Sir Furboy's Language Category Challenge

In 2011 I started a language category challenge where I hoped to read books in 11 languages. However real life intervened and in any case the project was over-ambitious as it required learning most of the languages concerned!

In 2016 I hope to have another go, but this time I won't try to match the number of categories to the number of the year. Thus here are my categories:

1. English - Category Complete

- 1. The Hollow Boy - Jonathan Stroud
- 2. Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi
- 3. Beast - Ally Kennen
- 4. Abomination - Robert Swindells
- 5. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
- 6. A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
- 7. The Iron Trial - Holly Black, Cassandra Clare
- 8. Earthfall - Mark Walden
- 9. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
-10. The Reluctant Assassin - Eoin Colfer

2. Welsh

- 1. Jac - Guto Dafydd
- 2. Olion Hen Elyn - Elgan Philip Davies

3. French - Category Complete

- 1. Le mystère de Gros-bois - Mitacq
- 2. Le Petit Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
- 3. Phænomen - Erik l'Homme
- 4. Vachement Moi - Emmanuel Bourdier
- 5. Le disparu de Ker-Aven - Mitacq
- 6. Histoires à lire le soir - Marc Thil
- 7. L'inconnu de la villa mystère - Mitacq
- 8. Sur la piste de Mowgli - Mitacq
- 9. Entre les lignes - Emmanuel Bourdier
-10. Le Petit Nicolas - René Goscinny

4. Dutch

- 1. Boy 7 - Mirjam Mous
- 2. Essential Dutch Grammar - Henry Stern
- 3. Een Zoektocht van Helden - Morgan Rice
- 4. Het Geheim van de Draak - Guido Kees

5. German

- 1. Emil und die Detektive - Erich Kastner
- 2. Das Urteil - Franz Kafka
- 3. Der Struwwelpeter - Heinrich Hoffman

6. Other Languages

- 1. Italian Short Stories for Beginners - Olly Richards
- 2. Io Non Ho Paura - Niccolò Ammaniti

The other language category was a catch all, and I had no idea what languages I would choose for this. However I have been learning Italian recently (which also slowed down my reading rate) and so can now report my first "Other" book.

Because this is 2016, I added 10 more categories. Some books may fit a language category and one of the others, which will count as a win for me :)

7. Sci Fi - Category Compete

- 1. Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi
- 2. Legend - Marie Lui
- 3. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
- 4. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
- 5. Earth Unaware - Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnson
- 6. A Confusion of Princes - Garth Nix
- 7. Ready player one - Ernest Cline
- 8. Maze Runner 2: The Scorch Trials - James Dashner
- 9. Escape to Witch Mountain - Alexander Key
-10. Visitors - Orson Sott Card

8. Fantasy - Category Complete

-1. City of Bones - Cassandra Clare (Urban fantasy)
-2. The Rest of us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
-3. Mirrorscape -Mike Wilks
-4. Mirrorstorm - Mike Wilks
-5. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - JK Rowling et al.
-6. Pan - the Untold Stories - K.R. Thompson
-7. Een Zoektocht Van Helden - Morgan Rice
-8. Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies - J K Rowling
-9. Goldenhand - Garth Nix
-10. Magician's Guild - Trudi Canavan

9. Coming of Age - Category Complete

-1. A Boy called Hope - Lara Williamson
-2. We Can Be Heroes - Catherine Bruton
-3. A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
-4. How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare, robbed a grave, made a new friend who might not have really been there at all, and while he was at it committed a terrible sin which everyone was doing even though he didn’t know it - Paul Jennings
-5. More Than This - Patrick Ness
-6. Abomination - Robert Swindells
-7. Greylands - Isobelle Carmody
- 8. The Ocean at the end of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
- 9. The Gathering - Isobelle Carmogy
-10. Treasure Island - R L Stevenson

10. Young Adult - Category Complete

- 1. Boy 7 - Mirjam Mous
- 2. The Outcasts by John Flanagan
- 3. The Iron Trial - Holly Black, Cassandra Clare
- 4. The Reluctant Assassin - Eoin Colfer
- 5. The Territory Govett Sarah - Sarah Govett
- 6. Timesnatch - Robert Swindells
- 7. Devil's Triangle - Mark Robson
- 8. The Copper Gauntlet - Holly Black, Cassandra Clare
- 9. The Bell Between Worlds - Ian Johnstone
- 10. More Than This - Patrick Ness

11. Award Winning - Category Complete

- 1. A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness - Carnegie Medal 2012, Greenaway Medal 2012
- 2. Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke - Hugo and Nebula Awards 1973
- 3. Greylands - Isobelle Carmody - Aurealis Award for best young-adult novel (Australia).
- 4. The Gathering - Isobelle Carmogy - Children's Peace Literature Award: Best Book (1993), CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers (1994)
- 5. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness - 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, 2008 Guardian Award, 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award
- 6. Strange Objects - Gary Crew - Australian Children's Book Council Book of the Year for Older Readers (1990)
- 7. Io Non Ho Paura - Niccolò Ammaniti - Viareggio Prize (2001)
- 8. The Ocean at the end of the Lane - Neil Gaiman - National (UK) Book Awards, Book of the Year (2013) + others
- 9. Turtle Boy - Kealan Patrick Burke - Bram Stoker Award (2004)
- 10. Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke - Hugo (1974) and Nebula (1973) awards + others

12. Historical - Category Complete

- 1. War of the Roses: Stormbird - Conn Iggulden
- 2. War of the Roses: Trinity - Conn Iggulden
- 3. The Crocodile Tomb - Michelle Paver
- 4. Pennies for Hitler - Jackie French
- 5. Iron and Rust - Harry Sidebottom
- 6. Blood and Steel - Harry Sidebottom
- 7. Gods and Warriors: Warrior Bronze - Michelle Paver
- 8. Gladiator: Vengeance - Simon Scarrow
- 9. The Jade Boy - Cate Cain
- 10. Entre les lignes - Emmanuel Bourdier

13. Geographical - Category Complete

- 1. Ghost Hawk - Susan Cooper (New England)
- 2. Boy Overboard - Morris Gleitzman (Afghanistan)
- 3. Io Non Ho Paura - Niccolò Ammaniti (Southern Italy)
- 4. Phænomen - Erik l'Homme (Switzerland)
- 5. Pennies for Hitler - Jackie French (Germany, France, England, Australia)
- 6. Strange Objects - Gary Crew (Australia)
- 7. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (Scotland)
- 8. Emil und die Detective - Erich Kastner (Berlin, Germany)
- 9. Entre les lignes - Emmanuel Bourdier (France)
- 10. How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare, robbed a grave, made a new friend who might not have really been there at all, and while he was at it committed a terrible sin which everyone was doing even though he didn’t know it - Paul Jennings (Australia)
- 11. Avery McShane - Greg Lyons (Venezuela)

14. Classics

- 1. Le Petit Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
- 2. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
- 3. Emil und die Detective - Erich Kastner
- 4. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- 5. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- 6. Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke
- 7. Das Urteil - Franz Kafka
- 8. Treasure Island - R L Stevenson
- 9. Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

15. Wish I hadn't Bothered (Oh please let this category be complete!)

(Obviously I won't *choose* any for this category)

- 1. Lockdown Alexander Gordon Smith
- 2. Solitary Alexander Gordon Smith
- 3. Gamerunner - B R Collins
- 4. Day of the Prophet
- 5. Pan - the Untold Stories - K.R. Thompson
- 6. Children of the Mechanism - Jeffrey Aaron Miller
- 7. Iron and Rust - Harry Sidebottom
- 8. Blood and Steel - Harry Sidebottom
- 9. Het geheim van de draak - Guido Kees

16. Non Fiction

- 1. Essential Dutch Grammar - Henry Stern
- 2. Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics – Richard Thaler
- 3. Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction - Chris Sims & Hillary Johnson
- 4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Step by Step - Mike Snyder et al.
- 5. Risk Savvy - Gerd Gigerenzer
- 6. Hillforts of Cardigan Bay - Toby Driver
- 7. The Bible Doesn't Say That - Joel Hoffman
- 8. How to Manage your Slaves - Jerry Toner

10 out of 16 categories complete.

Good luck with this very European challenge!
I like it when people include a category like your No. 15. It helps to warn the rest of us from lousy books.

Welcome! Great setup. I am impressed that you can read in five languages! Besides English, French is the only other language I can read in (I used to have some Spanish as well but have lost a lot of it). Really interested to see how your challenge fills up.

I am *super* impressed that you can read Welsh! I would love to be able to make any sense of it at all (I have a lot of friends in Wales, some of whom speak and/or are learning Welsh, I think it looks and sounds beautiful although completely incomprehensible!).

As well as English I can read in Romanian (some of my TBRs are in Romanian so I may get the chance to try something this year) and (rustily) in French. Romanian is less impressive than Welsh as it is very closely related to French, so having learnt French at school Romanian was relatively straightforward. I have found though that when speaking I can only really handle having one other language, other than English, and as I've learnt Romanian more recently it tends to be Romanian that comes out when I try and speak French!

Welcome! This looks very interesting, I'm especially looking forward to your reads in French and German!

Thanks for the messages. Is there any guideline about how many books to read in one category before that category is considered complete?

JackieKirkham, thanks for that. Welsh is a very interesting language but grammatically it presents some real challenges to the learner. Vocabulary wise, however, your languages will be helpful as Welsh has a lot of Latin vocabulary.

