Why Participate in Reading Challenges?

 A Reader's Respite didn't participate in any reading challenges for 2011.  We shoved them aside, foolishly believing that they hampered our reading and limited our book horizons.  Boy, were we ever wrong.  Truth to be told, we missed our reading challenges.  Challenges kept us on track and gave us a sense of accomplishment with our reading progress.  They also foster a sense of community and although many folks might see reading as a solitary experience, those of us in the book blogging world know differently.

Sharing our love of books via reviews, musings, recommendations and warnings is an essential part of the reading experience.  How many bookish friends have you made in the online world?  A Reader's Respite has made countless book-minded friends that we might never have met were it not for the bibliophile online community.  And reading challenges are a big part of that community.

So this year, 2012, we are returning to our love of reading challenges.  Oh, you can be assured that there will be a few that we will not finish and will berate ourselves over at the end of the year.  But we'll have a fun time trying and who knows?  Maybe we'll meet some new bookish friends.  (And perhaps we'll get through some of the 800+ unread books sitting on our shelves....ugh).

Here are the challenges we're signing up for:

Sponsored by Workaday Reads, we're being a little wimpy on this one, committing to 25 e-books in 2012.  Considering there are over 100+ books on our Kindle, we have more than enough to choose from.  Now if we could just remember what in the hell made us download most of them to begin with....

The death of Anne McCaffrey in 2011 seems like a darned good reason to re-read her classic books in this challenge sponsored by West Virginia Red Reads.  A Reader's Respite had no idea how many books are in or related to her original Pern novels.  We're committing to reading the original trilogy plus the Harper Hall trilogy.  (Oh crap, we've got a book moratorium going on in this house....what if we don't already have them all?  A trip to the library may be in order.....)

Hosted by Literary Escapism, we're pretty confident that of the 800+ unread books in this house, at least 25 of them were written by an author new to A Reader's Respite.  So it is with a happy heart that we're signing up for the New Authors Challenge.

We're pretty sure that The Hopeful Librarian had A Reader's Respite in mind when they created the Unread Book Challenge of  2012.  Or could it be that there are other pathetic, obsessive bibliophiles out there who have a nasty habit of buying more books than they can read?  Could it be that we're not alone in the universe?

Ah, The Game of Thrones Challenge.  Since The Lit Bitch is hosting it and we just happen to have the entire set sitting here on our shelves (still in shrink wrap, we might add), this must be kismet.

No set of reading challenges would be complete without War Through the Generations.  Consistently one of the very best challenges around, this year the focus is on World War I.  We're going to "wade" this year and read 4-10 books with a World War I theme.

Traditionally, A Reader's Respite has loved participating in the Chunkster Challenge since so many of our books meet the 450+ page criteria.  This year, though, we've decided to forgo the Chunkster because the rules state that Kindle books don't count (what the hell, people?  Isn't that the reason we got a Kindle to begin with?  So we wouldn't have to lug around a 10lb book anymore?).  So instead we're heading over to The Book Garden and signing up for the Tea & Books Reading Challenge where only books over 700 pages count!  Since Kindle books are acceptable (thankyouverymuch) we're committing to the Earl Grey Aficionado Level which means we have to find six of these mammoth books here on our shelves to read.

If you're a glutton for punishment and can't resist a good reading challenge, head on over to A Novel Challenge and find one that has your name on it.

Okay, that's it.  Now which ones did you sign up for?

R.I.P.

A Reader's Respite doesn't often post about reading challenges.  But if there's one yearly challenge that sets the standard by which all other challenges are measured, it would be the annual R.I.P. Challenge hosted by Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings fame.

If you've never participated, this is the time to join the annual fun.  This year, Carl has added some fun options including a short story challenge and a scary movie challenge for those of you who like your fright on the big screen.

What will A Reader's Respite be reading?

Breaking Prejudices....

A Reader's Respite has been busy breaking prejudices.  Why on earth would we want to do something like that?  For the Take Another Chance Challenge (sponsored by Find Your Next Book Here), of course.  Readers were challenged to think up a reading prejudice that we hold -- genres we eschew, authors we traditionally dislike, etc -- and then dive in.

