Hello,
Exciting news... I FINISHED THE FIFTY BOOK CHALLENGE!!!!I started August 15th last year and yesterday was the last day. It's unreal to me that a year has passed already! It feels like just yesterday I was reading Skulduggery Pleasant, having my copy of Paper Towns signed by John, throwing The Three Musketeers up against the wall, sinking my teeth into Nation, rediscovering an old friend in To Kill a Mockingbird, so on and so forth. It has been an amazing year, I'm so glad I did the challenge. I'm a better reader, writer, and most hopefully, a better person for having done it. It was lots of fun, and lots of work. Fifty books is a surprisingly large load. When I started I was like “Oh, fifty? Pssshhht! I'll get that no problem!” In actuality, it's nearly a book a week and with the busy life of a student, even a bookish one like me, that is a lot.
I read a lot of different kinds of books by lots of great, and a few not so great, authors. I probably would have not found a lot of them if I hadn't done the challenge. I was forever browsing through reader's blogs, Amazon.com, Shelfari.com, my local library, and recommendations from friends to keep me supplied with ideas for the next book to read. The genres were all over the place, from Fantasy and Sci-Fi to Mysteries and Classics. A lot of the books were Young Adult, but not all. Most were fiction, but some were non-fiction.
Below is my reading list in chronological order, organized into the months I finished the book, along with a sentence or two about what I thought of the book. You'll see some months I was consistent, some months I read lots of books (May was EPIC!!), and others I read hardly anything.Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support through this! I'm going to relax and read some larger books for awhile (I'm in the middle of the next to last Mary Russell book at the moment), but I'm going to start the challenge again in January.
Later!
~Em~
August '08:1.) Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy (Loved it, so funny! A great read for everyone.)
2.) Slaves of the Mastery, by William Nicholson (Another great book from The Wind Singer series.)
3.) Playing With Fire, by Derek Landy (Sequel to Skulduggery Pleasant, very good.)
September:4.) Trickster's Choice, by Tamora Pierce (Excellent and fun, isn't she always??)
5.) First Boy, by Gary Schmidt (I found myself surprisingly endeared to the characters by the end, despite the obvious plot, which says something for the writer's strengths.)
6.) Deep Domain, by Howard Weinstein (Meh. One of the suckier Star Trek novels I've read. Yes, I've read several.)
7.) Evil Genius, by Catherine Jinks (I had some hard times with this one, but the sequel makes up for any discomfort. I recommend it.)
8.) The Confessions of Fitzwilliam Darcy, by Mary Street (My first Austen spin-off. Awww... I devoured this thing and instantly gave it to my Austen-loving friend as a gift.)
9.) Presidential Doodles, by David Greenburg (Couldn't help myself. It was a fun read.)
October:10.) Trickster's Queen, by Tamora Pierce (Great sequel to Trickster's Choice, excellent series. Duh! It's Pierce we're talking about.)
11.) Lionclaw: A Tale of Rowan Hood, by Nancy Springer (I read the Rowan Hood books when I was a youngster and loved them, but I found them lacking now.)
November:12.) The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (Don't even talk to me about this book. I will start ranting. I hate Dumas; he's lucky he's already dead.)
13.) Paper Towns, by John Green (DFTBA!! In all seriousness though a very engaging read.)
14.) Cybele's Secret, by Juliet Marillier (Sequel to Wildwood Dancing (not on the list) and I liked it a lot more than the first. Paula was more my kind of girl anyways.)
15.) The Indigo King, by James A. Owen (If you like fantasy even just a little itty-bitty teensy-tiny bit you need to start reading The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series. It's starts with Here, There Be Dragons. Go now before I spill the beans!!)
December:16.) Doomwyte, by Brian Jacques (I owe a great deal of my passion for literature and the type of reading I like to Brian Jacques' Redwall series. Also, I took my first steps into writing because I wished to aspire to something half as great as BJ's masterful storytelling.Back to the book though, I really liked this one.)
17.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Now I have no excuse to not read Beowulf. I must say though, most of the metaphors and underlying messages went over my head because it just isn't metaphor used nowadays. I read it's little Sparknotes thing and was like "Oh, I didn't know a five-pointed star is called a pentangle..." You see the problem.)
18.) Ivy, by Julie Hearn (I have major issues with the author's motivation to write this book. There's something to be said for unhappy endings, especially when a person chooses them. Life isn't a Disney fairytale.)
January:19.) Mara's Stories, by Gary Schmidt (A beautifully crafted Holocaust story. I was bawling a few pages in.)
20.) Nation, by Terry Pratchett (One of my favorite reads of the year. I can't wait to reread it.)
