Quickly Now the Old Year Passes

Here we are, the last day of 2013! I participated in a reading challenge for the first time ever this year, and I've been meaning to post about it, well, all year. Better late than never?







My friend Indiana Jane challenged us to get a list of book suggestions from friends, and to then pick 5-10 of those books to read in 2013. Here was my list:

-Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith*
-Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin
-Redemption by Karen Kingsbury*
-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote*
-The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev
-I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith*
-Borderliners by Peter Hoeg*
-The Underland Chronicles (The "Gregor Books" - 5 book series) by Suzanne Collins

I'm not sure if I technically met the challenge, but I had so much fun with it that I wanted to post my results anyway.


I completed five books (indicated with *).

I read at least half of two. "Animals Make Us Human" I got bored with and only read about half. "The Blue Mountain" I had through ILL and had to return before I could finish. I was only a few chapters away from the end.

The books I was perhaps most excited about reading, the Underland Chronicles, I never even started. They aren't available at my library and I have wanted to purchase them, but I'm so cheap I couldn't convince myself to spend so much money on myself. They are still high on my "To Read" list!

I really had fun with this challenge. I'm not sure I would have read any of these books without the recommendation of friends. I've been trying to pick a favorite, but I can't. "In Cold Blood" perhaps has stayed with me more than the other books, if for no other reason than the haunting pictures of the murder's eyes on the title page. "Child 44" I enjoyed so much that I also read the rest of the trilogy. "Redemption" is a Christian-fiction novel, not something that I usually read, but I appreciated the message - a couple fighting to save their broken marriage. "Boarderliners" was very different, and very hard to put down. Perhaps sometime in 2014 I will succeed in writing full reviews.

I may attempt this challenge again next year, it was a lot of fun. I am also challenging myself to read through my own bookshelves. It is embarrassing how many books I have sitting on my shelves that I have never read! I started working on this a few months ago. I started with the A's and have made it to the C's. I'm not reading every book, just ones that I haven't read before (or haven't read for many years and want to read again).