Thanks for confirming the similarity between Romanian and French. I understood it to be a Romance language (thus the name!) but I have never studied it so could never confirm that.

I can understand the confusion, which I also have between German and Dutch. You do yourself down though, because it is actually harder to learn two closely related languages than you think. I am easily confused between Dutch and German but rarely between Welsh and French, or French and Dutch etc. The rule seems to be: if you are learning more than one language at the same time, make sure that the languages are *not* closely related.

Mamzel: I will probably keep category 15 as it is then!

>6 sirfurboy: I think you can pretty much make up your own rules! For my own challenge I am just hoping to get at least 1 book read per category, for a total of 12 books in the year (any over and above that are a bonus!). But other more prolific readers or those more closely tied to the 16 element of it all may go for higher numbers - good luck to them! :)

And it is allowed to change your challenge at any time during the year. We're nothing if not flexible. Whatever makes it fun and stress-free.

Welcome to the challenge, I am very impressed with your language skills and look forward to following along next year.

What an exciting challenge! I am a linguist so I'm particularly fond of this theme :)

Have you learned all of the languages for your challenge already? I would love to have more time to devote to studying new languages, I'm struggling just to keep up on the ones that I already know (I'm specifically devoting more time to Swedish in the coming year).

I can't wait to see what books you get to this year, best of luck!

Welcome to the category challenge! I am reading in three languages (German, English, Danish {and a bit of French}) myself, but I am really impressed that you read in Welsh and even learn languages for the challenge. Very cool!

>10 SleepySheep:

I know the languages best in the order I listed them. German will require a bit of work to get me reading a whole book, but is pretty much there. I expect I will need to check quite a lot of French and Dutch words in the dictionary too, and perhaps the occasional Welsh one.

Category 6 is for the language I have not yet learned. I have looked at a variety of languages in the past including Old English, Cornish, Scots Gaelic, Koine Greek and Hebrew, but I would not be able to read any of these without the extensive and continual help of a dictionary and a grammar text book too! In 2011 I was over ambitious and listed 10 languages +1 and at that point I had not learned French or any Dutch, so I quickly discovered that even getting to "advanced beginner" level in a language was going to take too long to complete the challenge. That is why I scaled this one back to something that is achievable, but hopefully will see me learning at least one new language to complete it.

Thanks also to everyone for the welcome.

Welcome back! I am terrible at languages beyond the basics of "Good Morning" and "Do you speak English?". Okay, I can usually muddle through a little more than just that.... but not by much. Good luck with your challenge!

Welcome! Sounds like an interesting challenge set-up.

Your challenge sounds quite interesting. I sometimes wish that I had kept up my Latin and French, but now English is my only language! Good luck with your 2016 reading.

Interesting challenge.

Thanks all for the welcome messages. First book down and it could fit 4 categories (award winning, sci fi, young adult and English). I won't mark it up in all 4 though. The review is here:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/210950

First non English book now read.

Boy 7 Mirjam Mous



This was my first book ever read in Dutch. It was a little strange because it was actually set in the USA, which I did not realise when I bought it. I was expecting more immersion in Dutch culture from my first Dutch read, but I suppose there is no reason why Dutch authors must only write about Dutch speaking places.

Boy 7 (an older teen) finds himself alone on a remote world with no memory of who he is, or what he is doing there. He has a backpack, a phone with a voicemail message from himself telling him not to call the police, a roll of banknotes, a picture of a grey building, a Pizza Hut leaflet and a scrawled telephone number that turns out, when he calls it, to be a public payphone.

That is an interesting way to start a book, and he is quickly befriended by a girl, Lara. Lara is about his age - old enough to drive though. She takes him to her aunt's guest house, and slowly Boy 7 begins to trust her enough to enlist her help in unravelling the mystery.

This was actually a very interesting read. The story moves along quickly enough, which was good as it made up for my slow reading speed with it. There are some nice twists and turns and a story about corruption and power, and events much larger than just one boy lost in the American desert.

Some things seemed a touch odd - principally the way that Lara just accepted that Boy 7 would be called Boy 7 (the only name he can think for himself based on the number on his clothes) - but perhaps that is explained by later events.

This is a good young adult story.

Just added my first Coming of Age novel.

A Boy Called Hope - Lara Williamson

Dan Hope hasn't seen his dad for four years until the day he pops up on television as a news reader. This event spurs him to try to make contact, but the attempts are ignored - or perhaps the messages are just not getting through.

We hear about how his older sister has gone all mean and weird, and about his mother's new boyfriend. We see him struggling through school and life in a way that was hilarious and heart breaking.

Dan Hope is a wonderful naïve but still intelligent boy, sparkling with life and a sense of adventure. Written in the first person, his observations are just perfect, and I could not help but warm to the character at once. He sometimes blunders and sometimes marches headlong through a series of events that reveal things about himself and others that eventually reach to a very satisfying conclusion, if a touch bittersweet too.

A great coming of age novel, with wonderful characterisations. Thoroughly recommended.

Congrats on your polylinguistic skills! I admire your focus on learning additional languages.

I took French and German in school and I can communicate in French and read French (if I actually take the time to do it, but I guess I'm not patient enough). I travel a lot for work, and I always aim to learn a bit of the language on every trip and try to review what I learned on the last trip and add some more - so maybe I'll learn 15-20 phrases at a time, not enough to have a conversation or read though. Last foreign trip was to Indonesia and I learned some Bahasa Indonesian, and in fact more than the expat head of the region.

That being said - what you are doing is amazing!

Your first two reads look like good ones - I'd like to find Boy 7 in English.

Thanks LisaMorr.

I don't think there is an English translation of Boy 7 although there is a German one. Maybe in time one will arrive though.

Two more added:

Abomination - Robert Swindells

Over the years I have read a lot of books by Robert Swindells, and have often found them somewhat disturbing. This book just shouts out that it could be disturbing, and so it has been on my TBR shelf for some years just waiting for me to get around to it, and I have been avoiding it.

Which is a pity, as it turns out, because it really was very good!

Martha is the daughter of religious parents from an ultra strict Christian or Christian like sect. She dresses plainly, and lives a life without modern distractions like computers or TV (the book was written before smartphones, so they don't figure either). She is, nevertheless, in a state middle school, where she is bullied because she is different.

And then along comes Scott, a new boy in the school, whose engaging, winning, and wonderfully plausible character shines through the pages of this work. We spend half of our time in Scott's head, and half of the time in Martha's, and both characters are well drawn, but it is Scott who brings a touch of humour, and a good dose of normality to a book about something very strange indeed... because Martha's family has a secret. A secret called Abomination.

To avoid spoilers I won't say any more, but this book is well written, and despite the religious nature of some characters, it does not descend into any silly attacks on religion but rather looks at the choices some very flawed people might make, and the repercussions of these.

The Ask and The Answer - Patrick Ness

Another fantastic book by Patrick Ness. This may be classed as Young Adult fiction but it might as well be classic science fiction. It picks up where "The Knife of Never Letting Go" leaves off and describes how Todd and Viola cope with being at the mercy of the former mayor and now president (or dictator) of the whole of "New World". In the course of the events we see a succession of moral dilemmas unfold, and as ever with Patrick Ness, there are no easy answers. Instead the protagonists must navigate their way through a quagmire of compromises and difficult decisions to stay alive, and to attempt to save each other.

Like all good science fiction, the writer writes of a future but speaks to today. You can see echoes of the whole concept of New World in the history of the European colonisation of the "New World", America, in the past. We can also see attitudes and choices and beliefs that can all be found in the world today.

A core point of tension in this book is the existence of "the noise", where men's thoughts are broadcast to others in their vicinity. We see that this is the way the whole planet works: everything on the planet speaks to each other. The sea is full of dangerous fish who tell you they are going to eat you, and then they eat you. The intelligent species of aliens communicate in this way so much that they have almost know spoken language. And yet curiously the women can keep their thoughts private - are unable to share their thoughts with others.

From a pedantic point of view, that is one of the less believable aspects of the book. The idea that aliens from another world (us) would be so well adapted that men could share thoughts in this way - and yet something about a lack of a y chromosome ensures women do not - stretches credulity somewhat, but engaging one's willing suspension of disbelief, it makes for some delicious tension and conflict that spills out into an all out war.

Additionally in this book there is a cure for the noise in men so that some men too can hide their private thoughts, but control of that cure is used to control the men too.

Personally I was particularly struck by some thoughts about the privacy debate when reading this. I am sure there is much else the book talks about, but at a time when the UK conservative government continues to fight to be allowed to access everything anyone says on the Internet, this book can certainly make you think. Because in this book, elites can choose to hide their private thoughts, but insist on being able to hear the thoughts of everyone else, for security reasons.

Other analogies to political debates come when all women are expelled, locked up or otherwise kept away from men because some of them may be dangerous, and because they cannot be spied upon. Also there was the part where women are fitted with a kind of branding ring that permanently marks them with a number, and the president/dictator asks: if they have nothing to hide, why wouldn't they allow it?

I am sure other people would find other things in this book because it is really very intelligent, very thoughtful, very profound. Definitely recommended.

I think I should check out Patrick Ness! Your other reads sound interesting as well.

LOL on Mirjiam Mous. I had the same reaction with Blacksad. I'd found a Spanish graphic novel, and found it set in a carefully researched and recreated Jazz Age New Orleans.

Thanks for that. I re-read my post and saw a couple of embarrassing typos! Oh well, I shall edit at some point.

