2025 Reading Challenge discussion
ARCHIVE 2015
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Emily's 80 books in 2015
date
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My Books So Far (87 out of 80):January
Dear Mr. Knightley completed 1/5
Happy completed 1/6
Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944 completed 1/11
Searching for God Knows What completed 1/14
A Woman Of Independent Means completed 1/15
Clouds of Witness completed 1/17
How to Bake a Man completed 1/20
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho completed 1/25
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What?: 101 Amazing Stories of Magical Moments, Miracles and... Mischief completed 1/28
February
Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters completed 2/5
Civil War Hospital Sketches completed 2/10
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library completed 2/11
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East completed 2/13
Behind the Scenes at the Museum completed 2/18
Quidditch Through the Ages completed 2/19
84, Charing Cross Road completed 2/26
A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries completed 2/27
March
Journals, 1952-2000 completed 3/2
The Perks of Being a Wallflower completed 3/3
The Beauty and the Sorrow completed 3/11
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street completed 3/12
A Star for Mrs. Blake completed 3/17
April
Under the Wide and Starry Sky completed 4/2
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work completed 4/8
Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society completed 4/9
Girl in Hyacinth Blue completed 4/12
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies completed 4/15
How Right You Are, Jeeves completed 4/16
White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson completed 4/20
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience completed 4/22
The Trip to Echo Spring completed 4/26
The Rosie Effect completed 4/29
The Humans completed 4/30
May
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War completed 5/7
Dear Committee Members completed 5/7
Rosie Dunne completed 5/10
Americans in Paris: a Literary Anthology completed 5/20
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? completed 5/22
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood completed 5/27
The Elegance of the Hedgehog completed 5/29
June
Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal and Survival in Hitler's Germany completed 6/1
The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet completed 6/3
How the Irish Saved Civilization completed 6/4
Mad About the Boy completed 6/5
We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History completed 6/6
Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology completed 6/9
Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War completed 6/18
TransAtlantic completed 6/24
Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale completed 6/25
March completed 6/26
July
Testament of Friendship completed 7/16
The Book Thief completed 7/26
Outliers: The Story of Success completed 7/30
August
Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana completed 8/3
The Book of Madness and Cures completed 8/6
The Complete Father Brown completed 8/7
Where'd You Go, Bernadette completed 8/8
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail completed 8/17
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry completed 8/21
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life completed 8/27
American Transcendentalism: A History completed 8/29
Sunshine on Scotland Street completed 8/31
September
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are completed 9/3
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination completed 9/3
The Wright Brothers completed 9/7
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle completed 9/12
The Bugles Are Silent completed 9/19
Bob Schieffer's America completed 9/26
Autumn Light: Illuminations of Age completed 9/30
October
The Secret History of Wonder Woman completed 10/3
The Soldier's Wife completed 10/13
Station Eleven completed 10/20
Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith completed 10/26
November
Emma: A Modern Retelling completed 11/3
Slaughterhouse-Five completed 11/6
Life on Purpose Devotional for Women: Practical Faith and Profound Insight for Every Day completed 11/8
A Study in Sherlock: Stories inspired by the Holmes canon completed 11/10
Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters completed 11/14
Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals completed 11/19
Olive Kitteridge completed 11/23
December
Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women completed 12/2
Five Red Herrings completed 12/6
Building a Life Out of Words completed 12/13
A Study in Scarlet completed 12/17
The Sign of Four completed 12/20
Shelter Cats completed 12/27
More Than a Carpenter completed 12/31
I just stole these stats from Cheri, who got them from Cassandra. I've updated them to reflect my list.2015 Reading Statistics
Genre/Type
Biography/Memoir: 9
Classics: 0
Fantasy: 2
Graphic Novel: 1
Historical Fiction: 10
General Fiction: 18
Play: 0
Literary Fiction: 9
Mystery: 4
History: 11
Social Action: 2
Food & Nutrition: 0
Other Nonfiction: 21
Science Fiction: 0
Length
Short (<250 pages): 25
Medium (250-500 pages): 54
Long (501-800 pages): 8
Very Long (>800 pages): 0
Author Gender
Female: 42
Male: 39
Multiple Authors: 6
New to Me or Repeat Author?
New to Me: 65
Repeat: 22
Series or Standalone Book?
Series: 18
Stand alone: 69
Format
eBook: 12
Audiobook: 0
Owned Book: 23
Borrowed Book: 7
Library: 45
Book 60: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling LifeI love Eleanor Roosevelt, but this fell flat for me. I just struggled the whole way through.
Finished 3 books since I last posted (2 were very short):Gifts of Imperfection, The: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are completed 9/3
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination completed 9/3
The Wright Brothers completed 9/7
Read 2 books, which both go for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Challenge only:Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle completed 9/12
The Bugles Are Silent completed 9/19
Finished books 68 and 69!Bob Schieffer's America completed 9/26 (Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge only)
Autumn Light: Illuminations of Age completed 9/30 (Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ AND the I Spy challenge! Woot!)
Emily wrote: "I just joined this group, so I'm hoping I am doing this right. I have read 57 books so far this year. I'm also doing the Popsugar challenge, but I'm guessing I don't post about that here? I just lo..."Hi Emily, I'm sorry that we didn't catch you earlier. I'm Kadijah Michelle, a member of the Welcome Committee, and you can keep track of your PopSugar reading challenge here. There is a whole thread for it in our Let's Chat section.
Oh I know! I meant like here on this specific thread. I have a post on the Popsugar thread in this group and I have a post about the popsugar challenge in my member's corner.
Book #70: The Secret History of Wonder Woman finished today! Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge only. Eeek only 10 left!
