a little preachy and a little dull. I did learn things from it but in the end it wasn't a book for me. I like my science books a little lighter than that.

Whilst I enjoyed all of the other books one stands out from all the rest. That book is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. This stands out not just because I loved the book but it's also one category which was definitely out of my comfort zone. My first foray into drama since school was some Shakespeare for another challenge at the start of the year. So this was only my second attempt and with something completely different. Like with the Shakespeare books it was easy to forget the format it was written in. I got just as much from it as I would have done from any novel and I couldn't put it down. I was surprised by how well the atmosphere of the play was built up given the restrictions to the format. I don't think I will ever dismiss the play again when it comes to reading material. For that one book alone the challenge was successful.

If you want to see what I thought about all of the books you can do so here. This is my original sign up post and I have linked all my reviews to it. If you want to see how others did with the challenge Ellie has posted a sign up on her blog.