The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

What were your favorite books of the Winter 2014 Challenge?

So many I loved!
House of Echoes, Pioneer Girl, The Martian, Among Others, and All the Rage were all 5 stars for me.

My 5 star books from Winter...

I had a couple re-reads here, but only counting the ones that were new to me. And luckily...there were a lot of them!

Best Books

The Martian Funny
Shutter Island Great Twist
The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity Well written

Most surprising : Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet - I was dreading the dancer task. It turned out to be a great read.

I had a great season for 5 star books. The best part was that the majority of them were total surprises. I went into a couple of these not even expecting to enjoy them, just "needing" them for challenge spots, and ended up loving them.

My favorites were

Some of my 5 star favorites were:



And I had a ton of 4 stars. I completely enjoyed the challenge.

My best finds were Lock In by John Scalzi and The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson, both of which got a rare 5* out of me.

The first thing you have to know about me, is that I am parsimonious in handing out the 5 star ratings. So I was absolutely amazed with the number I ended up with.

Among Others was my favourite book of the season. It's a love letter to books, a book where the "orphan" coming of age is a girl rather than a boy, a book set after the big battle between good and evil is over, leaving the heroine broken in so many ways. I dance a little inside remembering this book exists.

“There are some awful things in the world, it’s true, but there are also some great books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“What I want is much more complicated. I want somebody I can talk to about books, who would be my friend, and why couldn’t we have sex as well if we wanted to? (And used contraception.)”
― Jo Walton, Among Others


The Drowning Girl is written by trans author Caitlín R. Kiernan a schizophrenic woman called Imp who is caught in a ghost story. Or maybe a siren story. Or a werewolf? This is Unreliable Narrator taken to the max, and I absolutely loved it.

“Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl

The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology goes through some of the most greatly admired Japanese haiku poets. This is a very small book, but one to be read slowly. Some of the haikus are given in more than one translation, and there are copious notes.

I sleep... I wake...
How wide
The bed with none beside
--Kaga no Chiyo (1703-1775)


The Summer Book is a lovely set of vignettes set on a Finnish island where six year old Sophia, her father, and her grandmother spend the summer. It made me miss my grandmother so much. As one of the reviewers put it "This is the quietest great book I have ever read".

“It's funny about me,' Sophia said. 'I always feel like such a nice girl whenever there's a storm.'
"'You do?' Grandmother said. 'Well, maybe ...' Nice, she thought. No. I'm certainly not nice. The best you could say of me is that I'm interested.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book


(And there are 5 more besides these! Will have to include them in another post.)

Loved Lonesome Dove--I'd never read a Western before and it was just beautiful. Fantastic characters, brilliant plot, lush description--likely to become one of my all-time favourite books.

Also really enjoyed Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, which I was a bit surprised by (Wodehouse is one of my favourite authors, so for anyone to try and pay him homage is a big task to my mind). It was a wonderful read.

Best for me:


Great season, thanks mods! And sorry for all of my mistakes... I will try to do better this time around! :)

I struggled to finish this challenge. almost 80 books,phew!! I must say I was a bit cunning in trying to read books that were just a little more than a 100 pages!(I must add that I had a tough time finding books that adhered to the rules, the task criteria and the page count)
However I discovered some gems along the way:

and were my top favorites of the season.

My two favorites were One Plus One and Larger Than Life

My favorites
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Cat and Mouse, The Light Between Oceans, and The Rosie Project

I had another wonderful season for five star books :P 20 out of the 52 books I read were 5 stars (YAY!!) One of my biggest surprises was a 3 star (for me) read.

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins - This was my surprise 3 star read. I dislike poetry (this was 500+ pages), sad topics and religious stuff. So many dislikes but I've finished all the 5 point tasks ever since I joined SRC and for some reason I picked this up as my poetry book. Ellen Hopkins is truly talented! I fully expected to give this book 1 star or not even finish.

The Walking Dead, Vol. 01: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman - In January/February I started watching Walking Dead and am now caught up (UGHhh I've been spoiled, waiting to find out what happens next is horrible). To ease the waiting I started reading the graphic novels. I don't love them as much as the show but I'm still anxiously turning pages needing to know what happens.

Kindling the Moon by Jenn Bennett - I love the urban fantasy genre and I'm annoyed I didn't start this series sooner. So good.

Angels' Dance by Nalini Singh
Sixth Grave on the Edge by Darynda Jones
Alpha & Omega by Patricia Briggs (reread)
A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare
Hard to Come By by Laura Kaye
Obligation by Aurora Rose Reynolds
Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage by Jennifer Ashley (reread)
Night of Cake & Puppets by Laini Taylor
Summoning the Night by Jenn Bennett
Tangled by Emma Chase (reread)
Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Rapture in Death by J.D. Robb (reread)
SEAL of Honor by Tonya Burrows
Pride and Pleasure by Sylvia Day
Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh
This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Immortal in Death by J.D. Robb (reread)

Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "My favorites
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Cat and Mouse, The Light Between Oceans, and The Rosie Project"

The Rosie Project was a really cute read :) I need to try more male authored romance-y books.


Morgan wrote: "My 5 star books from Winter...

I had a couple re-reads here, but only counting the ones that were new to me. And luckily...there were a lot of them!..."

Red Rising was so good! I don't think I've ever experienced a more emotion inducing read. I felt sick from adrenaline and anxiety the whole time :P

Kait wrote: "I had another wonderful season for five star books :P 20 out of the 52 books I read were 5 stars (YAY!!) One of my biggest surprises was a 3 star (for me) read.

Rumble by [author:E..."

Ellen Hopkins really is talented! Her books are intense, which is impressive considering how few words she uses. Keep reading her!

Jennifer W wrote: "Ellen Hopkins really is talented! Her books are intense, which is impressive considering how few words she uses. Keep reading her!"

I've got Burned on my list to read this spring. Sounds just as intense as Rumble if not more so!

My Five-Star Books from Winter 2015:

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkein
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf
Passing Nella Larsen
The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service Andrew Meier
Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth Chris Hadfield
Laika Nick Abadzis
The Complete Persepolis Marjane Satrapi
Late and Posthumous Poems, 1968-1974: Bilingual Edition Pablo Neruda

These are my Top 5: (I had a few more with five stars but these are the best of the best)

1 - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt.
2 - In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan.
3 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
4 - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.
5 - Psiquiatras, psicólogos y otros enfermos by Rodrigo Muñoz Avia.

This was my first seasonal challenge and I enjoyed it so much!

I reread some favorites. But the best new books for me, all 5 stars, were:
Kim, Morning Glory, The Rope Dancer, Newbery winner Moon Over Manifest, and Christian novels Burning Sky and Be Still My Soul.

Here be Dragons made me a huge fan of the author, and the audio version of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, narrated by Richard Armitage, was so good I'm listening to it again.

It was also my first challenge and was great fun. :)

I had five 5 stars from the Winter 2014 challenge. I had fun reading books that I normally wouldn't have read.

My top favorite book of the 2014 Winter challenge was:



Beautifully written and unique storyline.