Reading Challenge

Have you ever participated in a reading challenge? I have seen many and I usually have a certain goal about what kind of books to read or how many. But the other day while going through some lovely blogs I came across a "chunky book challenge". And this time, I signed up.

There are several levels from "The Chubby Chunkster" over "The Plump Primer" and "Do These Books Make my Butt Look Big?" to "Mor-book-ly Obese". Even though I liked the third title best, I signed up for the fourth level which means I want to read eight or more Chunksters (books over 450 pages) of which three must be 750 pages or more. Since I read 20 chunky ones of which 6 had more than 750 pages last year, and since I love large books, I am sure this will be an easy task.

If you are interested in the challenge, check out this link:

They also give you suggestions by page number, in case you can't find any chunksters yourself. ;-)

So far, I have already read:
Homer "Odyssey" (GR: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC - 450 pages

Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong. A Novel of Love and War" - 1993 - 503 pages
Hislop, Victoria "The Return" - 2008 - 592 pages
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (RUS: Преступление и наказание) - 1866 - 801 pages 
Tremain, Rose "Music & Silence" - 1999 - 464 pages
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of Time" (E: El mapa del tiempo) - 2008 - 768 pages
Mitchell, Margaret "Gone with the Wind" - 1936 - 1010 pages
Boccaccio, Giovanni "The Decameron" (OT: Il Decameron, cognominato Prencipe Galeotto) - 1350 - 1072 pages
** Shriver, Lionel "We need to talk about Kevin" - 2003 - 496 pages
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (E: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/1615 - 1488 pages Pamuk, Orhan "The Museum of Innocence" (TR: Masumiyet Müzesi) - 2008 – 752 pages
Navarre, Marguerite de "Heptameron" (FR: Heptaméron) - 1578 - 544 pages
Ghosh, Amitav  "Sea of Poppies" (Ibis Trilogy #1) - 2008 - 544 pages
Mahfouz, Naguib "Children of the Gebelawi/Children of our Alley" (Arab: اولاد حارتنا) - 464 - 1959 pages
Ghosh, Amitav "River of Smoke" (Ibis Trilogy #2) - 2011 - 592 pages
Marschner, Rosemarie "Das Mädchen am Klavier" (GE) [The Girl on the Piano] - 2013 - 512 pages
Grossman, David "To the End of the Land" (Hebr: אשה בורחת מבשורה/Isha Nimletet Mi'Bshora) - 2008 - 735 pages
Bánk, Zsuzsa "Die hellen Tage" (GE) [The Light Days] - 2011 - 544 pages
***
Oates, Joyce Carol "A Widow's Story. A Memoir" - 2011 - 450 pages
Rutherfurd, Edward "Paris" - 2013 - 1360 pages  Sendker, Jan-Philipp "Whispering Shadows" (GE: Das Flüstern der Schatten) - 2007 - 464 pages
Cabré, Jaume "I confess" (Cat: Jo Confesso) - 2011 - 847 pages
Hislop, Victoria "The Thread" - 2011 - 480 pages
Gillham, David R. "City of Women" - 2012  - 617 pages
Moyes, Jojo "Me Before You" - 2012 - 631 pages 
Clarke, Susanna "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" - 2004 - 1,024 pages  
Basti, Abel & van Helsing, Jan "Hitler in Argentina" (GE: Hitler überlebte in Argentinien/[Hitler survived in Argentina] - 2011 - 576 pages
Collins, Wilkie "Armadale" - 1866 - 752 pages
Johnson, Adam "The Orphan Master's Son" - 592 pages
****
Gabaldon, Diana "Outlander" (UK: Cross Stich) - 1991 - 864 pages
Bernières, Louis de "Birds without Wings" - 2004 - 640 pages
Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (GE: Der Zauberberg) - 1120 pages
Allende, Isabel "Maya's Notebook" (E: El Cuaderno de Maya) - 447 pages
Keneally, Thomas "Schindler's Ark" - 492 pages
Modick, Klaus "Die Schatten der Ideen" (GE) [The Shadows of the Ideas] - 2008 - 464 pages
Sterne, Laurence "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - 735 pages
Garfield, Simon "On the Map. Why the World Looks the Way it Does" - 468 pages 
May, Karl "Through the Desert" (Durch die Wüste aka Durch Wüste und Harem) (GE) [Through the desert] - 1892 - 573 pages
George, Margaret "Elizabeth I" - 2011 - 688 pages
Austen, Jane "Pride & Prejudice" - 1813 - 512 pages

