lindsacl's 50 books for 2007

This is my first year attempting the 50 book challenge. I've never tracked my books before but I think 50 is a reasonable goal for me.

I begain keeping a book journal, with reviews of each book as I complete it.

Tags in my library help me keep track of things i.e.; "read in 2007" and "TBR".

I'm really looking forward to the challenge!

Here are my first 4 books of 2007, with links to the reviews in my book journal:

1. The Grapes of Wrath - review

2. Before Women had Wings - review

3. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey - review

4. Water for Elephants - review

On track so far ...

Two more this week:

5. The Book Thief - review

6. 1776 - review

6 / 50
(12.0%)
2,335 / 15,000
(15.6%)

Moving along. A couple more books to report on. Neither of these rocked my world but you can find reviews in my book journal:

7. Rest in Pieces - review

8. The Inheritance of Loss - review

Books Read: 8/50 (16%)
Pages Read: 2,954/15,000 (19.7%)
(I miss the bookmeter...)

I created one here:

www.evolutionwriters.com/meter.php

*

Just Add Meter then edit it.

I managed to read 6 books in February; here are the last two, with links to reviews:

9. Two for the Dough - review

10. Suite Francaise - review. Touchstone not working ...

Suite Francaise was definitely my favorite this month.

10 / 50
(20.0%)
3,661 / 15,000
(24.4%)

First two for March:

11. Never Let me Go - review

12. Daughter of Fortune - review

Both very satisfying!

12 / 50
(24.0%)
4,396 / 15,000
(29.3%)

13. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - review

14. Half of a Yellow Sun - review

Half of a Yellow Sun was my favorite this month.

14 / 50
(28.0%)
5,319 / 15,000
(35.5%)

Finished one more in March:

15. Old Filth - review

15 / 50
(30.0%)

Here are my first two for April:

16. One Hundred Years of Solitude - review: didn't like this one so much.

17. Cloud Atlas - review: FANTASTIC! Predict this will be my favorite for April.

17 / 50
(34.0%)

Laura, I'm going to watch your 50 list. So far we seem to have common likes and dislikes. I recently bought another Irene Nemirovsky book: David Golder, which was published in her lifetime. Goodness knows when I'll read it.

18. Beasts of no Nation - review: well-written but disturbing (sorry, touchstone not loading)

19. Fall on Your Knees - review

lindsacl, I have seen Half of a Yellow Sun recommended by several folks on LT and just started it. So far, so good.

>13 momom248:: momom248, I was also inspired to read it because of the fantastic reviews on LT. I was not disappointed!

20. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - review: insightful, and easier to take than Beasts of No Nation.

21. Three to Get Deadly - review: a fun way to wrap up the month.

Hi lindsacl. I'm planning to read all of Jane Austen too. I've got Persuasion (the only novel I have yet to read) out of the Library but I haven't started it yet. What am I going to do when I've finished her books?

When I saw the bookmeter - 2,335/15,000 - I thought this was your lifetime target of books to read!

QUOTE:
16. One Hundred Years of Solitude - review: didn't like this one so much.

17. Cloud Atlas - review: FANTASTIC! Predict this will be my favorite for April.
END QUOTE

These are the only two books on this list I've read, but I feel the same way. I'm glad there's at least one other person who isn't blown away by One Hundred Years of Solitude - I started it twice but gave up each time - it just dragged so much. Cloud Atlas is one of my favourite books, and I also loved Black Swan Green which is the only other book of David Mitchell's I've read.

#16 Make that three people.

>16 Akiyama:: Akiyama, thanks for your comments. I'm using the bookmeter to track both books and pages read. Having never really kept track of my reading before, I thought I'd try it both ways. I'm not too anal about the pages, just casually interested to see that my typical read is more than 300 pages.

Thanks also for the moral support on One Hundred Years of Solitude!

MAY

22. Sense and Sensibility - review. I really loved this book!

23. The Bookseller of Kabul - review, very enlightening.

24. The Thirteenth Tale - review, loved it! This was my favorite book for May.

25. One Good Turn - review, pretty good, but not my favorite.

26. The Translator - review, lyrical & wonderful.

JUNE

27. A Long Walk to Freedom - review, a fascinating autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Favorite book of June.

28. To Kill a Mockingbird - review, a long-overdue re-read of Harper Lee's classic. Wonderful.

29. Four to Score - review, OK but not as good as others in this series

30. Alentejo Blue - review, interesting set of character sketches set in Portugal.

31. Vanity Fair - review, enjoyable but probably best read as a study of period literature, with several secondary sources to increase understanding and appreciation.

JULY

32. Lucky - review, a compelling memoir of rape and its aftermath.

33. Invisible Man - review, interesting but not as good as I wanted it to be.

34. High Five - review, a fun and humorous mystery series

35. Hot Six - review, more of the same

36. Northanger Abbey - review, Austen's first but not her best

37. Gate of the Sun - review, Arab-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

38. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - review, surprisingly my favorite book of July. It was good, but this was also a rather ho-hum month for reading.

AUGUST

39. The Lizard Cage - review, highly recommended, story of a political prisoner in Burma. This is already one of my best of 2007.