21.) Graceling, by Kristin Cashore (Another favorite of the year. Kristin Cashore is a great new writer in the tradition of Tamora Pierce with her strong characters and great imagination. I'm dying for the next book to come out.)
22.) The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (Old favorite, I've probably read it six times. It never gets old. The perfect antidote to Dumas.)
February:23.) The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde (I do love to read a play from time to time.)
24.) Devilish, by Maureen Johnson (Not my favorite Maureen book. It needs a sequel, or something.)
25.) Gone-Away Lake, by Elizabeth Enright (I started this when I was like ten or twelve and never finished it. So for nostalgia's sake I picked it up again. Good for middle schoolers.)
March:26.) To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (My second read through TKAM. I loved it, and I found the way my reactions had changed to it very interesting.)
27.) Let It Snow, by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle (Awesome little feel good read.)
28.) Girl At Sea, by Maureen Johnson (I really liked this one! Clio appealed to me.)
29.) I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, by Kyria Abrahams (This was an autobiography of a woman who was raised Jehovah's Witness. I don't know, it was interesting, but it was very hard to read due to the emotional content and I felt like she needed to take some more time before putting pen to paper.)
30.) The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart (One of my favorite reads of the list, possibly my most favorite. I was fascinated with the ideas in the book and Frankie was my kind of gal.)
31.) Are We There Yet?, by David Levithan (Meh, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't my cup of tea.)
April:32.) The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart (I loved it. Not quite as good as Frankie, but still really awesome.)
May:33.) Genius Squad, by Catherine Jinks (I loved this book up one side and down the other. It was perfect, I loved all the heroes (finally) and still felt shady about the bad guys. Jinks plays the grey areas of criminals well.)
34.) Melting Stones, by Tamora Pierce (Confession, I haven't read any of the Circle of Magic books and just blindly grabbed a Pierce. Nonetheless, very good!!)
35.) The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (My favorite playwrights. (I've read Inherit the Wind three times.) I would love to see this play performed to see what it actually looks like. It's all very ethereal in my mind. A very good play.)
36.) The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Book One of the Mary Russell Series, by Laurie R. King (And then I found the book that at once destroyed one of my story ideas, but fulfilled my vision a million times better than I ever could. I looooove this Sherlock Holmes spin off series, and once you've read SH I strongly recommend this.)
37.) Much Ado About English, by Richard Watson Todd (I read all of it too! Yay nonfiction.)
38.) A Monstrous Regiment of Women, by Laurie R. King (Book 2 of the Mary Russell series. Loved it.)
39.) A Letter of Mary, by Laurie R. King (Book 3, I was epic addicted by this point.)
40.) The Moor, by Laurie R. King (Book 4, I couldn't stop!)
41.) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon (A very interesting story told from a very interesting point of view. It has really stayed with me.)
June:42.) How to Buy a Love of Reading, by Tanya Egan Gibson (Preface, this was a novel. I honestly still don't know what to say about this book. I ranged from hating to disliking all the characters but Bree and Justin, but I struggled with them too. It wasn't a pleasant read due to the emotions involved. I don't know. Most of the characters had this deep-rooted self-hate that is hard to take. But I don't regret having read the book and can't wait for my mom to read it to see what she thinks.)
43.) Th1rteen R3asons Why, by Jay Asher (So, reading a book about a boy dealing with his crush's suicide while listening to a tape she made about why she killed herself, right after reading a book wherein everyone hates themselves, was probably not a wise choice, but it's the choice I made. I loved this book. It was very, very good. Epic sad though.)
July:44.) O Jerusalem, by Laurie R. King (Book 5 in the Mary Russell series. My third favorite of the series so far. It was the perfect book at the perfect moment in the series and the perfect book to read after three emotionally draining books in a row.)
45.) A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park (I was pleasantly surprised how much I loved this little book. Very deserving of its Newberry.)
46.) Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci (A collection of short stories from seventeen authors (lots of whom I am fans of), with the main theme being geeky things. One of my favorite short story collections. The first story is about a Klingon and Jedi falling in love at a convention. Cracked me up!! I'd still rather be a Vulcan than a Jedi.)
August '09:47.) Justice Hall, by Laurie R. King (Book 6, very good.)
48.) Alternate American Religion, by Stephen J. Stein (An interesting read, I was shocked how many ideas of the outlying religious groups of olden times are now mainstream today. Separation of church and state, for example, was not a mainstream idea AT ALL in Colonial times.)
49.) The Red Pony, by John Steinbeck (I'm sure I missed half of everything you're supposed to get from this book, but it was the oddest coming of age story I've ever read. And the last chapter's glaring omission bugged me! But I'm sure I missed the point there. Sigh.)
50.) Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank (I read this when I was young, and decided to read it for old times sake. I didn't really remember it like I thought I did.)