** We have just reached the end of three months, and I have already fulfulled my goal, eight chunky books with more than 450 pages and four of them have to have more than 750 pages. I will carry on listing my chunky books, though. 31.03.13
*** End of June: another ten chunky ones including three super chunky ones which makes eighteen chunky books, seven of them super chunky. 30.06.13
****  End of September, elven more chunky books including 4 super chunky books. Now I've read 29 chunky books, 11 of which are super chunky. 30.09.13
***** End of December, added another nine chunky books, 2 of them super chunky.
My final result is now 38 chunky books, 13 of them super chunky. I think I can easily say I have reached my "goal" of 8 and 3. ;-) 31.12.13 

(pages in bold - more than 750 pages = super chunky)

Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451"

Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953

I always joke that this story really should be called Celsius 232 because in most of the modern world we measure temperatures in Celsius. But it was written in the States, so I guess we all have to convert. At least this title.

I'm quite a fan of dystopian novels, I always think the stories portrayed in these books are more likely to happen than those in the utopian ones. And you can usually see when the book was written by the topic the author chooses to evaluate. "1984" was written shortly after World War II, and the totalitarian idea was still very fresh. "Brave New World" was written shortly before World War II and you can see the ideas of the Nazis taking form in this novel.

"Fahrenheit 451" was written in the fifties, in the United States, at the height of the McCarthy era, when the fear of the communists during the Cold War was leading to almost witch-huntlike attacks on citizens.

So, it is not surprizing, that the society in this novel wants to banish books, wants to banish knowledge, so they can influence people the way they would like them to. I think, as in all dystopian novels, the future looks partly like the author described it. Especially if we look at what Ray Bradbury said at the end of his novel in "Afterword": "There remains only to mention a prediction that my Fire Chief, Beatty, made in 1953, halfway through my book. It had to do with books being burned without matches or fire. Because you don't have to burn books, do you, if the world starts to fill up with non-readers, non-learners, non-knowers?" Something to think about:

I don't think I have to mention that I really liked the book.

From the back cover:

"The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic novel of a post-literate future, ‘Fahrenheit 451’ stands alongside Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock."

I have read "The Martian Chronicles" in the meantime and have enjoyed that at least just as much as this one.

Ray Bradbury received a special Pulitzer Prize citation in 2007 for "his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy."

 

We discussed this book in our international online book club in December 2020. 

This is one of the comments from a member:
"I enjoyed reading Fahrenheit 451. How comforting to read an affirmation of observations and positive values in defiance of the dystopian world of the novel and also in contrast to the dystopia of certain lived realities in North America today. This book is why I read. Yet I read it long ago when I was young and was grossed out by the overt sexism. Ha!"

Hannah, Kristin "Angel Falls"

Hannah, Kristin "Angel Falls" - 2000

The story of a woman who is in a coma and her husband who tries to carry on with the life of the family. Only through contacting her first husband can he bring her back to consciousness but is afraid he will lose her through this forever.

A love story with some complications, your usual chick lit. Although, it is beautifully told, a story about devotion and fidelity. Not a bad read.

I later read "Winter Garden" with my book club.

From the back cover:

"Mikaela Campbell lies in a coma after a freak riding accident. Although doctors have told her devoted husband not to expect a recovery, Liam hopes his love will accomplish what they cannot. Between caring for their two grieving children, Liam sits by Mikaela's bedside day after day, holding her hand, telling her the stories of their life together. 

Then he discovers Mikaela's secret past: her first husband was world-famous movie star Julian True. And when Julian's name is the only one Mikaela will respond to, Liam must face the painful reality that Julian may be the only person who can bring Mikaela back to life. But at what cost? Does Liam love his wife enough to risk losing her to a man no woman can resist? 