Anyhow two for my "wish I hadn't bothered category". Maybe not the worst I ever read but not recommended:

Escape from Furnace - Alexander Gordon Smith

This is an unrelentingly miserable book that bizarrely is highly rated on Amazon. I do not quite understand that because as a story it has some major problems. All the same you can see why it might appeal to the imaginations of some of its young adult target audience.

Furnace is a new type of underground penitentiary for young offenders who the government has got really tough on, following some violent year in the recent past that has apparently completely changed social attitudes. Not to the point that the state executes the young criminals, but to the extent that they are happy to bury them deep underground for the rest of their natural lives, and never to be seen again.

One wonders, therefore, how that is really different from execution... but there we go.

So with willing suspension of disbelief firmly engaged, we follow 14 year old Alex down into Furnace, convicted of a murder for which he was framed by the prison governor himself. He may have been framed for that crime, but Alex is definitely guilty of others, including housebreaking.

When we join Alex in Furnace we find a regime that is so dark and disturbing that I just wanted to stop reading, and I cannot imagine ever recommending this book to anyone else because of it.

Unsurprisingly his thoughts turn to escape, and we follow him and a few others through a series of events that lead them to their escape attempt.

And then the book stops, like one of those free self published works that mistakenly thinks the way to keep its readers reading is to tell half a story and stop in the middle of it before charging for "book 2".

Usually this trick will cause me to add the author to my "never to read again" list, but I decided that on this occasion there was maybe just enough conclusion to the story to allow me forgive it. Just! In any case I was able to borrow book 2 from the library, so I leapt straight into that. See below.

Despite the fact that I read book 2, I am not recommending this one. Dark tales are all well and good, but there should be some let up to the darkness - and if that happened in this book, I missed it.

Solitary - Alex Gordon Smith

Book 2 of this series, or the continuation of book 1 if you prefer. We find out how the escape attempt proceeded, and although I would like to avoid spoilers, the name of the book is perhaps a bit of a giveaway.

And if book 1 was unremittingly dark, then book 2 was... well it was certainly no light at the end of the tunnel.

Actually there is, quite literally, a light at the end of a tunnel in this book, but don't let that fool you.

There are things about this book that I would admit place it better than self published works. the writing is competent, often good. The characterisations are pretty well thought through too. Alex in particular is a well considered character.

This tale is not terrible, and it has all the elements of a good escape from prison style story, but the horrors of the place are really rather overdone.

My daughter is quite taken with the Furnace books. I can't imagine reading the second when the first was so dire! Will you read the third?

> RidgewayGirl

I have no plans to read the third. I certainly won't be paying money for it, but if I got it free from the library I might do so.

I can imagine children would like these, and that is fine - they are meant for a young adult audience, and I fall outside the demographic. However they are a depressing read. Think "Hunger Games" but darker, smellier, grungier and without the benefit of winning.

For the award winning category:

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

Continuing my exploration of this author, here is another delightful short tale. The author credits Siobhan Dowd with the idea, but she died of cancer before she could realise it, which makes the book much more poignant as it describes the terminal illness of 13 year old Conor's mother. Conor's father has divorced and moved to America, and the only other significant adult in his life is his grandmother who is somewhat old fashioned, proper, and unused to boys. He does not get on well with her.

But then a monster comes calling. A monster represented by an old yew tree behind Conor's house, and the first encounter with the monster is amusing and intriguing, as well as scary.

Conor's character is great. In deed all the characterisations work well in this book, and the story really tugs at the heart strings. All the characteristics of Patrick Ness's writing are there. First person narrative that is very immediate, difficult decisions and a lack of easy answers, and an emotional rollercoaster of a story packed into a small but interesting space.

This one rightly won the Carnegie medal in 2012 as well as the Greenaway medal.

I am wondering when to call a category complete - should it be 10 or 16 books in a category? I think it will make sense to say 10 books, not least because reading 16 books in Dutch or German this year may well be beyond me! I expect I will be hard pressed to read 10. In any case I will declare a category complete when I reach 10 books in it. Come December I might declare a category complete if it has *any* books in it :)

*

Here is another young adult one:

The Iron Trial Holly Black, Cassandra Clare

This book achieved something that many books often fail at: it managed to surprise me with the ending. Perhaps I was not paying enough attention, because looking back, all the clues were there. Nevertheless it caught me by surprise and transformed the book from one I was fairly sure was going to be placed in the derivative "Harry Potter clone" category into one that was something else entirely. It also was transformed from the first in a series I would not have bothered complete into the start of a series I am now eager to continue with.

So what can I say without plot spoilers? Well I will describe what I *was* thinking as I read through, and just hope that the description is not a turn off, because the book exceeds expectations.

Callum Hunt is an ordinary boy living an ordinary life. Following an accident at birth he has a bad leg which prevents him from getting involved in much physical activity, but otherwise he is an all American boy. That is until he gets to try out for an American Wizard school known as the Magisterium,

Now Callum has known about magic all his life. he knows it killed his mother and no good comes from it. His father is a wizard who renounced his magic, and Callum is determined to do the same. He is determined to fail the entrance exam.

He nearly succeeds too, at one point being the first candidate to score negatively in a test, but as fate would have it, his wizarding powers just have a way of showing through and he scrapes into the magisterium. What is more, the foremost instructor in the school chooses Callum to join his elite group of apprentices.

What follows is Callum's first year at Wizard school, along with all the mystery of his birth, his father's dislike of wizards, his own powers and, of course, a dark wizard intent on ruling the world (what else?)

Worth a read for lovers of the young adult genre, or indeed Harry Potter / Magyk / Percy Jackson fans. It is not actually any of these stories, but you will surely think it is at times.

when to call a category complete
The flexibility of this challenge is that you call the shots. You can change the scope of your goals at any time, alter the theme, flip-flop on topics, or whatever. The goal is to enjoy the journey and not stress about attaining numbers you set months prior. I personally don't set any minimums since I am such a capricious reader and I don't like to be locked into a number. There are others that thrive on structure, however, even going so far as planning all the books they read at the beginning of the year. As they say, whatever floats your boat!

>30 mamzel:

Thanks for that. Yes, I intend to be flexible. I am starting with the number of 10 per category, however, because I need some number! My English language list is likely to get full very quickly, so by saying the category is complete at 10, I will simply stop reporting books in that category, and will find other categories for them instead. In that way the other categories won't get buried.

Choosing 1 per category is perhaps too small for me as I tend to read a lot, and I want the challenge to be challenging :) However, as I said, 10 per category may be too much for some categories so that is when I will likely become flexible!

Actually, in particular, I somewhat hope I don't have 10 "I wish I hadn't bothered" books!

Thanks for the reply.

I never know which of my categories will be top-heavy at the beginning of the year, so there tends to be some moving around of books within the categories half-way and at the end of the year. :)

I'll take a book bullet on The Iron Trial!

First French book is a comic book:

Le Mystère de Gros-bois - MiTacq

Le Mystère de Gros-bois is the first book in a Belgian (French language) comic book series called "La Patrouille des Castors" (The Beaver Patrol). It is drawn by MiTacq and the story is by Jean-Michel Charlier. It was first published as a series between 1954 and 1955 but published as a single book in 1957.

The Beaver Patrol consists of six scouts, each taking an animal moniker. Poulain (foal) is their leader, and when this book starts we find them on a hike in a forest where they come upon the ruins of an old abandoned abbey, empty since the French revolution. The Forest and abbey belong to the Baron de Gros-bois, who is a kindly if reclusive old man living with his grandson, Alain.

There is a legend that the ruins of the abbey contain the treasure of the Baron's ancestors, hidden and lost in the turmoil of the revolution. The scouts are taken by the story as you would expect, and search for the treasure, but they are not the only ones looking!

This is a grand old fashioned boy's own story in comic book form. It is written entirely in French, and I am not aware of any English translation. I understand that the books are quite widely known in France though.

There is humour, mostly centring around one character, Tapir (whose moniker is the same in English). there is also a Tin-tin style adventure with treasure and thieves, good guys and bad guys.

Being a comic book it was also a good first book for me to read in French. as the amount of text, whilst not insubstantial, was less than a written novel, and the pictures helped too.

This is the first of a reasonably long series and I will keep going with these.

Another for the "I wish I hadn't bothered" list (although not totally without merit):

Gamerunner B R Collins

Rick is a gamerunner in a massive virtual reality RPG in a dystopian future world. His job is to look for bugs in the code, and he gets to play all day and live well in a protected bubble in the headquarters of the company who make the game. His father, Daed, is the game creator.

Things go sour one day when someone finds a hack into the roots of the maze and looks like he will successfully complete the RPG quest for the very first time. Rick is sent in to stop him, because under no circumstances must the game be finished.

This book was a fast moving adventure that built heavily on the dystopian genre and on computer gaming trends. The world has suffered climate catastrophes so that the air poisons you and the rain will kill you. The rich cocoon themselves away from a world that is disintegrating right outside of their little bubbles of safety.

The book had promise, but it was really a pretty miserable lead, and the story did not so much as finish as come to a crashing halt with pretty much everything unexplained and unresolved. As a story, this book fails. It felt like Murukami for young adults, and I am no fan of Murukami's habit of just abandoning his plot when he seems to get bored of writing!

So I tried to think if there was something deeper going on with the story. Why had I invested my time in reading a book that failed to resolve itself? What was it trying to tell me? I decided that the author was probably trying to make the story like a video game that also leaves you feeling like it is unresolved and demands you play it again. That may be why he chose to end the way he did - it was all a video game analogy.