What was our prejudice?  A prejudice against stupid people really didn't seem to apply here, so we had to go another direction.  A Reader's Respite fully admits to having unexplainable issues with the Fantasy genre of fiction.  Even fantasy books we want to love, for example, let's say the unimpeachable Tolkien trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, turned into one big snooze-fest.  We never even made it past the first book of The Chronicles of Narnia.  In fact, our only claim to fantasy novels might be Rowling's Harry Potter series, but given the targeted age group of those books, we might be stretching things here.

It might be all the unpronounceable character and place names:

Je'har-eeza, Queen of the Baa'shods on the planet of Zon'rumba fights for truth and justice for all of her oppressed race, all the while trying to keep her boobs inside of her outfit.

Really, if we can't keep the character's names straight, how in the hell are we supposed to follow the plot?  Guess our prejudice is pretty evident here, isn't it?

So in order to meet this reading challenge, we decided to pick up a fantasy novel that came highly, highly recommended by one of our bloggy friends over at Passages to the Past.  In fact, not only did Amy recommend this book, she BOUGHT it for A Reader's Respite last Christmas.  As you can see, we were flat out of excuses.

This was a huge moment for us.  At best, we'd break a prejudice.  At worst, we'd have 800-plus pages of sleep inducement.

To our immense surprise and delight, A Reader's Respite loved this book.  Truly.  The Name of the Wind is the first of a proposed trilogy  written by Patrick Rothfuss.  His characters are lovingly complex, the plot has just the right amount of twists, and his fantasy world is actually believable.  We want to live in his world.

First of all, the character names weren't exactly mind-numbing.  Our main character is a mysterious inn keeper named Kvothe who, we might add, is one very sexy man.  Can a character be sexy in your mind's eye even when we aren't really given a physical description of him and the author doesn't necessarily intend this?  We think so.

He is dark, brooding, mysterious, and clearly is not just an inn keeper in the world of.....of.....okay, we're not really sure what planet he's on.  But it doesn't really matter.  It's a lot like Earth without all of our 21st century gadetry.  We're thinking more like the European dark ages, but who knows for sure.  Anyway,  Kvothe is a man with a past, which is expertly revealed in flashbacks when Chronicler, an infamous lore-writer-downer, appears at the inn and prys all Kvothe's deep, dark secrets from him.

Okay, so we're being overly simplistic here.  It's actually much more sophisticated than that.  The point is, A Reader's Respite was left wondering what else we've been missing out on.  How many other fabulous fantasy novels are just floating around out there, undiscovered by yours truly?  We're a little dismayed by the thought.

So our question for you this week is:

1.  What reading prejudices do you hold?
2.  What other fantasy novels should A Reader's Respite be reading?

As if we need an excuse....

If you're anything like us, you probably have a series of books that you've been working your way through, but honestly, who has the time? It's hard to fit in time to read a great series, so we sneak in a book here and a book there.

But Michelle over at Galleysmith, God bless her cotton socks, is giving us all the best holiday gift ever: Seriespalooza, an entire week to devote to reading nothing but a series! Any series....an old favorite, one new to you, or in our case, one we've been pecking our way through for the past year.

Us? We're going to catch up on Sookie and finish off The Southern Vampire Series!



Go Team!

In Preparation...

For those of you who keep track of such things, Fall of 2009 is the scheduled release date for author Diana Gabaldon's newest novel, Echo in the Bone, the latest installment of her fabulously popular Outlander Series.





In preparation of this newest release, A Reader's Respite and Passages to the Past are joining forces to bring you the Outlander Reading Challenge: 2009. We will attempt to read - or listen to - each of the previous six books in the series (all bazillion pages of them) prior to publication of Echo in the Bone.

A side view of A Breath of Snow and Ashes. Just kidding. Sort of.

Anyone is welcome to join us. But a word of warning: this challenge is not for the faint of heart eyesight. It takes a brave and dedicated bibliophile to complete this challenge.

And that is why there will be prizes involved. Cool prizes.

You know you read a lot of books....

...so as long as you're going to be reading books anyway, why not sign up for J. Kaye's 2009 100+ Reading Challenge? C'mon, you don't even have to pick out the books ahead of time and it's a great way to keep a log of the books you read throughout the year. Don't be a coward --- sign up!