2016's Reading Challenge

July-December

• A graphic novel The Complete Persepolis
• By a female author In The Unlikely Event
• Romance A Bollywood Affair
• An Autobiography or Memoir The Tenth Muse
• Published in the decade you were born Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Out of your comfort zone Deja Dead
• An award winner To Kill A Mockingbird
• Adapted into a movie A River Runs Through It
• Recommended by a friend Orphan Train
• An overdrive E-book or E-audiobook An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
• Has more than 500 pages Outlander
• By a BC author Gumboot Girls
• A book “everyone” has read Furiously Happy
• By a person of colour We Should All Be Feminists
• A magazine on Zinio Elle magazine
• Published this year (2016) Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Science Fiction or Fantasy A Wrinkle in Time
• Juvenile or Young Adult Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Book Club - A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

Yahoooooo!  I am done!  I finished this one last week.  18 books in 6 months.  It's been years - since before kids - that I have read that much.  To Kill a Mockingbird and Astronauts Guide were my top 2.  I will keep my least favorites to myself.  :)

I will say that reading the last few books took longer than I thought - not because I wasn't enjoying them, but I was getting tired of following a list to tell me what to read next.  I'm looking forward to reading some of the stuff that's piled up around here, both fiction and non fiction.

What's next on your reading list?

Book Club - An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Eath by Chris Hadfield

"The Windows of a spaceship casually frame miracles."

"You are getting ahead if you learn, even if you wind up staying on the same rung."

"The shimmering, dancing show of the northern and southern lights; the gorgeous blues of the shallow reefs fanning out from the Bahamas; the huge, angry froth stirred up around the focused eye of a hurricane - seeing the whole world shifts your perspective radically."

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For Summer Reading Club - E Book

Book Club - Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

` ``You think I`m going into the zombie apocalypse sober? ` I shook my head.  ``I don`t think so.  Plus, alcohol is a good disinfectant.``

``I`m pretty sure butterscotch schnapps isn`t ideal for wounds.``  He knew me too well.  `

`Like my grandmother always said, `Your opinions and valid and important.  Unless it`s some stupid bullshit you`re being shitty about, in which case you can just go fuck yourself.`

`Then I realized I hurt too much to use Twitter, and that`s when I knew I was dying.`

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For Summer Reading Club - A book `everyone`has read.

Book Club - To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

"...(he was now positively allergic to my presence when in public)..."

' "Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking." '

' "Don't fool yourselves - it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay hell for it." '

' :....we had given him nothing, and it made me sad." '

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For Summer Reading Club - Award Winner

Book Club - Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

' I am ninety one years old, and almost everyone who was once in my life is now a ghost. '

' "Yes I do.  I believe in ghosts."

"Do you think they're...present in our lives?"

Vivian fixes her hazel eyes on Molly and nods.  "They're the ones who haunt us." She says.  

"The ones who have left us behind." '

"Now then.  Where shall we begin?" 

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For Summer Reading Club - Recommended by a friend.

Book Club - A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

"Behind the trees clouds scuttled frantically across the sky.  Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground."

"Did a shadow fall across the moon, or did the moon simply go out, extinguished as abruptly and completely as a candle?"

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For Summer Reading Club - Science Fiction

Book Club - A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean

'The backbone of a mountain would not break, so the mountain compresses the already powerful river into sound and spray before letting it pass.'

'If you think that what I am about to tell you next is a contradiction to this, then you will have to realize that in Montana drinking beer does not count as drinking.'

'How can a question be answered that asks a lifetime of questions?'

'I am haunted by waters.'

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For the Summer Reading Club - Adapted into a Movie.

Book Club - Elle Magazine

Not sure what Zinio is, and I'm not signing myself up for anything, so I read an Elle magazine that I'd bought at the beginning of Summer when we were away and The Boy and I were sitting out a rainstorm at a Tim Horton's.  I bought this at the drug store next door, but people watching was wayyyyy more fun than any book or magazine could have been that day.

Book Club - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling

" "The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." "

"We cannot protect the young from harm.  Pain must and will come."

"In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison; that knowledge that pain will come again."

For the Summer Reading Club - Published this year (2016).

I am a big Harry Potter fan; I was happy to read this one.  It was good - and I wish I would have the chance to see the actual play.

Book Club - We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"We have evolved.  But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much."

Love this book.  This will stay on my bookshelf  and I will be suggesting it to everyone. 

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I finished reading this on August 31, the last day of the Summer Reading Club.  I read 9 books in two months.  For me, lately, that is a LOT.  I haven't read that much since before The Boy was born.  

I'll finish off the Club list, then Book Club will return to whatever is on my shelf and at the library.

Book Club - Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

" 'Jonathan,' he said, and these were the last words he spoke.  'Keep working on love,'  When they could see again, Chiang was gone."

70's, baby.

Book Club - In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

" 'Happy New Year Miri, I hope someday I have a daughter exactly like you.' He ruffled her hair.

'I am your daughter' Miri told him inside her head.

'I know.' Henry whispered, as if he'd actually heard what she hadn't said."