That may be what he intended but it was not a video game, it was a story, so I did not much like the ending.

Is it a story that makes you think, though? Perhaps on that score it succeeds a little. You get a strong sense of "there must be more to life than this" from this book, although the book doesn't find anything more. In fact it all felt very nihilistic and depressing. A couple of faint touches of humour lift it slightly, but really this book must be aimed at angsty teenagers with a penchant for wearing black and playing violent video games.

I don't think I will be recommending it to anyone.

I just discovered your thread and am impressed by your ambitious language challenge. The MiTacq comic book looks interesting. My French is also at a level where I can manage a comic book, though I have found Tintin and Asterix comics challenging because of the colloquial language and the play on words.

>36 mathgirl40:

Thanks for this. Yes, if you can find these books they are good. There is a little colloquial language but I didn't have much trouble with it. I agree about the problem with Asterix and the wordplay humour. If you don't know the words you don't get the joke!

I have longer reads in French coming - Le Petit Prince is coming but not quite finished it yet, and I will also be reading an Erik L'Homme novel which will take even longer. Le Petit Prince is quite short so a good next step.

In the meantime I posted up the completion of another English book Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness.

Added two more books - The Reluctant Assassin and Earth Afire. My English language category is now complete and Young Adult is heading that way.

The Iron Trial sounds interesting.

>39 hailelib:

Yes, it has a nice twist.

Just added this as a first in my geographical category. It is set in New England (which is not local for me). This is better literature than The Iron Trial, although not such a fast paced story:

Ghost Hawk - Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper's novels are always intriguing and interesting. This one is a well researched piece set in New England where a native boy's life will become entwined with the life of a European settler.

Avoiding spoilers is tricky now, because something quite strange and a little disturbing happens quite early on in this story that marks it out as quite different from what you might expect from this story, although perhaps there are clues in the title!

That event certainly disturbed me, but ultimately the book became better for it, and much more poignant in the end, when Susan Cooper seems to insert herself into her own story. She has mentioned before in her afterword of another book that she was privileged to meet the characters of her own stories, and so in this one she really does meet one of them, very briefly.

This was a touching tale, and I liked it a lot. However I suspect some might find the story a little disjointed. It is not a plot driven narrative but an exploration of historical events, and as with real historical events, they don't all happen in the way that a perfect story might allow.

That was not a problem for me though, and this is a thought provoking novel that shows this author has not lost her ability to spin a good tale.

Now added this one:

Sci Fi category (it is also young adult).

A Confusion of Princes - Garth Nix

I have read just about everything by Garth Nix but this one had slipped me by, for no better reason that I bought it for my daughter and after she was done, she placed it on a shelf in her room and I forgot all about it.

It was nice to rediscover it though, and the story is an interesting one, as you would expect from this author. This is set in a future galactic empire that covers millions of star systems, and ruled by an emperor that is connected to thousands upon thousands of princes through a kind of telepathic link known as the Imperial Mind. We follow Prince Khemri from his ascension and through his career as a prince. He is up front at the start of his tale that he died three times, because the imperial mind can restore a stored consciousness to a new body where necessary.

There are a variety of techs in this universe, and princes are selected for their aptitude with these. However they also vie for power and are as likely to assassinate you as to help you.

All in all this is a nasty world (or universe) filled with hierarchies and conventions and good guys and bad guys and a whole lot who just act the way they do because that is the way people act.

However Nix pulls this all off fantastically. His story is rich in detail, and action packed too. there are good characterisations, poignant moments and plenty of humour.

If you are looking for something like the Old Kingdom tales then this is not that. However this is a great story that shows Nix's versatility.

As in the Abhorsen stories, there is just a little sex, not described in detail, but enough that I would suggest this is a teen read rather than for younger children in general. Having said that, the references may be oblique enough that they would pass younger readers by. Maybe.

Anyhow this is still a great story. I am glad I found it again.

Historical category is now off the ground (technically Ghost Hawk was also Historical but I listed it as Geographical... I may change that by December!)

War of the Roses: Stormbird - Conn Iggulden

Conn Iggulden writes great historical novels, intertwining history with ordinary lives of common (but fictional) folk. He is not afraid to theorise about history behind the scenes and work those theories into his stories, and what results is a living tale that is full of interest and intrigue, and rich in historical detail.

The War of the Roses is not an area I knew a lot about before reading this book, but I am now considerably better informed. This book is the first of a series, and it is a series I will be continuing with interest.

>42 sirfurboy: That does look like an interesting series. Glad that you liked the first book and will be continuing!

Thanks rabbitprincess. the second book does not disappoint an so I have now also completed that too. Great series, highly recommended. The second book is War of the Roses: Trinity.

Cyfres Pen Dafad: Jac - Guto Dafydd

(Title means "Sheep pen series: Jac")

My first Welsh Language book of the year, means I have now started 4 out of 6 language categories.

This book is marketed as for 11-15 year olds. Jack (whose age is never mentioned but appears to be in the middle of that intended age range) discovers a dead body in sand dunes near his home in North Wales. He is determined to get to the bottom of what has happened. Who was the murderer and why? He latches onto and helps out Jim the local police detective.

The story is something of a boy’s own detective adventure, but I found myself confused as to what age it was really intended for. I think teen readers would find this a bit young for them, and might be driven somewhat to distraction by the preposterous way that Jac inserts himself into the role of detective and has the police working with him! Younger readers who might let that slide could potentially be turned off by the slightly gory nature of the murders – but perhaps not! So I suspect the readership of this will be at a younger age than advertised.

That is also a good thing because the writing suffers from some issues. Characterisation is weak, and there is little development of the embryonic side plots. A romantic interest hits the buffers as soon as Jac predictably fails to turn up for his first date when Jim invites him along to do police work, for instance. After that there is only really one mention of the event and that is brief and contrived.

Younger readers won't mind because what is left is a fast plot based detective adventure without getting distracted by any other stuff. Nevertheless I can't help but think that if this book had been presented in English it would have been unlikely to get published. Not as a young adult novel, although perhaps as a younger children's novel.

Being set in North Wales (near Bangor) this story is written in North Wales dialect. Welsh dialects differ quite strongly, particularly between North and South, and so there were some phrases that had me scratching my head a little, but by the end of it I felt a lot more fluent in the dialect!

There is a twist in the end of this story. I predicted it very early on, and many other readers will too, but it does make the story more powerful.

All in all, this was a grand boy's own adventure about a boy who turns detective on the trail of a murderer.

Added City of Bones and The Rest Of Us Just Live Here. Patrick Ness' book is the perfect antidote to urban fantasy. Fantastic stuff.

A great French read here:

Le Petit Prince Antoine Saint-Exupéry

This is a delightful book, but what is it? It is hard to say. Philosophy for Children? Or is it written for adults? A fairy story for grown ups? I am not sure. However you can completely understand why it is a classic of French literature. Moreover it is not a very long book, which makes it an easier read if you want to read it (as I did) in the original French.

The story starts in the most charming manner, with the young author being inspired by a book he read about boa constrictors in the forest that eat their prey whole. He thus embarks on drawing a picture of a snake that has eaten an elephant whole, only all the adults who see his picture think he has drawn a hat. The illustrations in the book make it clear why. When he draws another picture to show the hat's gory secret, he is persuaded to give up his magnificent future career as an artist, and so he becomes an aviator instead.

And then his plane crashes in the desert and in a perilous state with limited water, he tries to repair his plane, but is interrupted by a small boy who asks him to draw him a sheep. At first he draws an elephant eaten by a boa constrictor because that is all he can draw, but the boy knows exactly what it is (unlike the adults) and persuades the aviator to instead try again. He does so, only the drawing is not right and he goes through various iterations, until eventually, in frustration, he draws a box and says the sheep is inside.

"c'est tout à fait comme ça que je le voulais" says the Little Prince. "That is exactly what I wanted."

By the time I was this far into the book I was enchanted by it and very happy to read through to the end. There is plenty more of this, and some wonderful wry observations. The Little Prince, it turns out, comes from an asteroid, so far away and so small that it can only be seen by a telescope. A Turkish astronomer discovered it once and told a meeting of astronomers but no one believed him because of his clothes. Fortunately he wore western clothes on a later occasion and then they believed him.

And so it goes on, and there are meetings with all kinds of strange characters, and so much sub text that I can only begin to guess at what this book is all about, but I don't mind because I just enjoyed it as a story too.

It has a poignant part, but the ending is still a good one, and this book surely cannot disappoint.

This is widely available in translation, but it was a lot of fun reading it in French, as it was written.

>47 sirfurboy: It was nice to read your comments on Le Petit Prince. I read it originally in French as well, in a high school French class. Wonderful book.

Completed my Young Adult category with this one:

The Gathering - Isobelle Carmody

This book is not currently available as an ebook, and is not in print, but I found an audio version in the library and listened to it whilst driving on a work trip. It is a pity that the text copy would be hard to come by as it is a very good book that reminded me in parts of "The Chocolate War" but also had a supernatural or "magical realism" element too that reminded me strongly of David Almond.

Cheshunt is, depending on how you look at it, a model low crime neighbourhood, or a fascist one complete with night time curfews. As soon as Nathaniel moves there with his mother it is clear that he is wavering towards the second point of view. It does not help that his mother has moved the two of them so frequently that he is heartily sick of his rootless existence. It is perhaps relevant that his estranged father has recently died. The town itself smells of death because of the abattoir located there.

