2012 Book Challenge [It has begun!]

How do you decide what to read?

The book covers	19.1%	[ 9 ]
Suggestions from others	19.1%	[ 9 ]
Online book reviews	10.6%	[ 5 ]
If it sounds good, sure why not?	42.6%	[ 20 ]
Gimme my gold!	8.5%	[ 4 ]
Total Votes:			[ 47 ]

[cerebral ulcer]

Ooh. I shall try this thing, then. :'D

Awesome~

yeah I'm not a fan of long in-depth reviews either..

[mihaela]

I always set this type of challenge to myself, but I never can accomplish them. As you said, school, getting sick, and basically life gets in the way of good reading. Also, I tend to read quite slowly and that certainly doesn't improve my chances.

I want to say 100 books for 2012, but I'll be fortunate to finish a tenth of that. So my goal for 2012 will be... 50 books. Doable? We'll see.

Name: mihaela
Goal: 0/50

I won't set titles I plan to read because I change my mind too often and I never can quite keep to something so specific.

yum_strawberry

[StarfruitPanda]

mihaela

Alright, sounds awesome. I'll put you down, though when you change a book can you let me know? Or something, I mostly want to know because I'm always looking for new books to read, I'm not trying to be super a**l.

nyrissa

Oh, thank you for that. I generally don't buy books anymore now that I have a nook and I can just illegally download them all. But it's always nice to get free ones where I can expand my hardcopy collection

cerebral ulcer

Yeah, I'm with you there. Some people take as much time into writing reviews for books as they do into reading them, and it bugs me. It's like when you see a preview for a movie and they show the entire movie in that minute and a half. What's the point?

[mihaela]

StarfruitPanda

mihaela

Alright, sounds awesome. I'll put you down, though when you change a book can you let me know? Or something, I mostly want to know because I'm always looking for new books to read, I'm not trying to be super a**l.

Oh, yeah, that totally works for me. I didn't want choose titles already because, as I said, I never stick to the plan. I'll post when I finish reading something. I'm also always looking for new titles or stuff I've never heard of before that's secretly awesome. yum_strawberry

[StarfruitPanda]

mihaela

Yeah. It's especially hard for me because not many of my friends are avid readers. Those that do read, read the same things I do because we have similar tastes, so it's rare if I come across something I haven't read.

Like, with the Ender series, I had heard of it but it wasn't till a friend told me what it was about that I was like Oh! must read!

[Man_I_Jizzed2]

I'll join you. Since its for the whole year of 2012. I'll challenge myself to 40 books. Are we allowed to count the books we just finished or not until Jan 2012?

[WickedREMY]

StarfruitPanda

WickedREMY

I did this two years in a row... only counting new books, not manga or books I'd already read once before. My goals were around 110-120, I think.

The days when I had time to read a bunch.

Wow. I can't read that many books that quickly.
I think last year my goal was 111, I made it to 70 because I got sick a lot the first half of the year.

Will you be doing it this year?

Probably not. When I don't have work or school, it seems like I always have other things to deal with.

[StarfruitPanda]

WickedREMY

StarfruitPanda

WickedREMY

I did this two years in a row... only counting new books, not manga or books I'd already read once before. My goals were around 110-120, I think.

The days when I had time to read a bunch.

Wow. I can't read that many books that quickly.
I think last year my goal was 111, I made it to 70 because I got sick a lot the first half of the year.

Will you be doing it this year?

Probably not. When I don't have work or school, it seems like I always have other things to deal with.

Well I hope that won't deter you from hanging out with us for good book conversations, despite all the goings on in life. Trust me, I know what it's like not to be able to read because you have a huge presentation due and your professor just pushed up the date by 3 weeks. /end rant.

[WickedREMY]

StarfruitPanda

WickedREMY

StarfruitPanda

WickedREMY

I did this two years in a row... only counting new books, not manga or books I'd already read once before. My goals were around 110-120, I think.

The days when I had time to read a bunch.

Wow. I can't read that many books that quickly.
I think last year my goal was 111, I made it to 70 because I got sick a lot the first half of the year.

Will you be doing it this year?

Probably not. When I don't have work or school, it seems like I always have other things to deal with.

Well I hope that won't deter you from hanging out with us for good book conversations, despite all the goings on in life. Trust me, I know what it's like not to be able to read because you have a huge presentation due and your professor just pushed up the date by 3 weeks. /end rant.

I'll probably be lurking. If I happen to see any books that sound good, I'll see if I can find them at the library or something~ I'm too busy to set up any huge goals, but I still like reading casually.