" 'It's going to be a great adventure.' Rusty whispered.  Miri never thought about her mother being adventurous.'

" 'So long Cowgirl,' she says softly.  'I'll see you in my dreams.'

'Not if I see you first.' "


Summer Sisters by Judy Blume is a big favorite of mine, so this has been on my list since it was announced.  This is for the Female Author category in the reading challenge.

Book Club - Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

"A half moon had come up, and the light was bright enough to pick out the leaves of the mallow plants growing on the roadside, but the shadows in the clefts of the rock could hide anything."


" 'I told you that the Blessed Sacrament was not alone, for you were there.  But what of you, ma chere?  Were you alone?'
I stopped and looked at him for a moment before answering.
'No,' I said.  'I wasn't.' "

"Not a gift, but a trust.  Fiercely to cherish, softly to guard.  The words spoke themselves and disappeared into the groined shadows of the roof."

Also for the Summer Reading Club - A Book Over 500 pages.  And it was.

Book Club - Gumboot Girls

"Living on or by the Pacific Ocean is a sort of sanctuary.  The Sea is moving and constantly changing.  It is my home.  Dan's still down there, somewhere on the bottom, too deep for recovery."

"Life leisurely focused on survival.  It took time but there was no sense of urgency.  The land and sea provided."

" 'I was so much older then.  I'm younger than that now.' Bob Dylan"

For the Summer Book Club - By a BC Author.

Book Club - Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs

 "When Summer arrives in Montreal it flounces in like a rumba dancer: all ruffles and bright cotton, with flashing thighs and sweat-slicked skin."

"Years of his criticism had never broken me of the habit.  Separation has its advantages.  Now I can fidget to my hearts content."

" 'A la prochaine' I said to the summer night."

Book club and the summer reading club - this one is for Out of Your Comfort Zone.  I do NOT enjoy crime or grisly books, or horror any more.  It was a good book, but I'm not sure I'd read another in the series.  

Book Club - The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

"I turned around to see them one last time.

It would have been better to just go."

"But let's be fair.  If women faced prison because they refused to wear the veil, it was

 also forbidden for men to wear neckties (that dreaded symbol of the west),

 and if a woman's hair got men excited, the same thing could be said 

of mens bare arms, and so wearing short sleeved shirts was also forbidden."

"I finally understood what my Grandmother meant - if I wasn't comfortable with myself, 

I would never be comfortable."

"At one of the demonstrations, a German journalist took a photo of my mother.  I was really proud of her.  Her photo was published in all the European newspapers.  And even one magazine in Iran.  

My mother was really scared.  She dyed her hair, and wore dark glasses for a long time."

Book Club - Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

"When the sun was too hot we fell back into the water, and when the chilly sea made us shiver we crawled out again, and so it went until our shadows began to lengthen across the cove."

"She laughed and ran off to catch up with the others.  I didn't know what to call it, what was happening between us, but I liked it.  It felt silly and fragile and good."

For The Summer Reading Club - Juvenile or Young Adult.  Because I've wanted to read it since it was published, and now I'm on a list for the sequel.

Book Club - The Tenth Muse - My Life in Food by Judith Jones

"Then she looked at me and asked: "Tell me, Judith, do you really like garlic?"  I couldn't lie.  Yes, I admitted, I adored garlic.  She looked so crestfallen at that moment that I was sure she felt a sense of finality about the wayward path her younger daughter had taken."

"Back in Paris, I reveled in the pleasure of being on my own.  I found cheap lodging at Hotel Lenox, four flights up, with one shared bathtub on the second floor, and I learned to enjoy a meal by myself with a half bottle of wine in the little local bistros.  I could really only afford one meal a day, so I had to choose carefully."


For the Summer Reading Club - An Autobiography or Memoir.
Why did I choose it for the Club?
It fit the category!  I bought this second hard last summer on holiday and hadn't
got around to reading it yet.  This gave me the push I needed.
It was a fun summer read - she has had a most interesting life!
I especially enjoyed reading about her childhood and early years on
 her own in France - what a dream.

Adult Summer Reading Club

If you're a fan of reading, you might want to check out the Adult Summer Reading Club at the TNRD Library.

It runs until the end of the summer with some great prizes.

While there is no way I could come close to completing the list by the end of the summer, I will be taking it on as a longer term project.  I had fun reading the categories and thinking of books I've got to read that would fit in.

You can see all the rules here.

Big THANKS to the always entertaining and informative A.L. Smithey for posting about this cool event.

The categories are:

• A graphic novel 
• By a female author 
• Romance 
• An Autobiography or Memoir 
• Published in the decade you were born 
• Out of your comfort zone 
• An award winner 
• Adapted into a movie (Watch the movie too) 
• Recommended by a friend 
• An overdrive E-book or E-audiobook 
• Has more than 500 pages 
• By a BC author 
• A book “everyone” has read 
• By a person of colour 
• A magazine on Zinio 
• Published this year (2016) 
• Science Fiction or Fantasy 
• Juvenile or Young Adult

Make sure you check out the booklet that you need to fill out (and color!) -it's super cool.