The 2020 AW Reading Challenge! Perfectly visionary.

My selections for year.

2. Armchair voyages: A book taking place somewhere you have always wanted to go, but have never been.
Henry Lawson’s Best Stories, Henry Lawson (Australia)
The National Poet of Australia.


12. Take note: A book where music features prominently, or about musicians.
Buried Alive, Myra Friedman
Bio of 1960s rock star Janice Joplin, acclaimed in its time. DONE


14. No Cliff Notes this time: A book that’s required reading in most high schools or universities.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
OK, it’s time to tackle this.


18. Out of Africa: A book taking place in Africa (including North Africa).
The Fate of Africa, Martin Meredith
History of Africa after colonization up to the 1990s.


22. Setting sail: A book taking place mostly or all on water.
Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller
SF novel taking place in a floating city in the North Sea. WORKING ON


25. Support the home team: A book by a fellow AWer.
TBA


26. Face your fears: A book that intimidates you, for any reason
The Tale of Puddin’head Wilson, Mark Twain
Been wanting to read this for a while but haven’t read Twain since Huckleberry Finn.



29. Three-color mythology: A graphic novel or comic book.
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Life in Iran from the perspective of a child who lived it. DONE


34. Out of this world: A book taking place in space or on another planet.
Brightness Falls from the Air, Joan D. Vinge
The adventures of Cat the telepath continue.


37. Literary literal alliteration: A book whose title or author’s name is an alliteration.
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
On my bucket list.


41. Succinct: A book with a one-word title.
Lolita, Vladimer Nabokov
My cousin read this and I feel I should too.


47. Just the facts, Ma’am: Non-fiction on any subject.
To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire, David Cowan
Account of the terrible fire in a Chicago Catholic school.


I've already finished Persepolis and Buried Alive, am working on Blackfish City.

mrsmig said:

Hooray! So glad we're back!


I never had the chance to post my list before we crashed, but in the interim I've been reading like a FIEND. So here it is, albeit with some titles already finished during the month and a half AW was down:

Rain: Four Walks in English Weather is a book I picked after Robert Macfarlane mentioned it in his book The Old Ways (which is also about walking in England and Europe). It's a slight volume and an easy, enjoyable read with lots of beautiful imagery.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a book I'd always intended to read, and while I figured out the "twist" within the first three chapters, I still found it intriguing, particularly the dialogue between the main character and her surviving family. It was another quick read: I finished it in a day.

Mudlarking was terrific - it's a new release from a woman who looks for historical artifacts in the Thames (she has a great Twitter feed, too). Her enthusiasm on the topic is infectious.

I'm currently reading Roger Deakin's Waterlog, which is about swimming in the UK. I guess I'm on a UK historical/natural history bender!


2. Armchair voyages – Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
6. Eyes to the skies – Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison DONE
9. Youthful exuberance – We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson DONE
17. Better known for – Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives by Terry Jones and Ed Ereira
22. Setting sail – Waterlog by Roger Deakin
25. Support the home team - Chasing Danger by Richard C. White
27. Old world charm – The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
37. Literary literal alliteration – Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem DONE
38. Loose Ends – Medieval Children by Nicholas Orme
40. Ripped from the headlines – Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
42. You might also like – Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
44. Epic Odyssey – The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Looking forward to your take on Essex Serpent. I thought it was great!

Chris P said:

For what it's worth, I've found Sinclair Lewis much more accessible than Fitzgerald. Main Street and Babbit are probably his two most famous.

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I do wish I'd been picker about my choice, but I didn't, and I'm on Chapter 5, so I'm going to stick it out.

ETA: I was discussing it with a friend on FB, when another friend popped up and got onto me for not liking the book. This is a lady who is a retired high school English lit teacher.

"I taught it in high school! It gives off a wonderful feel for the roaring twenties. Read the background. Fitzgerald's wife was just like Daisy."

I had to wonder who Gatsby was like.

I read the cliff notes and such. And I still don't like it.

Chris P said:

Lol. That teacher's words are from the "you like it because you are SUPPOSED to like it, you philistine" camp. I feel the way you do about The Sun Also Rises (or anything Hemingway, for that matter). I might love history, might love literary stories, and might respect someone who captures their time and place, that doesn't mean I have to like the book.

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That teacher is a queen bee. Lol. You know, one friend said "It get's better." About Chapter 7 or so. Not one other person liked it.

I've read worse than Great Gatsby, and it does encapsulate an era/class/mindset, but... yeah, didn't like anyone in it, didn't particularly care for it. And that mentality - "you have to like it because Classic, otherwise you're tasteless and stupid", wielded like a cudgel to pummel young minds with - has, IMHO, done more damage to literacy than can ever be calculated.

Gatsby was OK. When I read it as a teen, the social message and satire seemed overly heavy-handed. When I watched the most recent movie, my thought was, "Why didn't Gatsby just send Daisy a damn invitation to his party?"

