Challenge: 50 Books discussion

I had already decided to read (on average) 1 book per week in 2010. So my challenge is actually 52! I'm hoping to "get ahead" so that I can read a few longer/more difficult books this year. My list of completed books since 01/01/10 so far:

1) Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
2) The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
3) Year of Wonders
4) Moonflower Vine
5) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Next up? Possibly Maisie Dobbs or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

6) A Long Way Gone wins for the next book. It's a quick read; I started yesterday and will finish today. I am reading this one in advance of my Feb. book club meeting; it's a depressing account of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone's civil wars of the 1990's. Maybe the end will be more uplifting.

As a follow-up to this book, I'm going into my book collection of unread books, and selected Simon Schama's Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. Rough Crossings is about slaves in colonial America and Canada that were sent back to Sierra Leone in the late 1700's.

Book #6: Finished A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Started book #7: Rough Crossings.

How was Goat Song? I love me some cheese. ;)

Laurie wrote: "How was Goat Song? I love me some cheese. ;)"

oops, looks like I didn't reply correctly, here it is:
Goat Song was quite good. The author and his wife bought a farm in Vermont and then got dairy goats, so they are start from getting young goats, to breeding, to making cheese. Along the way, he digresses into the history of goats and goat herding, goats in myth, etc. I'm getting dairy goats this spring and trying my hand at goats and cheese myself, so I found this more fun to read then most books on dairy goats, but I suppose I really should read the other books so that I don't miss the more mundane subjects relevant to goats, such as sturdy fencing.

Is this cheating? I had started Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process at some point last year and put it down unfinished. I i just finished it, so that makes book #8 (and still working on book #7). Loved Alex & Me. Of course, now I want to get a parrot (from a rescue organization, of course)

Thanks for the info! I'll be adding it to my TBR list. Good luck on your goats.

Finished another book - finally! Book #9 The Rossetti Letter. It was predictable with some cliched situations, but that said, it was still fun to read. Still haven't finished book #7, maybe sometime soon I will be able to concentrate enough to read it?

Finally finished another book - #10 for the year. The Collaborator of Bethlehem. I am still distracted from moving, so i thought the first half of the book was really slow. that or I was really tired.

#11 done - Devil May Care. Fun, fast read. Must get moving along to make 50 for the year...

Do audio books count? I'm going to say that they do. #12 - Bitter Medicine

I say you are the final say on what counts and what doesn't since it's your journey...so definitley if you want audio books to count, they count. :-)

Hi Desi, thanks for that. While I realize being too busy is everyone's problem, I'm just going through a period where I'm doing a millioin things - and I am not watching any TV because we currently don't have it hooked up and I still can't find time to read!

Since I'm counting audio books, I just finished #13 - Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.

I really liked this book, however, the author's politics were apparent. While I personally agree with his politics and his outrage, I think the book would have been stronger on its own merits if he had left out some of the politics and let the reader come to the same conclusions. As far as Pat Tillman goes, what a surprise. Based Krakauer's portrayal, I liked him just as much as the author did, and kept hoping that somehow the outcome was going to be different. What a tragedy.

Just checked and we are into 2010 by 24 weeks. YIKES!

#14 - Great Tales from English History (Book 2): Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More

#15 - Blood of Victory. Not the best of Furst, too disjointed, characters not developed enough to easily keep straight.

#16 - Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War.

#17 - Kingdom of Shadows

#18 - The Return of the Dancing Master. Will be reading more by Menkell - maybe the Wallender books? Learned a lot more about Sweden than I ever knew (which is to say, not much), including WWII history.

#19 - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. In this book, the author, Paul Theroux, goes on essentially the same trip in 2007 that he did when writing The The Great Railway Bazaar, published in 1975. I may have to go back and read that one again.

Currently reading Stone's Fall: A Novel - love the author! and The Moonstone for book club.

#20 - Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously. Fun book! Great even for non-knitters.

#21 Up at the Villa. Very short book which helps get me closer to 50.. First book I have read by Somerset Maugham, I enjoyed his writing style and will be reading more.

#22.The Girl Who Played with Fire. Read in 2 days! Got seriously hooked on the story line.

#23 The End of the Affair. Liked the book, Greene's austere writing, the anguish of the central character. Got a bit bored with Sarah's dilemma regarding her belief in God, though. Clearly Greene was trying to work out his own faith through this book. Disappointed that Smythe in the end can't have stayed true to this "faith".