Book #73: Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge. Only fair.
Finished book #74 for my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge: Emma: A Modern Retelling. I love AMS, but this definitely is not his best book. I prefer the 44 Scotland Street series for sure.
Book #75: Slaughterhouse-Five for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge, the Popsugar challenge, and the Modern Mrs. Darcy challenge.
Book #76: Life on Purpose Devotional for Women: Practical Faith and Profound Insight for Every Day for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge.I've been reading a devotion a day from this book since August so I'm pleased to get it done!
#77: A Study in Sherlock: Stories inspired by the Holmes canon for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge.Only fair--would recommend just rereading the originals if you're in the mood for some Holmes.
Book #78: Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters for the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge.This is technically 2 books in one volume, but since I'm totally going to pass my goal of 80 books, I'm just counting it as one book.
Y'all, these books are so fantastic. It took me 3 weeks to read the volume because there's so much to savor that it's hard to read a lot of it at once. Definitely going to reread both. This was my only 5-star read of 2015 so far. To me a 5-star is like a book that changed my life and this definitely fits the bill. Will be thinking about it for a long time.
Also, it made me want to read more of Lewis's work. Previously, the only work of his I'd read was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I think I'll reread it and work on the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia too in 2016.
I finished Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals this morning before work. I have read 79 books wooo! One more to go!This book was short, yet it took a long time for me to get through -- I felt like there was so much information in this book that it was hard to process. I'll have to reread it someday.
WOOT finished my challenge with Olive Kitteridge! It met the Popsugar and the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ challenge. Yea! It was an excellent book!
Congratulations on finishing your challenge! What are some of your favorite books from this year?
Cassandra wrote: "Congratulations on finishing your challenge! What are some of your favorite books from this year?"I'd say, barring any spectacular reads in December, my top 5 books that I read in 2015 are:
Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters--it was my 5-star book of the year.
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
A Woman Of Independent Means
Outliers: The Story of Success
Station Eleven
I haven't heard of A Woman Of Independent Means before but it looks really interesting. I added it to my to-read list.
Cassandra wrote: "I haven't heard of A Woman Of Independent Means before but it looks really interesting. I added it to my to-read list."It's an epistolary novel, which is my favorite genre. It's the life story through letters of a woman living in Dallas, Texas in the 1960s-1980s. It's also an incredibly quick read--I read the whole thing over 2 days.
Finished #81: Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of WomenOnly fair--I was hoping for a bit more of an academic book on the subject of women in the Bible.
I'm glad to get it done though--it's been on my TBR for nearly 2 years!
Finished #82: Five Red HerringsThis book is a Peter Wimsey mystery, but it was not that great. I gave it only 2 stars, which is rare for me. I just felt it was too long and there were too many suspects. I wasn't engaged in the story.
Finished #83: Building a Life Out of WordsThis is a free ebook from Amazon that a blog I love recommended a LONG time ago. I've been reading a bunch of ebooks because I had run out of physical books in Tennessee, but yesterday I went to the Half Price Books Outlet, so now I have 5 physical books to read!! Yea!!
I also got all 9 of the Sherlock Holmes books on my Kindle for free, so I'll be working on those as well.
I read A Study in Scarlet finally!! I love BBC Sherlock and the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies, so I figured I need to read the source material. I especially need to read them since I got them all on my Kindle for free! That makes 84 books.
What did you think of A Study in Scarlet? I read it without knowing much about Sherlock except the first Robert Downey Jr. movie (and what's generally part of popular culture).
Cassandra wrote: "What did you think of A Study in Scarlet? I read it without knowing much about Sherlock except the first Robert Downey Jr. movie (and what's generally part of popular culture)."I liked it a lot. The Mormon stuff threw me off a bit--I think I had heard there was some Mormon stuff in it, but I didn't realize it was such a huge part of the book. Also, catching the murderer was a lot less dramatic than BBC Sherlock made it out to be.
And in reading Watson's descriptions of Holmes in the 2nd/3rd chapter, I have to say I think media gets Sherlock Holmes wrong. Like Watson basically says that, though Holmes is a bit eccentric, he's for the most part a decent roommate. Yet Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch both portray him as a terrible roommate that only a crazy person would live with.
That's very true! I noticed that the Sherlock Holmes print stories are much more low-key, but they also tell more of the thought process along the way, which I like. I like the Robert Downey Jr. movie version, but I also like the Arthur Conan Doyle book version.I do have to space my Sherlock Holmes stories out, though, or else they start to feel pretty similar.
Cassandra wrote: "That's very true! I noticed that the Sherlock Holmes print stories are much more low-key, but they also tell more of the thought process along the way, which I like. I like the Robert Downey Jr. mo..."I agree. I finished The Sign of Four today, but I think I'll be taking a break from SH for a few months. I am going to read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for the Around the Year in 52 Books challenge, but I have all of 2016 to do it.
Book #85 was The Sign of Four, the second Sherlock Holmes book. I was on an airplane today, so plowed through a huge chunk of it to get it done. I had seen the Jeremy Brett version of this story and it is very close to the book (Unlike BBC Sherlock's A Study in Pink vs. A Study in Scarlet), so I knew the ending. But still a good, fast-paced read.
#86: I received Shelter Cats as a Christmas present and got through it quickly since it's a coffee table book full of kitties. : pIt was a sweet treat to look through.
Final book of 2015 is More Than a Carpenter! I read 87 books this year, 7 more than my goal. Yea!I'll see y'all in my 2016 challenge page! (Which is HERE if you want to check it out.)
Well done Emily! 87 is an impressive number.
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