[StarfruitPanda]

WickedREMY

Well, I'm all for lurking, but I hope you still stay for some conversation.
Reading casually is better than not reading at all.

[mihaela]

StarfruitPanda

mihaela

Yeah. It's especially hard for me because not many of my friends are avid readers. Those that do read, read the same things I do because we have similar tastes, so it's rare if I come across something I haven't read.

Like, with the Ender series, I had heard of it but it wasn't till a friend told me what it was about that I was like Oh! must read!

I'm willing to start on anything that sounds even mildly interesting. I usually go through phases, so there might be five books in a row that are 50s and 60s pulp lesbian novels, then I decide I need to get my Russian 19th novelists on repeat, and, next thing you know, I get a random recommendation that has me reading everything that author has ever written in a row.

I have a huge backlog that has been steadily increasing over the year (it should go the other way around, shouldn't it?). I have my yearly books -- a few that I read at least once per year because they are just that good. I'll touch anything basically, but I might not finish it if I truly dislike.

[StarfruitPanda]

mihaela

I think I should pick one of my novels and do that with every year, my major problem is if I remember a book too well, I can't read it because I already know what happens. Though, since Jane Eyre was the toughest for me to read, I might start with that.

There's a series that I've read so many times and because I can never remember all the details, I read it constantly. It's called Myst. There's 3 in the series, but it's so bloody fantastic and written well.

[mihaela]

StarfruitPanda

mihaela

I think I should pick one of my novels and do that with every year, my major problem is if I remember a book too well, I can't read it because I already know what happens. Though, since Jane Eyre was the toughest for me to read, I might start with that.

There's a series that I've read so many times and because I can never remember all the details, I read it constantly. It's called Myst. There's 3 in the series, but it's so bloody fantastic and written well.

For me it's Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. It happens with other Pratchett books, too, but Thief of Time is so amazing I have a hard time not picking it up for a quick browse whenever I'm in its vecinity. I don't even have to read it beginning to end because I already know which pages have my favourite parts without needing to mark the book.

Ah, Jane Eyre. I'm always on the fence with the Bronte sisters. On the one hand, they were true revolutionaries not just for the genre or for fiction, but for women getting a voice. However! Jane Eyre is so frustrating, as a book and as a character (and not in a good way). Plus, after you've read the revisionist novel by Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (which I heartily recommend), you can no longer look at the so-called "angelic heroine" and the "madwoman in the attic" archetypes without thinking how unfair women writing about women can be.

[StarfruitPanda]

mihaela

Oh my gosh, I am not a Prachett fan at all. Like.. I dunno I can't even pin point why I don't like it. I mean it's written well, maybe I get lost too often in it, but I scoff at the idea of even a suggestion I should try him again.

As for the Bronte sisters... Jane Eyre I liked, Wuthering Heights I did not. Wuthering Heights was so far off into descriptions at times I think she loses site of what the story really is. I'll check out that book though. Women writing about women in that day... it was like a gossip outlet, a chance to be truly harsh without someone scrutinizing them for it.

[mihaela]

StarfruitPanda

mihaela

Oh my gosh, I am not a Prachett fan at all. Like.. I dunno I can't even pin point why I don't like it. I mean it's written well, maybe I get lost too often in it, but I scoff at the idea of even a suggestion I should try him again.

As for the Bronte sisters... Jane Eyre I liked, Wuthering Heights I did not. Wuthering Heights was so far off into descriptions at times I think she loses site of what the story really is. I'll check out that book though. Women writing about women in that day... it was like a gossip outlet, a chance to be truly harsh without someone scrutinizing them for it.

True. However, I can read Jane Austen without flinching. She's so mean at times, but in a sort of jovial way almost. It's very cleverly written and you can't help but smirk to yourself even as you're thinking she's mean. I'm very biased towards dear ol' Jane, I must admit.

I liked Wuthering Heights more than Jane Eyre by a lot, though, again, kind of on the fence. Half-way through I was thinking something is about to happen, and something did, and the plot fell off a cliff and I lost interest, but it was a short-ish read overall, so meh. At least it wasn't Thomas Hardy, where I'm always wondering if character no. 348 is the hero/heroine or even someone I should care about at all and women always get the short end of the proverbial stick.

I love Pratchett, but I can see how, if you don't get into his writing style/story, you're just left standing there staring blankly. I can only recommend Thief of Time as a very good read and probably the best to start with because the writing is a lot neater than in the earlier Discworld novels, the characters are some of the most likeable (even the anti-heroes/heroines), and it made me laugh in a very unsightly way every few minutes (which few things, if any, have managed to do quite so well).