I finished the reading for my fifth annual While I Was Reading Challenge Monday morning—and thought I was running late, but apparently, I finished 2 days before I did in 2021—how’s that for progress?
Ramona Mead has once again done a good job in making me think about books I’d never think of before—and in ways I’d never thought of (I know I’ve never cared about an author’s astronomical sign before). Next year’s looks like a lot of fun, too. Am looking forward to it. But before we get to that, let’s look at this year.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories
- A book with a question in the title: Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember by Lauren Graham
- A book of non-violent true crime: Blessed Are the Bank Robbers: The True Adventures of an Evangelical Outlaw by Chas Smith
- A book with a cover you don’t like: Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker
- A historical fiction novel not set in Europe: A Snake in the Raspberry Patch by Joanne Jackson
- A book with a character’s name in the title: With Grimm Resolve by Jefferey H. Haskell
- A book featuring paranormal activity (fiction or non): (that feels like half of what I read) Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron
- A book with a number in the title: Citizen K-9 by David Rosenfelt
- A food related memoir: Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson with Veronica Chambers
- A book that’s won an award: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (Winner of The Booker Prize, 2011)
- A middle grade novel: How to Save a Superhero by Ruth Freeman
- A book by an author who shares your zodiac sign: Radio Radio by Ian Shane
- A book that’s a combination of genres: Bloodlines by Peter Hartog
allyson johnson
Still waiting for your review of “Sense of an Ending.” I thought I had posted about it on Amazon, but it seems I didn’t – must have felt it was too difficult to grasp, though it made a profound impression on me.
The key for me was the way the protagonist thought he understood a key event in his life, and then at the end discovers he had looked at the whole thing from the wrong assumptions. I recently had a similar experience, where I thought x was the problem and y was just a sideshow, and then discovered that x was the sideshow and y was a much deeper problem, It makes the whole world seem suddeny a bit askew.
HCNewton
Sure, we’ve seen this as a plot device time and time again–but something this fundamental to a character’s understanding of his life and everything that came after that point (and some of what happened just before it?). That was great.