Things turn sour in school quickly when Nathaniel challenges a science teacher's love of ants and the way they all do what they are told. It is apparent that individualism is not cherished here, and his headmaster talks to him about it and then issues a detention when Nathaniel refuses to join the school youth club, "The Gathering".

Daniel is not the only one who resists the drive for conformity, however, and it turns out that a group of students have coalesced around an unusual leader who sees them as a magical circle of chosen ones, each of whom must find their totem. The totems are ordinary objects that take on a supernatural significance, and here there is a clever walk by the author along a tightrope between imaginative games and something that is actually a little supernatural.

Behind everything there is a rising evil and a hidden past to Cheshunt and Nathaniel is to discover and confront both the history of the place but also of himself too.

This was a well written book for young adults, and deserves to be more widely known. It is set in Australia by an Australian author, but it could just as easily be America, or (sans mention of a hurricane) many other countries. definitely worth a read if you can find it, but unless your library has it, second hand or audiobooks may be the only way to go with this one.

>47 sirfurboy: One of my favourite books! I read the original French version in French class at school, and have reread it a few times since then. I have also read the German version, but prefer the French. The language is more beautiful to my (German) ears and eyes. :)

>48 LisaMorr: Yes, I agree. :)

>50 Chrischi_HH: Thanks for stopping by :)

I agree, the French language just suits the book perfectly!

A German friend of mine tells me about when he was at school, and they had a French language teacher who would angrily tell the class off for misbehaving but would do so in French, and he would sit there thinking "tell me off again, it sounds so good!"

Great comments regarding Le Petit Prince. I read the story way back in my childhood and then re-read it more recently and was surprised at how much more I got out of the story as an adult reader.

>52 lkernagh: Thanks. yes, definitely more than a children's book.

New entry for my science fiction section:

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

My daughter was reading this book and enjoying it when Roni mentioned it too, after my poor experience with "Gamerunner". I have to say I was quite blown away with how much better this book is than Gamerunner which was aiming for the same genre.

It is the 2040s, and a new dystopian reality has emerged as humans run out of so many natural resources and economies are collapsing. Wade Watts is a tean born into this era, and like so many people of his time, he escapes the bitter and squalid reality by logging into a virtual utopia known as the OASIS - a massive multi user immersive virtual world that would be familiar to readers of "Snowcrash" or any who believe the hype (of not the reality) of Second Life.

The creator of this world dies at the start of this story, but in his will he initiates a worldwide competition to solve a series of puzzles and win a prize that will confer on the winner ownership of the Oasis, the company that runs it and all assests to the tune of $240 billion. Wade, like many many people, thus devotes his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with 1980s pop, geek and nerd culture.

As it turns out, Wade will uncover the first clue (that is not a spoiler - he tells us this in the first pages of the book), but with $240 billion at stake, that is not going to be problem free nor risk free.

In terms of structure, this book is a classic plot driven narrative in three acts. As such it feels like it is written to be a movie, and it was no surprise, when I finished the book and googled the author, to find that he is, in fact, a screenwriter. Moreover it seems he adapted his own book to be a screenplay and the film is slated for release in 2017.

I can also tell you that I will be watching that film, because this story really is a classic of its genre.

For me, the reading experience was enhanced by the fact that I grew up in the same era as the author, and all those 1980s references brought back many memories of the era.

There is a wealth of information in this book, and the history all appears to be quite right. I did not check some of the more obscure facts, but everything I remember is spot on.

Technically this is a good and well thought out book too. The author is clearly not just a "Dan Brown" style author who thinks he can write about geek stuff but is embarrassingly ignorant about it all. No, this author seems to understand how networks work, how online games and old arcade games work and, most importantly, how coding works.

He does not go into great detail about the coding, which is sensible - that would just bore some readers - but he shows an understanding about how programmers would make classes of objects, and then make instances of those classes, and how those classes would be distributed in world creation kits and such like.

One thing I struggled with slightly, although I am sure I understand his reasons, was that the world is described as "open source code", but then everyone hunting for the prizes is doing so by attempting to solve the puzzles in-world. To me it seems perfectly obvious that if the source code were available, even if the data itself is not available, you would probably have teams of people scouring the source for hooks, back doors or clues to solve the puzzle. Here though, everyone only searches in-world. A small gripe.

And then there was the part where I was convinced that the author was talking about one person in particular. An old friend of mine, Alan Cox. Now Alan was in University with me at a time when he was developing the first widely available open source multi user dungeon, AberMUD (it has a Wikipedia page). In fact some of my code went into AberMUD, although not much. We used to pull all nighters in a 24 hour computer room but my coding projects were generally different. Still we did play D&D together sometimes.

Alan took the pseudonym or handle of "Anarchy", but we used to joke around and call him Anorak (he did, after all, wear one!) So when I read about Richard Haliday in this book with his own avatar name of Anorak, I thought that Cline must be talking about Alan. I was even more convinced when I read about the girl who gave Anorak his name, a British Lord of the Rings fan, because Alan married Telsa Gwyn, AKA Hobbit. Moreover Haliday just sounded so much like Alan, albeit Alan never (yet) created an immersive 3D metaverse with haptic feedback. (He did, however, make a name for himself as one of the most important coders in the Linux community).

Sadly I had to pour a bucket of cold water over that theory when I discovered an author interview where he actually claims Haliday is mostly based on another British games programmer, Richard Garriott. Such a pity! Still the fact that I felt I was reading about a friend did add very much to my enjoyment of the book and my understanding (or perhaps mild misunderstanding) of the character.

Anyway a recommended read for anyone who likes good, well constructed, plot driven narratives, geeky books, or the 1980s.

I've had fun recommending this book to some of our nerdier kids. Word is getting around about it and I've had requests for it. It was definitely a sleeper.

>53 sirfurboy: My hubs absolutely loved Ready Player One. I haven't seen him that fired up about a book in a long time.

>54 mamzel: ; and
>55 VictoriaPL:

Thanks, yes it was a very good book and a welcome antidote from the distinctly substandard "Gamerunner". Gamerunner was only published months after Ready Player One so it was not obviously ripping off the idea, but it was interesting how similar and yet utterly different these books were.

>53 sirfurboy: I loved it too when I read it, for many of the same reasons you gave.

Easter has been busy and I haven't read as much as I would like. I have also had little time for this site. However I did finish one book, my longest French novel yet.

Phænomen - Erik l'Homme

This book tells the story of four children, Violaine, Arthur, Nicolas and Claire, who are endowed with supernatural powers. Their parents have abandoned them at the Clinique du Lac in Geneva, because they see them as abnormal and in need of mental health intervention. Only one doctor seems to treat them with respect, and does not just see them as crazy. When he disappears the four friends go in search of him armed with the start of a series of clues from his notebook, but very aware of the dangerous people behind the kidnapping.

This is a young adult story with a treasure hunt/chase theme. In some ways it took the reader in familiar directions, but it was a novel idea to have children who are, to all intents and purposes, mentally ill as the lead characters, and allowed some deeper thinking about the nature of mental illness.

It was also a supernatural thriller of course, with Violaine who sees dragons that seem to represent people's souls; Arthur who remembers every detail of absolutely everything and can only find relief by shutting himself away and drawing monkeys on the walls; Claire who can, particularly when frightened, move so fast that no one can see her; and Nicolas who has thermal vision and thus always wears sunglasses. Children with special powers always makes a good story, but this one also leads towards a much bigger conspiracy theory which leaves an interesting cliff hanger at the end of the book.

The cliff hanger is not a bad one though. This is a book that wraps up its first story, but leads into a trilogy nicely. This is not one of those books that stops mid story to make you keep reading.

I am not sure when I will continue the series as this one took me a while to read, but I would like to continue with it in time.

Just finished Vachement Moi by Emmanuel Bourdier

This is a funny children's book with a somewhat preposterous premise that is enjoyably if somewhat absurdly worked through. Paul, like everyone in his town, has a barcode on his hand that is used to scan him into school and such like. The computer system holds all his school records and all kinds of other data like dental records, allergies etc. All available at the swipe of a barcode reader.

Things go wrong on the day a mishap outside leaves him with a scratch on his hand, and suddenly the bar code reader insists that he is a cow. Now he has an uphill struggle convincing the authorities that he is really a boy and not a cow.

The title is a play on words in French. Vachement Moi means "really me" but une vache is a cow.

This book had me chuckling at points. I am not sure I would have bothered with it if it was in English, but in French it seemed to be pitched at my level - there were other plays on words, and I was able to appreciate those too. I did enjoy the humour of the story.

Good harmless fun. My one regret is it is rather short. The description said it was 73 pages long, which would be quite short. In fact I felt like it might be even less. It was a touch expensive for such a short book.

Another French read:

Le disparu de Ker-Aven - Mitacq

The Beaver Patrol returns in another graphic adventure with the scouts camping in Brittany, and involved in a trail finding activity that goes wrong when their youngest member, Mouche, mysteriously vanishes. The authorities are les than helpful considering there is a missing child, as they find a note in his handwriting suggesting he has decided he doesn't like camping any more and has gone home.

However the intrepid scouts notice something odd about the letter, and begin to unravel a secret message encoded in it.

Another boy's own adventure with smugglers, thieves and kidnappers. The book was written in 1957 and has something of a classic status amongst French language comic books, albeit not as well known as Asterix.