40. Watching the English - review, amusing & somewhat lightweight, anthropology for everyone.

41. The Optimist's Daughter - review, a beautifully-written Pulitzer-prize winner set in the southern US.

42. Identical Strangers - review, an LT Early Reviewer book. Not that great.

43. North and South - review, a classic exploring English classism.

44. Arthur and George - review, highly enjoyable historical fiction. My second favorite book of August.

45. Heat and Dust - review, a Booker Prize winner but just average in my view.

SEPTEMBER

46. The Road - review, amazing and worth every bit of critical acclaim! Favorite book of September.

47. Rumspringa - review

48. Their Eyes Were Watching God - review

49. The Yacoubian Building - review

50. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader - review

51. Hotel du Lac - review

52. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - review

Touchstones not working for last three books.

CHALLENGE WRAP-UP

I made my goal in September! At this rate I think I will finish the year at 65-70 books. When I began the challenge, I felt that reading one book per week was about the most I could do. I've been pleasantly surprised. And I've discovered many new authors along the way.

So, I'll keep plugging away, but having met this challenge I will leave this thread as is. I post all of my reviews on LT, and on my blog, anyway.

Happy reading everyone!

Awww...you can't abandon us that way! Just throw the titles on as you finish, so we know to go check for the reviews. This is kind of clearing house thread for me to keep track of who may have reviews I want to read. Pleeeeeeeasse??

Aw shucks, OK. And here I thought no one read this thread. I'll do it just for you, laytonwoman3rd !!

...and for me too, lindsacl!

You're not escaping THAT easily, ya know!

All right already! I'll start an October message with book #53, hopefully tomorrow after I write the review.

I'm reading it too! AND the reviews!

OCTOBER (by popular demand!)

53. East of Eden - review

54. A Woman in Jerusalem - review

55. Interpreter of Maladies - review

56. When the Emperor was Divine - review

57. The Book of Lamentations - review

58. True History of the Kelly Gang - review

Another person here who's reading your reviews!

Me too!!! Keep 'em coming.

Got it! Thanks so much! I'm adding to #31 through the month of October ...

NOVEMBER

59. A Thousand Splendid Suns - review. This was so fantastic, on Nov. 3 I'm already predicting it will be my favorite book of the month!

60. The Tenderness of Wolves - review

61. The Jewel Trader of Pegu - review. An Early Reviewers book that I simply could not get through.

62. Wide Sargasso Sea - review, OK but not as good as I'd hoped.

63. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - review, truly wonderful!!

excellent review, lindsacl. That got a green thumbs up from me!

Finally made it here and was impressed by your wonderful reviews, Lindsacl. Keep em coming!

We seem to have very similar tastes in reading, so it is interesting to see what you like (and thus, what I should snap up).

DECEMBER

64. The Way the Crow Flies - review, an intense and long book, but very good.

65. Frost in May - review, the first Virago Modern Classic published (and the first VMC that I've read as well)

66. The Master and Margarita - review, unusual fantasy/satire based in Moscow

67. The Art of Mending - review, emotional manipulative pulp, ick.

68. The Giver - review, fantastic Newbery award-winning, dystopian novel. Very thought-provoking.

69. Excellent Women - review, a wonderfully ironic view of English life.

70. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - review, an opportunity to "visit" Peru as part of Reading Globally.

71. We Need to Talk About Kevin - review, wow, compelling and sad.

72. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont - review, very enjoyable and a superb way to end my reading year!

Glad you liked this one, lindsacl. It sure is a favorite of mine. Excellent review, btw, without giving too much away. As a child who lived abroad and also returned (in my case, to the US) in 1960, this book certainly resonated with me.

Thanks kambrogi! There was a lot more I wanted to say in that review, but as you said, that would have given stuff away. The plot twists & surprises were part of what made this book so good.

CLOSING THE BOOKS ON 2007

Well, it looks like I've read 72 books this year, certainly exceeding my expectations! I like 72; it gives me a neat average of 6 books per month. And of course that got me thinking. I've seen a lot of other bloggers publishing statistics about their reading year, so I had a little fun with Excel this afternoon.

So yeah, 6 books per month on average, but I also see that I ramped up over the year, and I tend to read a lot more when I have time off from work (we took a family vacation in July/August, and I've been off the last part of December as well).


So then I was on a roll. Moving on from quantity to quality, I took a look at my ratings. On a scale of 1-5, my average rating was 3.5. That kind of surprised me, because lately I've read a lot of 4's.


I guess it's all those 3's bringing my average down to, well, average. I certainly don't read a lot of rubbish do I? I do know for sure that I've become a more discerning reader this year. And the numbers don't lie!

Well, that was a bit of statistical fun, and a fun way to wrap up a great year of reading as well!

Happy New Year everyone!!

I love the charts! I am resisting going into Excel and creating my own (I am going back to work tomorrow - yes, on New Year's Day - so I don't want to do anything remotely "work-like"). LOL. Great stats though.

lindsacl, you kill me - I love your charts!!! Statistical fun indeed!

Love the charts, lindsacl! Now I want to see a correlation of quality to month ... might the quality rise after, say, June? Your quantity rose, overall, as the year went by, even discounting holidays.

Will you start a new thread for 2008? Maybe you already have? Are you shooting for the big 100? :-)

kambrogi, the analytical possibilities are simply endless, aren't they?! I haven't started a thread yet but I s'pose I will once I finish my first book. However, I don't plan to set a quantitative goal. I found that made me a little obsessive and sometimes kept me from spending time on other activities or just on "real life."

oooh great charts! I agree re quantitative goals although I did set one for myself. I needed the extra push so I wouldn't get lazy. ;)