Introverted Reader

European Reading Challenge 2014

Edit: Complete as of July 11, 2014. I enjoyed most of my choices! Time to sign up for the European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader yet again! I always enjoy this challenge. The idea is to read books by European authors or books set in European countries (no matter where the author comes from). The books can be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre. You can participate at different levels, but each book must be by a different author and set in a different country – it's supposed to be a tour. For levels, a list of European countries, and rules (there's a prize for the ambitious readers out there!), visit the sign up page at Rose City Reader. I'm signing up at the Honeymooner level--4 books. I'll track my progress here. Thanks to Gilion for hosting again! City of Thieves by David Benioff, read by Ron Perlman--Soviet Union Life After Life by Kate Atkinson--United Kingdom The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan, read by Cassandra Campbell, Julia Whelan, and Danny Campbell--France The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt--Italy The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund, read by Katherine Kellgren, Erik Singer, and Reg Rogers--Sweden I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site. My opinions are completely my own.

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December 31, 2013

Bookish Miscellany

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. As always, it's been a few weeks since I last posted, so here are just some highlights. Posted:Sign up post for the Southern Literature Challenge hosted by yours truly! I hope you'll join me! My sign-up post for The Eclectic Reader Challenge hosted by Book'd Out. This is always a great challenge! Review: I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak--4 Stars Review: Naked in Death by J. D. Robb, read by Susan Ericksen--4 Stars Review: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai, translated by Ina Rilke, read by B. D. Wong--4 Stars Review: The Child Thief by Brom--4 Stars Read:Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges Sweet Nothings by Janis Thomas Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, read by Ari Fliakos Currently Reading:The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland (Book club pick) NPR Favorite Driveway Moments: Radio Stories That Won't Let You Go The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson Up Next:I'm hoping to get to a new audiobook in a day or two. NPR Favorite Driveway Moments is a super-short last-ditch effort to complete my own nonfiction reading challenge before the end of the year! I don't have anything in mind though. What are you reading this week? Do you have any reading challenges I should check out? I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site. My opinions are completely my own.

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December 30, 2013

Introverted Reader Features

Southern Literature Reading Challenge 2014

PLEASE LINK YOUR REVIEWS ON THE REVIEW LINK-UP PAGE It's that time again! I'm hosting the Southern Literature Reading Challenge for the fourth year in a row. I can't believe it's been that long already! The rules: Read a book(s)--non-fiction or fiction of any genre, for any age group--written by an author from the South and set mostly in the South. Definitions of the South are flexible, so I've decided to define it the way I want. That's the fun of hosting your own challenge, right? :-) The states: South Carolina Georgia Alabama North Carolina Virginia Tennessee Mississippi Louisiana Kentucky West Virginia Texas Arkansas Florida Please keep in mind that this is a Southern literature challenge. It's possible to find books set in each of these states that are not Southern in nature or feeling. Use your best judgment when choosing your books. Levels: Level 1--C'mon in the house! Read 1 book. Level 2--Pull up a seat and stay a while! Read 2 books Level 3--Have a glass of sweet iced tea, honey. Read 3 books Level 4--Y'all come back now, y'hear! Read 4 books The challenge will run from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014. You can join in anytime throughout the year. I am not limiting the challenge to bloggers. You can also link to a review you wrote on another site, such as GoodReads or LibraryThing. Crossovers with other challenges are acceptable, and feel free to read your books in any format you choose. Reading suggestions: I have a shelf on GoodReads with lots of books on it. There's also a Best Southern Literature list on GoodReads that should give you lots of ideas. Or you can reference the linked reviews from the 2013, 2012, and 2011 versions of the challenge. Different this year: I'll put…

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December 30, 2013

Book Review Lists

The Eclectic Reader Challenge 2014

Edit: Completed as of December 12, 2014! Well, I've finished reading books for all the categories anyway. I did not do well with the reviewing part. Oh, well. There's always next year! ShelleyRae at Book'd Out is hosting The Eclectic Reader Challenge again in 2014. As she says, "In it’s third year, the aim of The Eclectic Reader 2014 Challenge is to push you outside your comfort zone by reading up to 12 books during the year from 12 different categories." In the past this challenge has definitely pushed me into some new genres and it looks like this year will be no different. The challenge runs from January 1, 2014 - December 31, 2014. ShelleyRae is also offering up a prize. "All participants that complete the challenge by December 31st 2014 will be eligible to win a book of their choice to the value of $15AUD from bookdepository.com or a $10US Amazon gift card or paypal funds of US$10 to be drawn via random.org Jan 2015." Head on over to Book'd Out and sign up! This year's categories: Award Winning--Fun Home by Alison Bechdel True Crime (Non Fiction)--Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer Romantic Comedy--The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion Alternate History Fiction--Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Graphic Novel--Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez Cosy Mystery Fiction--The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters, read by Susan O'Malley Gothic Fiction--The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter War/Military Fiction--City of Thieves by David Benioff, read by Ron Perlman Anthology--The Beastly Bride, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Medical Thriller Fiction--Mutation by Robin Cook Travel (Non Fiction)--The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt Published in 2014--The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi I…

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December 29, 2013

The Trivia Lover’s Guide to the World: Geography for the Lost and Found by Gary Fuller: Book Review