So a quick progress update. So far this year I have read 35 books. 28 of these were in English so I ought to up my non English count to argue this is really still a language challenge!

Totals are

English: 28
French: 5
Welsh: 1
Dutch: 1
German: 0
Other: 0

My aim was for 10 in each language category, although that was always going to be a tricky goal. At this rate I should comfortably reach 10 French books, but the other languages are not looking so hopeful!

On the other hand, I only need to read one German book and one in another language to achieve the minimum goal.

You're making very good progress!

>62 rabbitprincess: Thanks for the encouragement :)

Added one more French book:

Histoires à lire le soir - Marc Thil

I bought this before some of the longer reads I have been through because it is marketed as easy short stories. It is indeed an easy read, each story being quite achievable for anyone with advanced beginner French onwards. However it falls down in the quality of the stories, and after I had read a couple I left this book for something more interesting. I have now read the remainder, because I paid for the book and it is still good practice. Nevertheless I don't really think the stories improved. Perhaps that is just prejudice against short stories on my part - I tend to like something longer with some characterisation, but even as short stories, these felt like they were aimed at a primary school level.

Of course, primary school level is not itself bad, but I would have liked more humour in that case. The police inspector hiding in a dustbin might have been somewhat humorous, but more could perhaps have been made of that.

I think Vachement Moi was a much better example of what would make good material at this level (see my review above).

Recently read this and want to recommend it:

The Territory Govett, Sarah



Sorry for the unnatural way I wrote the title/author of this one but it was the only way I could make the touchstone work, perhaps related to the fact I am the only LT member to have this book.

And that is perhaps a pity...

This was a book set in a dystopian future where sea levels have risen and dry land has decreased. The climate has also clearly changed and diseases such as Malaria have spread to Britain, and all other kinds of eco disasters are coming true. The eco-apocalypse, in short.

Noa Blake is just a normal 15 year old in 2059. Only normal is not good in this world. Children of the rich and powerful these days have nodes inserted into their heads where their brain meets their spine, and through these nodes they can instantly upload libraries of data into their brains.

The Territory is built on former high ground in Britain. The book is not specific where but perhaps the English Penines, rather than Scottish or Welsh Highlands. It does not really matter where though. What matters is that dry land ins limited and the population is too large, so all 15 year olds must go through an exam called the TAA and only those who pass can stay in the territory. The remainder are shipped off to "The Wetlands", a lawless dangerous area outside the safety of the territory where there is disease and a miserable subsistence existence waiting.

The book focuses on Noa and her norm friends, as well as the friction between them and the enhanced children, who are more or less guaranteed to pass their TAA.

This is a book that is about many things. It has love and loss, hope and despair, prejudice, bullying and a struggle against an authoritarian government.

In some ways the story failed to fully satisfy me. There were questions I had when it was all over, and I would have liked to have read more, but the story that is told is clearly the one the author intended, and ultimately it is a good one.

This is a first novel by this author, and published with the help of the Welsh Books Council. I think I picked it up at a book fair so maybe it is not widely known outside of Wales (which would explain why only I have a copy). Although not perfect, I thought the characterisation of Noa was very good, funny in parts, realistic in the main. her internal dialogue was a real strength of this book, and I would hope others might be interested enough to give it a go (and it is available for Kindle, so no need to worry about international orders).

A quick status update for June:

Number of categories complete: 3 of 16 (if you count "wish I hadn't bothered" which I sincerely hope is complete!)

Number of language categories complete: 1 of 6

Number of languages not started: 2 (German and Other)

Number of other categories not started: 1 (Non fiction)

*

I have been reading less the last month. That is because I have been busy learning another language. As we have discussed going to Italy either this autumn, or more likely next year sometime, I have been learning Italian, hoping to get to a conversational fluency level by the time we go. Learning has been greatly assisted by its similarity to French. Hopefully I can read a book in Italian reasonably soon, and that will start my "Other" language category.

>65 sirfurboy: That sounds wonderful! Good luck with the learning and I hope you have a great trip!

>66 VictoriaPL: Thanks. The trip won't be for a while, but learning a language takes time so I started early :)

Added a Historical category book:

Pennies For Hitler - Jackie French



This is a lovely piece of writing set just before and during the Second World War. Georg is the son of an English academic, born and raised in Germany. His mother is German although he has an English passport on account of his father's nationality. His life is comfortable and his family a loving one. His school teaches him of his Aryan superiority, and he absorbs some of the attitudes, although we get hints that his parents do not accept those.

Things go wrong on graduation day where Georg witnesses a group of students exposing other students as Jews (based on opening of their family records showing a Jewish parent or grandparent), and then summarily murdering them by throwing them from a window. Georg's father moves to stop this, but then he too is exposed as the grandson of a Jew and is also murdered, but not before he begs his wife to save Georg.

His wife acts quickly and Georg is smuggled out of Germany to safety. The rest of the story is something of a memoir, with a hint of coming of age about it as Georg grows up in England and then Australia, all the time trying to hide that he is secretly German for fear that he will be seen as an enemy or a spy.

Characterisations in this novel are heart warming and well done. I fell in love with the characters, and found the bonds of love and friendship were a powerful antidote to the darkness of the war years and the inevitable sadness that arises from the terrible events.

All in all this was a wonderful book, with some rich historical detail in it too. In the UK the Second World War is on the year 6 syllabus, and I would think this book would be a perfect piece for children of that age (10-11 year olds) to read, although it would be enjoyed by older children and, of course, adults too.

>68 sirfurboy: sounds interesting! Thanks for the review!

Now completed another category. Sci Fi now complete after completion of Visitors - Orson Scott Card



Last in this trilogy by O S Card. The trilogy started out well enough, but it all got a bit tedious in the end. Pluses are that Card is always inventive and spins a fair tale, and this one has fewer of the abusive relationships that are found in so much of his work (although it has some, so it is still typical Card).

The problem is that the time shifting concept gets a bit complex, sometimes the author seems to confuse himself, sometimes he conveniently brushes past problem issues, and the characters get bogged down in far to much dialogue trying to explain and unravel it all.

Not a terrible book, but hardly a gripping read either - I actually started this one a while ago and only just got around to finishing it.

Just added my seventh French book, and the third in the series La Patrouilles des Castors. - L'inconnu de la villa mystère - Mitacq.

The touchstone appears to link to a Dutch version, but as this was a Belgian publication, it makes sense that it was also published in Flemish. I only have the French version.

Essential Dutch Grammar Henry R Stern



My first completed non fiction work this year, which seems rather strange, although a lot of text books I just dip into so never truly complete.

This is a succinct and reasonably readable Dutch grammar that covers all the major areas required without getting too bogged down into intricate details. It is a grammar, not an workbook, so there are examples but no test questions. that is fine.

I would perhaps have liked a little more structure to the rules however. The author appears to have deliberately attempted to make the book readable by laying out the rules in paragraphs, albeit divided into some chapters and with some levels of sub heading. That works well, but time will tell whether I am able to quickly look up a rule I vaguely remember but need the explanation for.

Also some grammars go into more detail about how the grammar developed. That can add interest although at the expense of clarity, so this author chose the clarity - keep everything short and simple. Depending on what you want from a grammar, that may or may not be a good choice.

All in all a useful addition to my Dutch reference materials but hardly riveting reading!

For the purposes of this challenge, I am claiming it as a Dutch read. Of course, it is really an English book about Dutch, although it does contain plenty of Dutch examples and sentences... and hey, if I don't do something about it, I am not going to get close to my Dutch target for the year :)

>72 sirfurboy:
I have the Portuguese "version" of that and I've just started, but it is quite readable as well.

I will definitely look for The Territory; also took a BB for Pennies for Hitler.

I added five books to my category list. I will write full reviews when I can, probably in my 75 books thread, but in brief, they are:

Mirrorstorm - Mike Wilks

Sequel to Mirrorscape. Good enough, but I think, on reflection, this story would have been better had the author stopped at book 1, rather than going for the trilogy.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Jack Thorne

This was a disappointment, and not because of the fact that it was a script. I made allowances for that. The problem was the story as just another "what if we accidentally change history and then try to put it right" thing, and like so many time travel stories, it had glaring inconsistencies. One of the things I loved about The Prisoner of Azkhaban, was the way that JKR kept the time travel aspect of the story fully internally consistent. Not so this story.

Italian Short Stories for Beginners - Olly Richards

A book of 8 short stories designed to help language learners make progress with learning Italian. To be honest, I don't enjoy short stories as much as novels, and these ones did not grab me. The idea was great though, and well put together, but I won't try that again.

Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction - Chris Sims & Hillary Johnson

A short non fiction guide to part of the Agile development progress. This is a quick read, only of interest to anyone needing to know about Agile development and particularly the scrum process.

Sur la piste de Mowgli - Mitacq

Another adventure for La Patrouille des Castors - the Beaver Patrol. In this 1956 adventure, the scouts are given a trip to India in appreciation for their help in the last book. Things go wrong though, and they end up on their own before saving the life of a wealthy ruler, but things are not as they seem and they become embroiled in another adventure.

Legend - Marie Lu



This was a readable dystopian teen novel set in a fractured future United States where the western republic, at least, has forgotten there ever was a USA. The two sides are at war, sea levels have risen, and 10 year olds must pass a test, "the trial" or face life in labour camps, or worse.

