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Sunday, November 2, 2008

Some Wrap-ups While I'm Basking in Being Ahead

This might be the only time all month I'm ahead of the game for nanowrimo, so I'm going to post some updates on my reading challenges.

R.I.P. III
I have officially finished R.I.P. III. I read:
Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne Barbeau
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon by Philip K. Dick
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Highlights:
The Thirteenth Tale
was much awesomer than I was anticipating during my first glance-through.

Lowlights:
I only felt ho-hum about I Am Legend.

Mythopoeic Award Challenge
Finished this one, although I didn't realize it until I went back to review the award winners and realized I had inadvertantly read tons more Mythopoeic Award winners than I originally had on my list. I read:
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Highlights:
Loved the Neil Gaiman-liciousness of my reading. The Penelopiad really hit the spot.

Lowlights:
Couldn't finish Mortal Hand, too little actually happening, too many characters. Neverwhere didn't quite live up to what I was expecting.

In Their Shoes Reading Challenge
I'm calling it a day after reading these books:
Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Candy girl: a year in the life of an unlikely stripper by Diablo Cody.
Life is So Good by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman
Marie-Therese, Child of Terror by Susan Nagel
Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman

Highlights:
Loved Nickeled and Dimed, Life is So Good, and I felt deeply moved by Maus. I can't say a book about the Holocaust is particularly 'enjoyable' in the usual sense of the word, although I could not stop reading.

Lowlights:
None, really, I liked all of the books I read for this one. I wish I had time to finish all of the ones on my list.

Chunkster Challenge

On a complete technicality (since I'm never going to get to my original choice of The Once and Future King), I'm going to count The Absolute Sandman Volume 1 allowing me to be done with this one. It was a chunkster, man, weighing in at 7.4 pounds and 641 pages. So I read:
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Absolute Sandman Volume 1 by Neil Gaiman
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Highlights:
All except Great Expectations.

Lowlights:
I didn't hate Great Expectations. But it was really, really long. And it took a long time for me to get into it. Actually I could say the same thing for both of the Atwood books. So maybe the only real lowlight is that these books were looooooooooong.

The Rest
This leaves me with the following challenges to finish (afterwards, the number of books I've read for each challenge)

Classics Challenge (2/6)
Graphic Novel Challenge (4/3) Might read another one before the end of the year or I'd call this one finito
Short Story Challenge (6/10)
YA Reading Challenge (20/12) Hey, I might read a few more in December to relieve the stress of nanowrimo
My Year of Reading Dangerously (7/12)

So not bad, considering the only challenges I really need to play catch up in are the Classics Challenge and the Short Story Challenge. We'll see what December brings.

5 comments:

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

Basking or procrastinating? :P I need to do some major catching up on the classics challenge as well--and it's my challenge! I'm reading Swiss Family Robinson right now but keep falling asleep. Great job with the rest of the challenges!!

Stephanie said...

Sheesh. That's a lot of challenge books!! I'm still loving Gaiman. But I need to read the Graveyard Book. One of these days I'll get my hands on it.

I'm just not quite ready to be done with the RIP challenge!

Ana S. said...

That's quite a lot of challenges you managed to wrap up! I'm hoping to finish most of mine for this year this month.

Melody said...

Everyone seems to be doing so well with the challenges... I feel so way behind and I need to do a wrap-up one of these days.

Anonymous said...

Wow that's a lot of wrap ups congrats! There are some great books in your lists that I hope to get to soon.