I was caught not by your books but by your thread title. And I agree - books are always better than TV. After all, with a great book YOU get to be the casting director. I've hit 57 books for this year, though we don't share any. I plan to read some Greene soon, so I look forward to seeing how you like it.

#24 Among the Mad. Finished. Looking forward to reading the latest Maisie Dobbs book.

#25 The Princess of Burundi - in progress. Will finish, but finding this one a bit slow for a thriller/mystery. The jacket cover does not describe the book at all!

Also, listening to #26 - In the Presence of the Enemy. I read the reviews on Goodreads - I think you have to be a fan of the series to be a fan of this book, because I'm really not getting why people would give this 4 or 5 stars. But, seeing as I am on disc 8 or 9, I will listen to the rest.

#27 done, Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens. Overall, I like the book because i am interested in English history; the book covered medieval queens from William the Conqueror's wife up to Henry VII. I found the editing to be rather careless in the book (obvious stuff, like a son being born after the mother is dead? I don't think so!), which was a bit distracting at times. In addition, at times the writing was confusing and hard to untangle what the author meant to convey. On the plus side, although heavy on dates and names, the author weaved in larger themes of the changing role of the queen, which was interesting.

#28 The World Without Us. Really interesting book! Thought provoking, depressing too just how much we humans have managed to mess things up.

#29.The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey Through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, From Field to Farm to Table. Found the book really interesting, but I own and milk goats and aspire to starting a dairy. The tasting notes could get pretty old for someone not really, really into cheese. I'll probably use this for reference for doing some cheese tasting.

#30 Forgotten Victory

#31 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

#32 The House at Riverton. Finished. I enjoyed the book, but not sure I found the ending believable. I would read the 2nd book by the author, some of the posts said that the 2nd book is better.

#33 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Am I the only person who hadn't already this book? It was phenomenal - now I get why everyone seemed to love this book!

#34 - The Hemingses of Monticello. I found this book really interesting. However, I agree with the criticisms I read from other reviews on Goodreads as follows:
(1) Because little primary or even secondary source information exists on what Jefferson, his white relatives, or Sally Hemings and her relatives thought, said, or felt, especially relative to the Jefferson/Hemings relationship, the author hypothesizes a lot. This is okay up to a point, but turning hypotheses into facts, as the other does at points, is not okay.

(2) The author makes points regarding slavery - often the same ones - repeatedly. There's no debate that I know of regarding the horrible, degrading aspects of the institution of slavery; therefore, making a case against slavery repeatedly in the book was both unnecessary and repetitive.

These two points aside, the book was fascinating.

Looking forward to some reading time over Thanksgiving, but thinking that I'm not going to hit 50 this year, but I will see how far I can get!
Looks like I'll be repeating the challenge in 2011 :-)

#35 - Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

#36 - Hay Fever

#37 - Stettin Station. Got this book in England, since it's not yet available here, and read in one day on flight back from London.

#38 - Potsdam Station, 4th in a series, really enjoyed the whole series!

#39 - Pride and Prejudice (audio version). I've read this a number of times, but not since 2005. Since then, I've watched the 2005 movie adaptation several times and had forgotten all of detail left out of the movie. While I really like Matthew McFadyen (sp?) and even liked him as Mr. Darcy (a controversial opinion among Austen-philes I'm sure!), upon reflection I don't think the 2005 movie was very true to the book. Also, Keira Knightley's modern manners in the movie are irritating. I will be rewatching the 1995-Colin Firth version again soon.

The other thing that struck me this time around was the concept time regarding house visitors. Austen writes that the 10-day visit of the newly married Lydia & Wickham was "very short". How times have changed!

#40 The One from the Other

#41 The Mapping of Love and Death

The two books you mentioned in your October 1, 2010 post sounded intrigueing, so I marked them both TBR, as well as a couple more cheese books that I found in links from Petra X's review related to cheese. The other book, about how the earth would fare without humans reminded me of a short clip by National Geographic which may be saying the same things but in a shorter span of time, the clip is only 4 minutes long.

Hey Carol, I have the cheese book remind me and I'll bring it with me next time I'm in town and the other should be at the library - I'm assuming I got it at the B;burg library as an audio book, but I bet they would have it on the shelves too.

What town are you going to be in? I live in California, the Long Beach area....waaay south of you. I'm curious, though, what is B;burg?

Oh my gosh! I thought you were a Carol from my animal rescue group. B'burg is Blacksburg Virginia. I would be happy to be somewhere warm though about now like Long Beach!