Very much in the mould of the Hunger Games, this book does not read like a rip off. It had original elements and quite a different story, set around two protagonists. One is a boy living on the streets, a notorious criminal who goes by the name of Day. The other is a 15 year old prodigy of the republic living a privileged life as she trains to defend her country from hostile forces within and without.

I liked this story and I expect to read the sequel. Nevertheless it had some problems. The overarching story was not as original as it could have been, although the characterisations made up for that somewhat, and the setting had inventive elements too.

I also struggled with the almost "love at first sight" element of the story, which I found a bit gushy and unrealistic. It was all just a bit too fast. There were other ways, too, where the characters just did not act as they should, because another reaction seemed to be required for the story. I want to avoid spoilers, but an example would be one character who casually reveals to someone he/she believes is the enemy that someone else they both know is a "patriot" rebel, for no reason at all - just idle gossip really. That just made no sense, and was not in character. Not the only time something like this happened either.

So all in all this was a flawed book, but still a fun one.

Added three more:

Boy overboard - Morris Gleitzman (loved it)

Pan - the Untold Stories - K.R. Thompson (didn't think much of this)

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (not my cup of tea)

Reviews of these are on my other thread here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/210950

Added one to my Dutch reads:

Een Zoektocht Van Helden - Morgan Rice

This is the Dutch version of A Quest of Heroes - Morgan Rice



I first came across this book whilst browsing the Dutch Amazon store for good Dutch books to read. It was quickly clear that the same book is available in a number of languages including English, and I think it was written first in English. Thus although I read this one in Dutch, the review should be good for the English version too.

This is the story of a young teen, Thorgrin or Thor for short, who lives a dull life as a shepherd, disliked by his brothers and out of favour with his father too. When recruiters for the King's legion, the warriors of the Silver, arrive at his village, Thor wants to join up, but is prevented from doing so by his father. He does not take no for an answer however, and, runs away from home determined to join up.

There is a mystery around Thor and his birth. He is clearly more than he seems, able to work magic. A mysterious druid clearly sees a great destiny for the boy, and Thor sets out to bring it about, winning friends and enemies along the way.

All in all this was an enjoyable book. It hooked me in and kept me reading despite the fact I was reading in Dutch, which slowed me down considerably. That should be some recommendation for it.

However ultimately I think this book as good, but not great. In some ways it was highly derivative of other works, but with a slightly clumsy execution, and characterisations that were a little to stereotyped for me.

There is the evil plotting power hungry man who, incidentally, is gay... but we are assured that is not the reason for his badness. He is a member of a somewhat dysfunctional family of very noble and equally ignoble characters. There is the classic enemy who becomes a friend after Thor nobly saves his life. There are a whole bunch of events that just seemed formulaic in their presentation, and then the book ends on a cliff hanger that is straight out of Game of Thrones, except Game of Thrones did it so much better.

My real problem with the story was the way characters seemed to act in stupid ways because that was required for the plot. A case in point is towards the end of the book, so I have to give a spoiler warning. Don't read on if you don't want the spoiler...

SPOILER WARNING

Read no further if you want to avoid a spoiler

SPOILER WARNING

OK so you are still reading? Don't say I didn't warn you.

So Thor visits a druid who warns him that omens and prophecies he is seeing will certainly come to pass. He then has a dream of the king being poisoned in the festivities that day. He runs to see the king but the king is not around, and he must wait until he returns. He is then sent to do some squire work, and when it becomes obvious that the knight for whom he is the squire is about to leave, he offers to ride with him to the edge of the kingdom. Knowing he *must* be back by the start of the feast, he offers to do something that makes it impossible for him to do so, and seems to positively wish to do just that. There is no internal conflict at all. Did he forget?!

So then he rushes back and arrives with the feast already in full swing, of course, but luckily the king is not dead. He goes inside and...oh let's just get distracted by the king's daughter who looks sad. And while we are at it we will have a punch up with that noble.

After that he still evades being ejected from the king's presence, and manages to warn the king (who has shown much trust in him in the past, and always been careful in all he does, and suspects the plots in any case) but on hearing the warnings he dismisses and ignores them. So then Thor speaks to the king's son about the dream too. So now the king and all those around him and Thor's friend, the kings son all know that he had this dream, and all know he can work magic and such like, so have every reason to believe him, but inexplicably they do not, so when Thor finally leaps onto a table and dashes the poisoned chalice from the king's lips and it spills on the floor and a dog dies when lapping it up, for some completely inexplicable reason they throw Thor in the dungeon accused of trying to poison the king.

Sorry, no, none of this makes any sense. It is not just here but elsewhere where people seem to just forget who they are and what they know and act in ways against their character so as to fit this plot into the mould the author wants for it. Sadly this ultimately fails.

So... the big question... would I read the sequel of this book?

I don't know the answer to that. Maybe. Maybe it will get better as it goes, and the book was never terrible. However I won't be reading it any time soon.

Very slowly managed to finish a full length Italian novel:

Io Non Ho Paura - Niccolo Ammaniti



This is an award winning Italian crime thriller (it won the prestigious Italian 2001 Viareggio Prize) and has been turned into a film that has also won awards (although I haven't seen the film).

Nine year old Michele lives in a small Italian town called Acqua Traverse in Southern Italy. Despite its name, there is not much water there in the hot summer that is the setting for the events. Michele and his friends find themselves at an abandoned house where Michele discovers what he thinks at first is a dead body, but later realises is a kidnapped boy.

What follows is an authentic sounding description of the events from the point of view of a 9 year old boy. The setting is harsh in many ways but also finds real elements of humanity, and the writing - even for me, far from proficient in Italian, was powerfully descriptive and wonderfully immediate.

Nevertheless there is a disturbing element to this book, which is clearly intentional. It is not a happy work, taking as its theme a period of Italian history (the 1970s) when criminality and kidnappings were rife.

The book is available in English too, so non Italian readers can still appreciate it. The film by the same name is listed on Wikipedia as being in Italian only (although it presumably has subtitles in English).

Added a couple of books that I mention in my other thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/210950

These are:

How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare, robbed a grave, made a new friend who might not have really been there at all, and while he was at it committed a terrible sin which everyone was doing even though he didn’t know it - Paul Jennings

and

Strange Objects - Gary Crew

Also just completed my first German language novel, and this means I now have one book in every category of my category challenge, an important milestone :)

It could also tick off entries in the geography and classics categories.

The book is:

Emil und die Detective - Erich Kastner



In English this book is Emil and the Detectives, a story I read when I was in primary school, at the age of about 9. I liked it very much then but never re-read it. Reading it in the original German perhaps added some nuance to it that was missing in the translation, or at least it did evoke the feeling of Germany better for that.

As an older and wiser reader I would now recognise this story suffers from a structural problem - it essentially finishes about two thirds of the way in and then has a very long wind down. Still, the book is short so that does not matter too much. A long wind down is perhaps no longer than in any other book, it is just the adventure of catching the thief is all over rather quickly.

Despite such purist observations, of course, there is no doubt that this is an entertaining short tale and it is no surprise I loved it when I was 9. There are very many good books to choose from these days, but 9 year olds can probably still enjoy this one.

This book is set in Germany in the 1920s. There is nothing political in it that I could see, just a harmless tale of the triumph of a group of boys over a thief. Nevertheless Erich Kastner's books were banned and burned by the Nazi regime, and the author himself was harassed by the Gestapo. Nevertheless he lived in Berlin to the end of the war, before fleeing under the Soviet advance.

Such a pity that life could not be as simple as the world he wrote about.

Congrats for getting a book in each of your categories! I didn't know that Emil and the Detectives was originally German. Interesting!

>81 rabbitprincess: Thanks. Now I just need to read 9 more German books in two and a half months. Oh and 8 Italian, 9 Welsh, 7 Dutch and various others!

OK so I am giving up any hope of achieving 10 reads in every category this year... but that could be next year's challenge :)

>82 sirfurboy: Erich Kästner has written a few more children's books if you're looking for some easy German reading. Das doppelte Lottchen is fun, even for adults who enjoy a little bit of wordplay.

>83 MissWatson: Thanks, noted and added to my TBR, although I have a couple of other German books I want to try first. I have Wolfgang Hohlbein's "Der Orkling", for instance. That is quite a different book, but some years back a German friend spoke highly of Hohlbein's books. The only one available in English was Magic Moon, which I duly read, but he said that was not one of his best, so I am looking forward to discovering why Hohlbein's books are so popular.

>84 sirfurboy: Hohlbein is an author with an enormous output who writes for both grown-ups and kids, sometimes in collaboration with others, and I'm told that the quality is very uneven. I thought his take on the Nibelungen story was interesting Hagen von Tronje, but my only dip into his fantasy Elfenblut was very unsatisfactory and I didn't finish it. Will be interested to see what you make of him.

Iron and Rust - Harry Sidebottom



Sadly I have found a Harry Sidebottom novel I did not greatly enjoy. Even more sadly, I bought the sequel at the same time I bought this one so I will have to read it even though I may have chosen to stop here.

Harry Sidebottom was that extremely rare phenomenon: an academic, a historian, a specialist in his chosen literary subject who nevertheless created entertaining and action packed novels with great characterisations and engaging stories. I would thoroughly recommend his Warrior of Rome series as being some of the best Roman fiction out there. His books were wonderful but also highly educational.

This new series is still educational, but sadly the author has forgotten what surely must be the first rule of writing fiction: keep it interesting.