Now I'm reading Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller. Not too impressed. The story sounded exciting: a post-apocalyptic floating city in the north sea with a Inuit-based culture, a woman that rides on a killer whale, a cast of characters who deal with the changes she brings. In execution, eehhhhh. The city doesn't have an Inuit culture at all, it's more like a Hong Kong on an oil rig, and the orca rider, and orcas in general, are not playing a big part in it. The title and description were misleading, and I'm sure calculated to pint to the recent documentary Blackfish. Superdense, futuristic cities with great contrasts of wealth and poverty are an SF trope and the writer wasn't bringing anything new to it. How cool would such a city have been with an actual Inuit-based culture? But he didn't go there. Instead there's the same old coffin hotels, messenger boy punks, implants that deliver email messages, yadda yadda yadda.

There's a lot of worldbuilding about this city plus the history that led to its founding, everything shoved in where it shouldn't have been to the extent it interferes with the plot... what little plot there is. Something about a AIDs like disease that transmits the memories of infectee to infectee. No one seems superconcerned about it. It's hard for me to care about and it's hard to care about the four POV characters as well. At this point I'm reading just for the pitfalls to avoid in my own writing.

I forgot, but there was one friend who "loved" Gatsby. I thought she was talking about the movie, but no. She'd never seen either version and ran off to find one on streaming. I've known her for fifty years and had no idea how weird she was. Lol.

Welp, I finished The Great Gatsby this morning, and I must say, the last three chapters were gripping.

Read the following:

14. No Cliff Notes this time: A book that’s required reading in most high schools or universities.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 02/21/20

38. Loose ends: A book you started last year and haven’t yet finished.
Robicheaux - James Lee Burke 1/15/20

40. Ripped from the headlines: A true crime book.
If You Tell - Gregg Olsen 2/2/20

Currently reading:

30. Happy days are here again: A book published between 1945 and 1960.
Alas Babylon - Pat Frank

Chris P said:

So did the final three chapters vindicate the book?

I read Alas Babylon in high school, back when we thought Reagan was going to get us all nuked. It's memorable; I recall some scenes vividly.

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Indeed. I built bombs for federal contracts during Reagan's administration. I knew what could happen, but I never shied away from it like some of my coworkers. It was either our enemies or us.

And I cleared Don Quixote this morning. By today's standards, it rambles something fierce, though some of it was likely intentional, as Cervantes meant to lampoon the popular, often absurd and overly lyrical tales of knights-errant of his time. He also had a habit of sticking his own words in the characters' mouths, and the second part got a trifle overbearing as he deliberately skewers an unauthorized "fanfic" sequel. The ending seems a bit anticlimactic and abrupt. Still, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza remain iconic archetypes.

Updated List (4/12):
1 - I spy: A book featuring spies or espionage. - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, by Jackson Ford. (Caveat: the back cover indicates some spywork/espionage, but I'm not positive the book actually involves them. May swap out.)
2 - Eyes to the skies: A book connected to weather, or with a weather-themed title. - Ill Wind, by Rachel Caine.
3 - Take note: A book where music features prominently, or about musicians. - Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffrey.
4 - By its cover - Camp Tiger, by Susan Choi. DONE - 1/4/20
5 - Setting sail: A book taking place mostly or all on water. - The Bone Ships, by RJ Parker.
6 - Getting started - The Rage of Dragons, by Evan Winter. DONE - 1/19/20
7 - Three-color mythology: A graphic novel or comic book. TBA
8 - Out of this world: A book taking place in space or on another planet. - Cards of Grief, by Jane Yolen.
9 - Tag team - Bob, by Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead. DONE - 1/28/20
10 - Succinct: A book with a one-word title. - Updraft, by Fran Wilde.
11 - You might also like. . .: A book recommended by someone real, or by a bot. Highfire, by Eoin Colfer.
12 - No hablo: Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Walter Starkie. DONE - 2/26/20

OMG! Fanfic was around in Cervantes' time. Makes sense... no copyrights then.

Blackfish City was getting way too obvious and silly, so I switched to To Sleep with the Angels. What a harrowing book. Details of the school fire are available on line so I'm getting a triple dose of the tragedy. After Buried Alive (the bio of Janis Joplin) this year's reading is turning me into a wreck.

I'm reading Alas Babylong by Pat Frank. Set near Miami, Fla, in the late 50s, a small town in Florida survives the H Bomb. The auther's voice draws you in from the Forward to end.

Cobalt Jade said:

OMG! Fanfic was around in Cervantes' time. Makes sense... no copyrights then.

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I believe fanfic - or the essential idea of people expanding on someone else's story - has been around since stories first became stories. It's what humans do when they consume a story, bring it to life in their own mind and their own way. (At one time, there was a theory that The Odyssey was a later expansion of The Iliad by another poet: fanfic, in essence. The way the gods were treated differently, the overall tone... dunno if that's still a viable theory or not.) Though the unauthorized Don Quixote sequel was probably not just a fan effort, but a blatant attempt to cash in - there was a ten-year gap between the two parts, so consumers got impatient and someone stepped into the void...