Professor Gary Fuller sets out to fill in the gaps in your geography knowledge. I would guess that I know a little more geography than the average American but I'll be the first to admit that I'm still woefully lacking. I downloaded this book on a nook Free Friday (I believe), thinking that I might learn a thing or two. I sure did! I wish more of it had stuck with me, but I now know that camels originated in North America, the first country you come to if you go directly south of Detroit is Canada (I'm ashamed that I didn't know that one) and if you go directly south of Chicago, you'll run into the Pacific ocean, not South America (again, I'm ashamed that I didn't know that). There were lots more facts packed into this little book, all presented in a fun, entertaining way. I actually had a hard time putting the book down! The format of the book worked really well for me. The chapters were short and began with a series of questions. That's the one thing I didn't like. By the time I got to the answer, I'd forgotten what the question was and there often wasn't much of a contextual clue. I would have had an easier time with a physical copy, just marking the question page, but I wasn't willing to go clicking back through the pages on my nook. Trivia lovers should really enjoy this book, and I highly recommend it! Read an excerpt. Buy The Trivia Lover's Guide to the World: Geography for the Lost and Found at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission…

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak: Book Review

Ed Kennedy is an underage cab driver with no prospects. He's the very picture of your average young man. But someone has chosen him to carry out some tasks that require him to be anything but average. I was incredibly nervous about reading this book after reading The Book Thief. That book immediately became my favorite. I knew there was no way this one could live up to it. But after starting Messenger, I realized that the books are so very different that there was no way and no need to compare them. Basically, Zusak is telling us that we can all make a difference in other peoples' lives. If ordinary Ed Kennedy can do it, so can we. And he makes it clear that it doesn't really take a lot of effort to do so. Granted, Ed gets some huge assignments, but mostly they boiled down to taking the time to notice others and having the courage and the compassion to act on the needs he sees. "It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed." While not as consistently beautiful as The Book Thief, (sorry, I can't help it), there were moments of aching clarity and beauty in here. Zusak seems to be reminding us to look for the beauty in small, everyday moments. "Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are." And that brings us to my biggest complaint. The short, one-sentence paragraphs drove me up the wall. There were passages like the one above every page or two, if not more often. I eventually overlooked it and saw it as Ed's style, but at the beginning, it was killing me. Overall, this was a quick read with…

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: Book Review

Synopsis from GoodReads: Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko... Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, crèche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century. I didn't love this one. I'm not really a fan of dystopian novels in general so that could be the problem. Mostly though, I didn't like anybody. There was one guy that I kind of liked, really wanted to like, but his role turns out to be fairly small. The other characters were just jerks. And since everybody was a jerk, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be rooting for. I don't think there was really a good guy. There was just bad and less-bad. Maybe this world felt a little too...possible. It's set in a future where the big food companies basically control everything. We think the guys with the money control the…

The Commitment by Dan Savage: Book Review

As the "gay marriage debate" was heating up back in oh, 2005, Dan Savage and his boyfriend (they dislike the word partner) were in the middle of their own debate. Should they or shouldn't they? They'd been together ten years, they'd adopted a son together, neither had any intention of leaving the relationship, they fully believed that gays and lesbians should have the right to get married, they just weren't sure that marriage was for them. They talk it over, going back and forth, receiving lots of input in favor of marriage from Dan's mom, and against marriage from their 5-year-old son. Honestly, I read this for a book challenge I'm trying to complete before the end of the year. I think I saw Dan Savage once on Real Time with Bill Maher but other than that he's not on my radar. I keep my political opinions to myself. Has anyone ever changed the mind of someone else in a political argument? I think not. So let's just say that I'm a happily-married heterosexual female who thinks that gay people should be allowed to get married. And that's all I'll say about that. Savage's memoir is, for the most part, hilarious, brutally honest, and straight to the point. He points out the fallacies in the tired old arguments trotted out against gay marriage, takes some potshots at its most vocal opponents, and chronicles his own personal debate within the debate. I laughed most of the way through it. It did irritate me that Savage has no compunction about casting people around him in broad stereotypes, but at least he admits that he's a close-minded liberal (or something like that anyway). Apparently the entire population of South Dakota is fat, wants to kick his butt simply because he's gay, and doesn't…

Naked in Death by J. D. Robb: Book Review

Lieutenant Eve Dallas is assigned to lead a high-profile murder investigation into the death of a Senator's granddaughter. But the granddaughter was a "licensed companion," i.e. prostitute, and she was murdered in a pretty graphic way. Working mostly alone, Dallas must find the murderer before he kills again. I had such a love/hate relationship with this book at times. Mostly, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. But then Roarke, the drop-dead gorgeous bazillionaire and number 1 suspect (with an Irish accent, no less!), would do something that was supposed to be all hot and dominating, I assume, and irritate the absolute hell out of me. As a completely made-up example, let me offer this: "No, I'm not trying to seduce you right now, Lieutenant. When I do decide to seduce you, I won't be trying, I'll be doing it. And you'll like it more than you've ever liked anything in your life." Again, that is completely my own fabrication but it is true to how I perceived Roarke. I was hoping Eve would kick him in the balls a few times, just to bring his ego down to size. Either he got better as the book progressed or I resigned myself to him, but either way it didn't bother me as much by the end. I actually liked him a lot when he gave all that crap a rest. Roarke's ego aside, I have to admit that I couldn't wait to get in my car and continue listening to this book. I don't really read romance novels, I guess because I assume it's all "heaving bosoms," etc. and my sense of humor would get in the way of all that mess. So I started this with some trepidation. I was hooked in the first half-hour. I really…

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: Book Review

I hesitated over this book for a long time. I'd somewhere picked up the idea that it involves a lot of Philosophy, which I read as Big, Boring Thoughts That Have No Practical Application to Anyone's Life. Is that bad? Probably. But I came across it in Will Schwalbe's memoir, The End of Your Life Book Club and it piqued my...