Not that the plot lacks anything of interest. There is plenty of intrigue, an overarching plot, and wonderfully described fighting scenes. Nevertheless the book fails because there is not really a single character to hang it off. The action keeps jumping from one unfamiliar name to another and it is quite hard to make sense of it all. In particular I felt no particular connection to any of the characters.

Two more reads over the weekend. One classic - Heart of Darkness and one, I suppose, a fantasy although "contemporary fairy story" might be as good as a description: The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Warrior Bronze - Michelle Paver



Book five and the end of the God's and Warriors series that I very much enjoyed. This is good fiction for older children and young adults, as well as older young adult readers. This is set in the bronze age in and around what is now Greece.

In this book Hylas, Pirra and all the animals that have joined them meet together in a final showdown with Telamon and the crows. Other key characters also turn up, but I won't say more to avoid spoilers and because, in any case, if you have read the first four books in this series, you will want to read this one, and if you haven't then you should start at book 1.

Magician's Guild - Trudi Canavan



I bought this book quite a while ago, largely based on the cover! It then languished on my shelf for a very long time, but I have been trying to attack my TBR pile (which now has at least 60 books on it, and I think is probably closer to 100). Thus I read through this story, and overall I enjoyed it.

Despite enjoying it, I have some issues with it though. Firstly I bought it in the adult fantasy section of a book store, but having read it, I think this is miscategorised. This is classic young adult fantasy - excellent for that age group but perhaps some adult fantasy readers who don't read young adult stuff may scratch their heads and thing "meh".

The plot itself also has weaknesses. Things like the magicians, all of them collectively, just kind of forget they can detect the presence of another magician, or the extremely easy way in which the plot is resolved in this book.

Still the characters were quite engaging, and although there is room for improvement, I found myself enjoying the story. It was not completely formulaic, and there was just enough originality to enthuse me. I will probably keep reading this series - but maybe after I have reduced my TBR pile a little.

One more classic:

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley



Started this one on Halloween :)

Most people are somewhat acquainted with this story, but I suspect most, like me, had never actually read it. Rather we have watched the Hammer adaptions or somesuch.

Reading the book was interesting, and added some nuance that I had missed before. The book is pre-Victorian and it was interesting to think it into its historic context. This was the era that William Wilberforce was in parliament and campaigning against the slave trade, and of course Mary Shelley was married to the short lived but influential poet, Percy (although she wrote this before she had married him, and when still very young).

The language is flowery, the book filled with introspection, but that is merely a product of its age. As a story, it worked well enough, although it would not be written that way now of course.

What is remarkable about the book, however, is that it breaks new ground. It is regarded a horror book but really it is probably the first ever work of science fiction, and some of the themes it explores arise again and again.

It was also interesting in that this book forms a frame story. The first story frames a second (Frankenstein's) and that frames a third (the monster's) before returning to Victor Frankenstein and then the outer narrative.

I found the monster's story particularly preposterous, mind. His self teaching to become the erudite orator of the inner tale of this book just did not seem very likely to my modern mind. As I say above, it is a product of its time.

Anyway it ticks off one of my "classics" for the year.

One more for my history category.

Gladiator: Vengeance - Simon Scarrow



The third book and conclusion of a series for older children and young adults, set some 13 years after the third servile war (the Spartacus rebellion). Marcus remains on the trail of Decimus, the tax collector who illegally killed his father, seized his farm and sold him and his mother into slavery.

This is a gladiator story for children, and probably will appeal to them, as there is plenty of action and a few bloodthirsty bits that many would like.

For anyone who understands the laws and history of Rome, there are some preposterous elements to this story, but still it gives a nice flavour of life in the Roman empire for younger readers, and it is well enough researched, even if there is a fair dose of poetic license in there.

An exciting and enjoyable tale nonetheless.

This book ticks off a history category as well as a French one:

Entre les lignes - Emmanuel Bourdier



This is an interesting story of an 11 year old boy, Augustin, who is growing up in the Zone Libre, or so called Free Zone of France in the Second World War. The events take place in 1943, however, when the zone has been invaded by Germany, so there is a partition still, running close to Augustin's village and through their farm land, but the Germans are an unwelcome presence too.

In this charged atmosphere, someone in the village is involved in curious acts of vandalism and sabotage, quoting from Cyrano Bergerac (that is, the play by Edmond Rostand, not the historical person). The school teacher is suspected but Augustin and his best friend discover otherwise.

This book is recommended reading for French school children, and it is easy to see why. It speaks to a troubled period of French history and gets into the lives of those who lived through it. There are some poignant moments, such as the German soldier helped by Augustin's mother and who shares photos of his far away wife and child, accidentally leaving the photo behind when bawled out by his commanding officer. There are some troubling moments too, where we are made aware that resistance fighters are being summarily executed. Ultimately there is also a story of redemption and hope too.

It was education for me too. I knew little about the French partition prior to reading this book. I had a hazy knowledge that such a partition happened, but now I am much better informed.

>92 sirfurboy: This sounds really interesting! Do you know if there's an English translation?

Sorry to say I cannot find an English translation of this. Thanks for commenting though.

Boo, my library doesn't have Entre les lignes! I will add it to the TBR list anyway because it sounds like it's worth tracking down.

>95 rabbitprincess: Sorry to hear the library does not have it. I hope you enjoy it though.

One more just finished (although I started it early this year!)

Le Petit Nicolas - Goscinny et Sempé



First in a long series of books by the man behind Asterix, René Goscinny (the touchstone suggests the author is Jean-Jacques Sempé but I understand him to be the illustrator).

The books follow the adventures of little Nicolas and his friends. It is written from Nicolas' point of view, which allows us into the mind of a young boy as he gets up to all kinds of mischief, and from our older perspective, we can be wryly amused at his misunderstandings (such as when Dad accidentally gets left tied to a tree after a game of Cowboys and Indians, and Nicolas assumes that he must really like the game to still be playing it).

There are many more of these books, although this one took me a whole to read. It is broken into chapters, each a self contained story, so I dipped in and out of this book pretty much all year, and on the way I also watched the two films.

This book is harmless fun in a similar way to Jennings and Just William in the UK and contemporary with Jennings, being written in the late 1950s. I actually think Goscinny's story does the "mind of a child" thing better than Jennings, because he never jumps out of it and into an adult head to make sense of it all (as Buckeridge did with Jennings).

It seems a lot of people read these books to improve their French, and it is easy enough to see why.

Oh dear, this was not one of my best reads:

Het geheim van de draak- Guido Kees



(Title translates to "The Secret of the Dragon")

This story is only available in Dutch, and probably that is all it will ever be available in. The write up says (more or less, this is my translation):

Embark on an adventure to the Middle Ages. The stronghold where Wolf lives is plagued by a terrible dragon. Wolf's father, Sir Artan, heads out to fight the monster, but he disappears without a trace. Wolf takes matters into his own hands and searches for him. During his dangerous journey, he gets help from unexpected sources: a blacksmith son, a forest girl and a real wolf join him. Can they defeat the dragon? And will Wolf find his father? A thrilling tale of sabre rattling, roaring dragons and hooves.

Will Wolf find his father? Well this book won't tell you as it finishes up pretty much at the end of that synopsis. By the time the book ends, various elements are set up (like the villainous uncle Sieg, taking over the castle) but nothing at all is resolved. This is half a story - the kind of thing that usually forms a free kindle book and you are meant to buy the continuation.

Except this one was not free, and neither was it very good. I have been reading this but also Tonke Dragt's better written and better received "De brief voor de koning" ("The Letter for the King"). Although Dragt's book is better (and longer) both of these books are set in a medieval world that seems closer to fairy tale than the more usual fantasy genre we see in English language literature. This story had reference to the crusades and other such things that kind of made it seem like it intended to be historical fiction rather than fantasy, but there was insufficient scene building and setting to anchor it in place or time, so I was a little confused by that. I don't think that was just because I was reading it in Dutch.

Some of the plot elements (maybe many of them) were predictable, and although I won't bother with book two of this story, I suspect I already know how it all ends. Still the predictability would have been less of a problem for me if the whole story had been presented in one book. Sorry, but ending a story before anything much has happened is, for me, the unforgivable sin.

Anyway, one to avoid sadly.

One more German book ticked off:

Das Urteil - Franz Kafka



This books is really little more than a short story, not even a novella. However as I read it in German, and as the German is tricky in places, it took me at least as long to read as any English language novel. In fact I first tried reading this years ago and gave up because t was too hard then.

The story is typically Kafka, which is to say it is odd, and laced with deeper meaning beneath a deceptively simple surface. It is little more than a conversation between a son and his father that leads to a rather unfortunate "judgement" (Das Urteil means "the judgement") on the protagonist, after some discussion of letters to a friend in St Petersburg, Russia.

This is only my third Kafka book, and my first read in the original German. His work is fascinating, and yet not entirely captivating to me. Still I think Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) is a strange little book that everyone should read and Das Schloss (The Castle) is as perfect a description of an unyielding perfect bureaucracy as has ever been written. Sadly I am not quite so clear as to what Das Urteil was really trying to tell me.

Added my second Welsh book of the year:

Olion Hen Elyn - Elgan Philip Davies



The title translates as "Traces of an Old Enemy" and is a supernatural mystery surrounding the history of a Welsh village and a fire that destroyed an old school house 150 years ago. A group of local children investigate the history for a school project and get mixed up in something darker and supernatural.

This is part of a series, and this first book does little more than set the series up, not really resolving anything very much.

Written in Welsh only, I doubt this is a book that will get a translation to English.