Well, the posting and editing function is acting up so I can't update the list, but I started my "I spy" selection, The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, by Jackson Ford. So far, it's exactly as advertised: a somewhat snarky girl with psychokinetic powers who got roped into working for a clandestine government group. She's supposed to be the only one of her kind in the world - until they find a body that could only have been killed by someone with gifts like hers... Fun voice and plenty of action so far.

Finished To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire, by David Cowan and John Kuenster. What a harrowing book! The event took place in December 1958 in the Our Lady of the Angels parochial school in Chicago. Ninety children and three nuns died in the fire, which was most likely started by a student's arson (though there was a cover-up by the fire department and Catholic church in charging the student.) The fire was made worse by an old building and delayed response in sending the fire alarm, and it led to revisions in the fire code for all schools across the US. The authors took a journalistic approach, which I liked... there was no bias and no agenda. The idea conveyed was that it was a tragedy all around with shared blame. The authors skewered a number of urban legends about the fire, such that the nuns ordered the children to pray at their desks instead of escaping and that was where they died, and that the fire department's ladders were too short. The most terrible aspect of the fire was that, in those times, everyone was expected to get it over it and move on with life (as everyone had with the losses of WWII) -- grief counseling did not exist, neither did acknowledgement of PTSD. Only in the late 1980s was the event uncovered and began to be dealt with.

As a child in a Catholic school in NJ this fire was recounted to us by one of the nuns. I remember then thinking of how horrible it was and eying the distance from the school's windows to the ground and wondering what it would feel like if I jumped and hit the ground.

I am still reading Blackfish City but, as I posted earlier, I am having problems with the book. This might be one I pick up and put down multiple times.



2. Armchair voyages: A book taking place somewhere you have always wanted to go, but have never been.
Henry Lawson’s Best Stories, Henry Lawson (Australia)
The National Poet of Australia.


12. Take note: A book where music features prominently, or about musicians.
Buried Alive, Myra Friedman
Bio of 1960s rock star Janice Joplin, acclaimed in its time. DONE


14. No Cliff Notes this time: A book that’s required reading in most high schools or universities.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
OK, it’s time to tackle this.


18. Out of Africa: A book taking place in Africa (including North Africa).
The Fate of Africa, Martin Meredith
History of Africa after colonization up to the 1990s.


22. Setting sail: A book taking place mostly or all on water.
Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller
SF novel taking place in a floating city in the North Sea. WORKING ON


25. Support the home team: A book by a fellow AWer.
TBA


26. Face your fears: A book that intimidates you, for any reason
The Tale of Puddin’head Wilson, Mark Twain
Been wanting to read this for a while but haven’t read Twain since Huckleberry Finn.



29. Three-color mythology: A graphic novel or comic book.
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Life in Iran from the perspective of a child who lived it. DONE


34. Out of this world: A book taking place in space or on another planet.
Brightness Falls from the Air, Joan D. Vinge
The adventures of Cat the telepath continue.


37. Literary literal alliteration: A book whose title or author’s name is an alliteration.
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
On my bucket list.


41. Succinct: A book with a one-word title.
Lolita, Vladimer Nabokov
My cousin read this and I feel I should too.


47. Just the facts, Ma’am: Non-fiction on any subject.
To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire, David Cowan and John Kuenster
Account of the terrible fire in a Chicago Catholic school. DONE

Alas Babylon is giving me the boohoos.

And finished my Spy/Espionage book. The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind (Jackson Ford), about a psychokinetic young woman roped into secret government work - who gets accused of murder when bodies start turning up, murdered by skills like hers, even though she's supposed to be the only one of her kind in the world - is a bold, fast-paced story of action and attitude and random stuff flying through the air. It's a thrill ride from start to finish... until right after the main plot resolves, as the book sets the hook for the next book in the series. Just one too many eye-roller cliches forced in there... Before that, though, it's a decent, fun, and intense story.

May take a challenge break for a book or two, then get back at it.

Updated List (5/12):
1 - I spy - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, by Jackson Ford. DONE 3/8/20
2 - Eyes to the skies: A book connected to weather, or with a weather-themed title. - Ill Wind, by Rachel Caine.
3 - Take note: A book where music features prominently, or about musicians. - Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffrey.
4 - By its cover - Camp Tiger, by Susan Choi. DONE - 1/4/20
5 - Setting sail: A book taking place mostly or all on water. - The Bone Ships, by RJ Parker.
6 - Getting started - The Rage of Dragons, by Evan Winter. DONE - 1/19/20
7 - Three-color mythology: A graphic novel or comic book. TBA
8 - Out of this world: A book taking place in space or on another planet. - Cards of Grief, by Jane Yolen.
9 - Tag team - Bob, by Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead. DONE - 1/28/20
10 - Succinct: A book with a one-word title. - Updraft, by Fran Wilde.
11 - You might also like. . .: A book recommended by someone real, or by a bot. Highfire, by Eoin Colfer.
12 - No hablo: Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Walter Starkie. DONE - 2/26/20