Wednesday 22 January 2014

2013 Reading Challenges - Wrap-Up

I took part in three online challenges,
Chunky Books Reading Challenge:
My final result is 38 chunky books, 13 of them super chunky. I think I can easily say I have reached my "goal" of 8 and 3. ;-)
The "Piggybank" Challenge:
I read 85 books so far which resulted in €170 for spend for something nice. Officially, this challenge goes from 1 March 2013 to 1 March 2014 but it's easier to wrap this up now with the rest of the challenges.
European Reading Challenge:
The goal was to read as many books about Europe or by European writers as possible. That was quite an easy one for a European reader.
21 books from the UK (of which 19 from England, 1 from Northern Ireland, 1 from Wales)
17 from Germany
6 from France and Spain/Catalonia
4 from Turkey
3 from Italy and Russia
2 from the Netherlands and Ukraine
1 each from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland
I hope to read some books from those countries that I haven't read this year, or before.

Then there are the other challenges that go for longer than a year, well, I do them for longer than a year.
A Century of Books

The goal is to read a book from every year of the 20th centry.
I only added three books but "every little helps.
1933 - Pearl S. Buck "The Mother"
1951 - Jack Kerouac "On the Road"
1954 - William Golding "Lord of the Flies"
Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century

Again, I added three books to this list.
#17 Carson McCullers "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - 1940
#41 William Golding "Lord of the Flies" - 1945
#55 Jack Kerouac "On the Road" - 1951
Nobel Prize Winners and Their Books
I was invited to join this group "Read the Nobels" and have thoroughly enjoyed adding some of my blogs about the books by some Nobel Prize winners. I love reading the Nobel Prize Winners' work and found a lot of interesting reviews on this page.

These were the 14 books I reviewd on this page in 2013
Andrić, Ivo "The Bridge on the Drina" (Serbo-Croat: На Дрини Ћуприја or Na Drini Ćuprija) - 1945
Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930
Buck, Pearl S. "Peony" - 1948
Buck, Pearl S. "The Exile" - 1936
García Márquez, Gabriel "Love in the Time of Cholera" (E: El amor en los tiempos del cólera) - 1985
Hamsun, Knut "Pan" (Pan) - 1894
Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The African" 2008
Mo, Yan "Red Sorghum Clan" (Chin: 红高粱家族  Hóng gāoliang jiāzú) - 1987
Morrison, Toni "Paradise" - 1998
Müller, Herta "The Appointment" (GE: Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet) - 1997
Alice Munro "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" - 2001
Naipaul, V.S. "A House for Mr. Biswas" - 1961
Pamuk, Orhan "Istanbul - Memories of a City" (TR: Istanbul - Hatiralar ve Sehir) - 2003
Steinbeck, John "Of Mice and Men" - 1937

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.
Best European Literature
Homer "Odyssey" (GR: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (E: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/161
Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (GE: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Rus: Преступление и наказание) - 1866
Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953
Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
Oscar Winning Books
Aleichem, Sholem (שלום עליכם) "Tevye the Dairyman" (Tevye der milkhiker, טבֿיה דער מילכיקער, Yiddish and טוביה החולב,  Hebrew) - 1894-1916
Keneally, Thomas "Schindler's Ark" - 1982
Homer "Odyssey" (GR: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
The 100 Greatest Fiction Books as Chosen by The Guardian 
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (E: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/161
Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
Sterne, Laurence "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - 1759-67
Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
Kerouac, Jack "On the Road" - 1951
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (German: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels)
Alexijewitsch, Swetlana "Voices from Chernobyl" (RUS: Чернобыльская молитва/Černobylskaja molitva)
Grossman, David "To the End of the Land" (Hebr: אשה בורחת מבשורה/Isha Nimletet Mi'Bshora) - 2008
Pamuk, Orhan "The Museum of Innocence" (TR: Masumiyet Müzesi) - 2008
Pamuk, Orhan "The Silent House" (TR: Sessiz Ev) - 1983
The Top 10 Most Difficult Books
Still only one book. Should try to read another one this year.

Oprah’s Book Club
Ansay, A. Manette "Vinegar Hill" - 1995
McCullers, Carson "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - 1940

Top 10 Most Read Books in the World
I have read seven of these and don't think I will read any of the other three, well, maybe the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung but certainly not "The Twilight Saga" from Stephenie Meyer and probably not "Think and Grow Rich" by Napolean Hill.
100 Books by the BBC
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (RUS: Преступление и наказание) - 1866
Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong. A Novel of Love and War" - 1993
William Golding "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
Jack Kerouac "On the Road" - 1951

Total: 62 books, 34 movies

Not really a challenge but a wonderful list of valuable books to read. I am happy to have read six of them and only one did not really receive my approval.
Smiley, Jane "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" – 2005
Sturluson, Snorri "Egil's Saga" (Icel: Egils saga Skallagrímssonar) - 1240
Boccaccio, Giovanni "The Decameron" (IT: Il Decameron, cognominato Prencipe Galeotto) - 1350
Navarre, Marguerite de "Heptameron" (F: Heptaméron) - 1578
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (E: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/161
Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
Sterne, Laurence "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - 1759-67

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