1% Well-Read Challenge

3M is hosting the 1% Well-Read challenege for another year.

The Rules (taken from her post):

The editors of the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die threw a kink into our challenge when they updated the books with new titles last year. So, I’ve got three options for you on this next challenge:

Read 10 titles from the original list from March 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009.
Read 10 titles from the new list from March 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009.
Read 13 titles from the combined list (of almost 1300 titles) from March 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010. In other words, “What were they thinking dropping titles from Dostoevsky and Jane Austen?”

I was already challenging myself to read more books from this list and have managaged a few already this year so I'm going to plunge in for option 3. I'm not 100% sure what I will read but here is my pool:

1. Watchmen, Alan Moore
2. Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates
3. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
4. Great Apes, Will Self
5. Jack Maggs, Peter Carey
6. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker
7. Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
8. The Reader, Schlink
9. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
10.Jazz, Toni Morrison
11. Wild Swan, Chang
12. Senor Vivo and the Coco Lord,de Bernieres
13. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera
14. Arrow of God, Achebe
15. V, Pynchon
16. Out of Africa, Dinsen
17. All Quiet on the Western Front
18. The Count of Monte Cristo,Dumas
19. Animals People, Sinha (New List)
20. Small Island, Levy (New List)
21. The Reluctant Fundamentalist,Hamid (New List)
22. Suite Francaise,Nemirovsky

Library Loot 2

I've been to the library twice this week so this is the second instalment. All three books that I picked up were reserved for me so I was very good and didn't look around - I must be up to the maximum allowed books by now.
The Red Tree, Shaun Tan I saw this book blogged about a couple of weeks ago and love picture books so I had to order it in. If I had plenty of spare money I would love to have shelves with this type of book on, books that you can just pick up and marvel at for a short time.
City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, Adam LeBor - Eva reviewed this earlier this week. I know very little about this political situation so I'm hoping this will enlighten me.
Baghdad Diaries, Nuha Al- Radi (for In Their Shoes Challenge)I have a copy of Baghdad Blog so I'm going to read these in tandam and see how/if the male and female views of the political situation differ.

Sunday Salon: Today and a quick review

Today should be busy and I really should be getting on with lots of work at the moment, but its Sunday and I seem to be in a go-slow mood today.
I woke up and read my first Manga - Priests. I wasn't overly impressed but I'm going to try Manga Shakespeare next, hopefully I'll enjoy that more. Oh and I built a table - well a flat pack table!
I'm just about to pop off to the library to pick up my reservations then I should be filling out coursework forms for 50 pupils - this should be really stimulating, for each one I have to hand write in the title of their 4 or 5 essays that they are entering - I'm sure I could be doing something more worthwhile!


A Quick Review: Castle Waiting, Linda Medley
This is a big-ole graphic novel of 450 pages but a fairly quick and easy read. The fairy tale story is set is an old secluded castle where people retreat to in times of need. Through the novel we are told the stories of several of the lovable characters who come to live in the castle - like the bearded nuns, and a single mother.
The book has its funny moments and was an enjoyable way to pass a few hours. I thought it was an okay graphic novel, check out Eva's review she loved it.
Challenges:
The Graphic Novel Challenge


In case you missed anything I posted this week:
Orbis Terrarum - my picks for this years challenge
My thoughts on the excellent Fugitive Pieces
Library Loot
A Short Story Review: The Camel's Back
Two books others loved but I didn't, have you read them? What did you think?

Orbis Terrarum 2009

I loved this challenge last year and finished really early, so this year I'm adding a twist to the books I will choose. Each book has to have a link to the book that went before it. I have about 4 possible lists worked out, but they keep changing and I know I'm bad at following lists so I'm going to just add the books as I go along.
I have my first 4 worked out then I'll go from there:
The Hive, Camilo Jose Cela (Spain) - a Noble winning author as was Gabriella Garcia Marquez, I will tackle his Love in a Time of Cholera (based on Columbia). Whilst we are in South America I'm going to check out Cristina Garcia's novel The Aguero Sisters (Cuba) which links nicely to Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (India). Where I go from there I'm not sure as yet but it must be somewhere which lurks in mount tbr.

P.S I'll probably have an extras pile for those books I read on the side which come from different countries.

My Thoughts: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

This is one of those books that I have been meaning to read for so long, and I finally got their and finished it off in just two sittings! Not bad for a 300 page book.

The novel starts in a series of images, a young boy listening to his sister playing the piano, eating a family meal, and playing in his hideout. Then suddently the reader is presented with a startling image, he goes to play in his hideout when suddenly he hears a crash inside the house, his mothers bowl of buttons spill across the floor. Then silence. His parents and sister are removed from him forver by the Nazi soldiers.
While hiding from the guards in the marshy muds of Poland Jakob is discovered by a Greek geologist, who takes him home and stays his friend and companion for life. Jakobs life takes his through Greece and Canada and back again, yet no matter how far he travels from the terrors of his childhood he can never forget or lay his sister's ghost to rest.
The language in this book is stunning, with a real poetic quality. I started the book marking all the notable passages, but after sticking in 10 post its in the first 20 odd pages I thought it was best to just read and enjoy. I'll certainly be searching out more of Anne Michaels books in the future.

Challenges:
999 (1001)
Book Awards 2
War Through the Generations: WWII
Orange Prize Project
1001 BTRBYD

Library Loot

After winning 20 odd books last week with more arriving everyday I was planning on being strict with myself with this weeks trip to the library. I was planning on borrowing just the 3 books that I had reserved - and that's what I did in a way. I only borrowed 3 books but got tempted by the library sale shelf and 5, for the grand total of £2.35!

I borrowed:
The Girl Who Played with Fire, Larsson (For the Pub challenge)
Castle Waiting, Linda Medley (a book I saw on Eva's lists when I was looking for inspiration for the Graphic Novel Challenge)
Sky Burial, Xinran (An impulse reservation that I made after seeing someones review - can't remember who!)

I then brought:
Anything But Ordinary: The Nine Lives of Cecile, Cecile Dorward (In their shoes)
Tales of Innocence and Experience, Eva Figes (In their shoes)
Elements, A.S Byatt (I love her stuff)
Please Mr Einstein, Carriere
Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, Sarah Broom

Want to see what others have borrowed, check out Eva's post here

Short Story: The Camel's Back by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is the third story I have read by F. Scott Fitzgerald and I'm really starting o love his style, this is another story from the collection Tales of the Jazz Age. The story starts in this assured manner:

The glazed eye of the tired reader resting for a second on the above title will presume it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything, to do with cups or lips or pennies or brooms. This story Is the exception. It has to do with a material, visible and large-as-life camel's back.

Mr. Perry Parkhurst is one of the key players in his small society, always fashionable and good looking he is a young man with a happy future ahead of him. In love with Betty Medill, a girl who's looks belong in the movies he decides that their private engagement needs to be brought into the open and the marriage declared. Yet when he arrives on her doorstep with this proposal they bicker and he is left alone and single.
In a fit of lonliness Perry decides to party at the biggest social event in the area, the Townsend's circus themed fancy-dress party. As he is looking for a costume at the last minute he ends up attending the party dressed as a camel. His ex, Betty, falls in love with this absurd costume, giving dances and flirting with this unknown man. From his hidden vantage point Perry gets to see Betty as all the other men in town see her, as a flirt and he becomes the centre of her attention.
As the evening ends the two people with the best costumes are awarded, both Betty and Perry win and a 'fake' marriage ceremony is issued by the local minister, yet this wedding turns out to be all to real and the camels true identity is discovered. To see how Betty reacts grab a copy of the text.

I'm reading this collection of shortstories through DailyLit a free book service which delivers stories to your email address. They have a wide range of books, both non-fiction and fiction avaliable.