The decision he makes strikes deep at the heart of his family, transforming each of them. For when Mikaela finally wakes up, she is a different woman, changed in a way no-one could have foreseen."

Xu, Ruiyan "The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai"

Xu, Ruiyan "The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai" - 2010

Quite a different book about China, it's actually a story that could take place anywhere in the world. After an accident, a man loses part of his brain and can only speak the language he grew up with but does not reign that of his wife and child. A problem that is rare but can happen. A doctor is called from another country to help him find his way back into his ordinary life.

An interesting tale where we can see how much we take for granted in our everyday life. It is also a great account of how we have to find our way in an unknown world, both the patient as well as the doctor have to face several problems that come along with the inability to speak the language around you.

I also liked a quote on page 213:
"Clarissa sighs at the table, looking up at Rosalyn. 'Everyone always has to go. Everyone always leaves this place. People pass through here, and you get attached to them, but then they just leave you behind. You'd think we'd be used to it by now.'"

As an expatriate myself, I understand exactly what she is talking about.

From the back cover:

"When an explosion reverberates through the Swan Hotel in Shanghai, it is not just shards of glass and rubble that come crashing down. Li Jing and Zhou Meiling find their once-happy marriage rocked to its foundations. For Li Jing, his head pierced by a shard of falling glass, awakens from brain surgery only able to utter the faltering phrases of the English he learnt as a child - a language that Meiling and their young song Pang Pang cannot speak. 

When an American neurologist arrives, tasked with teaching Li Jing to speak fluently again, she is as disorientated as her patient in this bewitching, bewildering city. As doctor and patient grow closer, feelings neither of them anticipated begin to take hold. Feelings that Meiling, who must fight to keep both her husband's business and her family afloat, does not need a translator to understand."

Book Quotes of the Week

"What you read when you don't have to determines what you will be when you can't help it." Oscar Wilde

"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading." B.F. Skinner

"Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself." Paul Celan

"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" Marina Tsvetaeva

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991

Find more quotes here.

Wilde, Oscar "The Nightingale and the Rose

Wilde, Oscar "The Nightingale and the Rose. Short Stories" - 1891

I'm not a big fan of short stories. I'm also not a big fan of reading plays. But - I am a big fan of Oscar Wilde, so I couldn't resist reading this.

"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."

That's how this little story begins. A Nightingale hears this and helps the student to find the rose. The story does not end how we might like but short stories seldom do. They have a message they want to send in just a few pages. And Oscar Wilde, being the perfect writer he was, manages this perfectly.

I read this in a collection of short stories by Oscar Wilde and the other ones were also quite good.

From the back cover:

"An allegorical fable of love, sacrifice and selfishness. As with all of Wilde's short stories it embodies strong moral values and is told with an effervescence akin to that of the 1001 nights.

It is the tale of a lovestruck student who must provide his lover with a red rose in order to win her heart. A nightingale overhearing his lament from a solitary oak tree is filled with sorrow and admiration all at once, and decides to help the poor young man.

She journeys through the night seeking the perfect red rose and finally comes across a rambling rose bush but alas, the bush has no roses to offer her. However, there is a way to MAKE a red rose, but with grave consequences."

Other works by Oscar Wilde here.

Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong"

Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong. A Novel of Love and War" - 1993

The novel starts with a quote: Rabindranath Tagore says in "Gitanjali: "When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable."

The author has successfully tried to describe something unsurpassable, something so astonishingly unimaginable that I am asking myself two questions: Why I haven't read this any earlier? and Why isn't this book better known? It should be an obligatory read for every teenager who thinks about entering the army and every politician who even remotely considers starting a war.

Now, today wars are fought differently. Or so they want to make us believe. But if you read "Birdsong", you will see that the tragedies of losing friends and loved ones in a war cannot be changed, it will remain the same, no matter how they get killed.

There are few war books that describe the feelings of the soldiers during their fights as good as this one. An absolute MUST.

From the back cover:

"Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself."