Tag: Reading Challenges

An Amazing Start on My 2017 Reading Challenges

Ok so I do believe that I would be hard pressed to find two months in the last 15 years where I have read more books than January and February of 2017. In January I read  books and so far in February I have read three more! Bringing 2017’s total of books read to 11! In order to achieve my 2017 Reading Challenge goal of 60 books, I need to average 5 books per month.  I am already above that average in the first week of February!! Goodreads says that right now I am 5 books ahead of schedule! Woo Hoo!

Now the one bad thing about this is that I have been reading more than writing. Consequently, I am  seven books behind in writing reviews. The table below lists that books that I have read so far this year. (The links are to my review of the book)

I am going to group the books according to the Reading Challenge that they fit into. So the future posts will look like this:

2017 Mystery/Thriller Reading Challenge

 Series that are new to me

Jack Parlabane – Chris Brookmyre – Black Widow
Thomas Kell – Charles Cumming – A Foreign Country
Livia Lone – Barry Eisler – Livia Lone

Series that I am Behind on/ Series that I am Current with

Puzzle Lady – Parnell Hall  – A Puzzle in a Pear Tree – 
Thomas De Quncey -David Morrell –  Ruler of the Night –

2017 Literature Reading Challenge/ Nonfiction Reading Challenge

General Fiction

All that Man is – David Szalay

Nonfiction

How to Run the World – Parag Khanna

So now I’m off to pick out my next few books and start to read!!! Be back later with the first of the above posts!!

This Man Reads 2017 Reading Challenges…..

Two  years ago I signed up for several Reading Challenges on various websites. The result was that the challenges helped me remain more focused with my reading. So last year I created my own Reading Challenges. They were meant to keep me focused and reading a variety of books. So here is my 2017 version.

I probably should have created these reading challenges back  in December, but I was too busy trying to get past 51 books to do it!   But you know that they always say,”Better Late than Never”. So here are my 2017 Reading Challenges. My overall reading challenge is to read 60 books. I didn’t reach that goal in 2016, but I did read more books in 2016 that 2015 so maybe I can reach the goal this year!!

I have divided my 2017 Reading Challenge into four sub-reading challenges. The first one is the 2017 Literature Reading Challenge. This challenge is meant  to take me out of my reading comfort zone. My comfort zone is composed of mysteries and thrillers. I have set the goal for this Challenge pretty low only 6 books. The books are to be divided as follows.

2017 Literature Reading Challenge

• Two general fiction books, i.e, books where no one is killed or things are blown up!
• Two classics that I was supposed to have read in College or High School.
• Two books that have one an award, like the Pulitzer Prize, the Faulkner award or Man Booker award. Total 6 books

2017 Mystery/Thriller Reading Challenge

The second is my Mystery/Thriller reading challenge. Instead of just saying I am going to read 36 mysteries or thrillers, I have divided this challenge up a  little too….

• Six books from a series that I have always wanted to read, but have somehow always put off reading.  An example is the Enzo Files series from Peter May. Another example are the Charlie Parker books by John Connolly.
• Six books from series  that  I need to catch up on for example: Alex Berenson’s John Wells series, Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole series or Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series!!
•  Twelve books from authors and series that I currently read, i.e Joe Pickett from C.J. Box,
• Twelve  books from mystery authors that are new to me! One of the ways that I plan to discover new authors is through Mystery Scene magazine.  Andrew and Meaghan gave me a subscription for Christmas and just browsing through the first issue. I found several new authors! Thanks!!

2017 Science Fiction and Nonfiction Reading Challenges

These challenges are both pretty straight forward….

•  Six Science Fiction books  I plan to divide these books any way I want. The books can be written by either familiar or new to me authors/
• Twelve  nonfiction books. Basically, they can be anything that catches my fancy!!

Oh, I’ have also created a Kindle/Bookshelf /TBR Pile Challenge!  I want 40 of the books to come from books that are either on my bookshelves or on my Kindle! I spent a lot of time collecting books on my Kindle and then never getting around to reading them! Anyone else have that problem!!

Here is my spreadsheet table that I use to keep track of how I’m doing on my various challenges!

In my next post I’ll outline the books that I plan to read in January of 2017!! Wish Me Luck!!

Related articles

• The 20 best books of the year, according to readers

Where DID October Go!

Ok I give up where did October go? Seems like the NFL season just began and now we’re at Week 8. The World Series is at Game 5 and both the NBA and NHL have begun their seasons. And yesterday the two colleges that I attended. As the Universities of Florida and Georgia renewed their heated rivalry.  I really don’t care which team wins most of the time. But it’s always nice when the team that needs it more gets the victory. Since the Gators stayed atop the SEC East with the victory, I was glad they won.

October Reads….

Now back to my October reads and particularly the places that I visited this month thanks to the work of some great authors. Here are the five books that I read this month.

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Where My Fiction Reads Took Me In October!

The three novels that I read took me to some familiar places with some old friends and to a new spot in Sweden with a new fried. First up was a visit with Cork O’Connor and his family in Aurora, Minnesota. As usual the visit was exciting.  First in Manitou Canyon by William Kent Krueger, I visited the North Boundary Waters of Minnesota and eventually Manitou Canyon in Canada.

In Borkmann’s Point by Hakan Nesser an author that is new to me I visited the coastal town of Kaalbringen,, Sweden.  I met Chief Inspector Van Veeteren in Kallbringen, where Veeteren was sent to help solve the brutal murders of  several seemingly unrelated victims. It was a great read and I will write more about the book soon.

The last novel that I read took me to The Body Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee. In Without Mercy by Jefferson Bass, forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton  is called to help solve the tortuous murder of a young man chained to a tree. In the book Brockton also faces a sadistic killer from his past. I will write more about the book soon.

Non-Fiction Reads….

In October, I also read two non-fiction books.Connectography – Mapping the Future of  Global Civilization by Parag Khanna. was the first book. In the book Khanna opened my eyes and mind to the new Connectivity found around the world. Ad how as Americans we are falling behind the world , rather than leading! The other non-fiction book I read was Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich. In Saving Democracy Reich explains the problems we are facing as a result of the rigging of the system by the wealthy against the common man. Reich also provides several methods that may right our Capitalistic ship!

Reading Challenges Update…..

Where do I stand on my various Reading Challenges after reading five books in October. The following table shows the results.

As you can see, I suck on most of my challenges! I am only doing well on two challenges. The first on is my  Rgrandad Mysteries challenge, where I have read fourteen books more that my challenge total. The other one is my 2016 Nonfiction Reading Challenge. In that challenge I have read 9 out of 10 books.

Bottom Line:

t I will most likely not make my overall goal of 60 books for the year. However I only need to read ten books to read more books than I did in 2015 (51). Hmm, looks like I need to read three more general fiction books, I will meet that challenge. Then if I read three award-winning books I meet that challenge and one more non-fiction to achieve that challenge. By reading those books I will have met four out of eight of my challenges and have read 49 books. That means I only would need to read three more books to beat last years total! I’ll be back later to make a list of proposed reads for November!!

A Quick Update of Where I Stand on My 2016 Reading Challenges

So far this month I have finished three books. They are; Life with Pi, The Winter Fortress and most recently Dark Run. This brings my total number of books read in 2016 to 35 books. My lofty goal is 60 books. So right now I am way behind the pace I need (five books per month) to read to reach that goal. However, I am not that far off the pace needed to match last years total of 51 books.

Where I Stand  on My 2016 Reading Challenges

Yesterday I sat down and reviewed where I stood on my various Reading Challenges. Here’s a tabulation of where I stand right now!

Hmm, it looks like I am kicking  butt with those mysteries, but everything else is lagging behiind! Well, I guess I’m not doing too badly in the General Fiction, award-winners and nonfiction challenges, But it looks like I have my work cut out for me in several of the other categories!!

Books I am Currently Reading and Plan on Reading

Here’s a table of the next group of books I have started along with the books I am planning to read.

Maybe I should replace these two mysteries with a classic or woman/s mystery book. I could possibly even replace one with another science fiction book. I am kinda in Sci-fi mode. So maybe it won’t be hard to venture into another world. Maybe .even a sci-fi classic – something from H.G.  Wells??

Does anybody have a suggestions? Read any good books lately???

Renaissance Granddad’s 2016 Reading Challenges!

Well last year was the first time that I set a goals for both the overall number of books that I was going to read in the year and the types of books. I signed up for three reading challenges: Cloak and Dagger, Historical Fiction, and Nonfiction and created one of my own Science Fiction. While I kept track of the number of books I had read for each challenges I never posted at the websites where I had signed up for the challenges. I guess I should have but I was one of the few men who signed up for the challenges, so I felt kinda alone and funny posting! Also I’m lazy and a loner so it was easier just to post about the books I was reading here!

Anyway this year I have created my own reading challenges. There’s no way I want to make a commitment to read a large number of any one time of book i.e. I am not going to read thirty or forty classic books because that will cut down on the number of mystery books that I have time to read!! So I decided to create several reading challenges.

As I started to create my reading challenges I knew I wanted to read more literature and general fiction and maybe less murder and mayhem books! I also wanted to read more classic literature. Earlier in the month I came across this post at List Challenges  300 Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once. When I checked the books that I had read on this list I discovered that I have only read 30 of the listed books. So I feel that I need tp read books from this list. Therefore, I created my 2016 Literature Reading Challenge. The subcategories that I created are: General Fiction, Classics, NY Times Bestseller list and Award-winners. These categories allow me to read some contemporary fiction, some books that are on the current bestseller lists and some that have won awards like the Pen-Faulkner Award or the Pulitzer Prize. I also want to read some of those classics that I have avoided all these years!! I want to read 6 books from each of the 4 subcategories for a total of 24 books in the reading challenge!!

My second challenge is my mystery/thriller challenge. The two subcategories in this challenge are RGranddad’s Mysteries or the mysteries and thrillers that are books in the series that I read or books from my favorite authors. The second subcategory is Women Mystery Book authors. I have many books by female authors like Linda Fairstein, Sara Paretsky and Dana Stabenow on my TBR shelves that I haven’t gotten around to reading. I thought this would be a good way to make myself read these books. I know I will enjoy them!! I plan to read 10 books from each subcategory or 20 books total!

My final two challenges are a nonfiction challenge and a science fiction challenge. I would like to read ten nonfiction books. After reading The Politics of Deception my current read is In Retrospect by Robert McNamara both deal with history of the 1960s, I have enjoyed both books so I think that many of the nonfiction books I plan to read will deal with the history or politics from 1960 to the present! Of course there will also be some self-help, anti-aging and happiness books mixed in among those reads! Finally, I really did enjoy those Science Fiction books I read in 2015 so I would like to continue to read a few books from that genre! So the 16 books in these challenges added to the books from the other two challenges bring the total for the 2016 Renaissance Granddad Reading Challenge to 60 books!! Whoa!!

Here’s the breakdown! Wish Me Luck!! Bye – I’m off the read now!!

P.S. I love to hear about anyone else’s proposed 2016 reading challenges!!

With 51 Books Read RGranddad Reaches His Overall Goal!

With the end of 2015 two days away, last night I finished the 51st book I’ve read for the year The Politics of Deception JFK’s Secret Decisions on Vietnam, Civil Rights and Cuba, thereby reaching the lofty goal of 5I books I set at the beginning of the year! Overall, it is the most books that I have read in a year since 2009!

Now while I did meet the overall goal for books read, I did fall short on two reading challenges. I only read nine of eleven nonfiction books and nine of twelve books for the science fiction reading challenge!! But considering last year I only read seven nonfiction books, and only one science fiction book. So I did read more books from those two genres!!

Now the other reading challenge I had was the TBR reading challenge, I fell short on that challenge also reading only 16 books from my TBR pile.The goal was to read 25 books from the pile! But I do think that in 2014, I  didn’t read any books from my TBR pile. Well on second thought I may have read one or two books that I had lying around!

Overall I thought it was a pretty awesome reading year. At the end of the year I will create a page with all of the books! Book 51’s review will be coming shortly and maybe I can find a short book to read so that I can hit 52!!

2015 Reading Challenge Stats

The question is now, what will the four challenges be for 2016 – I’m thinking that the core three Cloak & Dagger, Nonfiction and Science Fiction may stay the same, with maybe an alteration to make the challenge more specific. Maybe the Science Fiction will be Nebula or Hugo award winners, while the Nonfiction may be biographies! The Cloak & Dagger Challenge may be female authors!

The fourth category  I think is going to be a Classics Reading Challenge. You know all those books that I was supposed to read in English class, but somehow managed to avoid!! Anyway, I have a few more days to think about them. For now I can enjoy the fact that I had a really fine reading year!!

Reading Challenge October Update

So now I’ve caught up on my running,(well, actually if you consider today’s run I’m not caught up with runs right now!), it’s time to catch up on my reading. Over the last couple of weeks I have finished two books! The first is the Pen/Faulkner winning Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, and then I finished Gracie: A Love Story written by her partner and husband George Burns!

They were the 43rd and 44th books that I have finished this year!! That leaves only 7 more to reach what I thought was a lofty goal of 51 books for the year!!

Proposed November Reading Challenge Books

So I need one more historical fiction read to meet that reading challenge and five each to meet the non-fiction and Science Fiction challenges. Hum that makes eleven books and I don’t think that is happening! The one historical fiction is doable and then maybe three each from the other challenges that would get me to my goal of 51! Additionally, if I were to find all of those books on my to be read (TBR) shelves, well that would get me to 80% of my TBR Challenge goal which would be pretty good!! So excuse me while I look over my shelves for three nonfiction, three science fiction books and one historical fiction book on my TBR shelves!!

Ok so here’s a list of potential November reads.

Reading the story of Gracie Allen reminded me about how much I liked reading about folks like The Marx Brothers, George S Kaufman and other comedic actors and writers. So while I was reading the book I was thinking about Dangerously Funny the story about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, one of my favorites!! Seems like a good time to read their story!

Likewise, reading the Richard Laymon book inspired me to pick up Simon Clark’s Stranger which I started yesterday, so far it;s pretty good!

Secondhand Souls was among the books I was supposed to read in October and it’s not due back at the library until the middle of next month so I still have time to read it!! A Conspiracy of Paper was a proposed read a few months ago, I’ll try once more to get into it!!

So there are my proposed November reads. I’ll try to write the reviews for Gracie and Snow Falling on Cedars tomorrow!! I will also try to write about today’s run!

George Burn’s in Gracie: A Love Story describes how one of his favorite movies to make was Damsel in Distress. In the movie, George and Gracie had to tap dance with Fred Astaire! Getting ready for the movie George remembered an old vaudeville act that danced with whisk brooms. George brought one of the dancers to Hollywood to teach he and Gracie the dance. They taught the dance to Astaire and he put it in the movie!! Here they are performing the dance!! And with that I’ll  say – “Good Night, Ed!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMYPfX9Rj_w

2015 Reading Challenge 41 books down 10 more to go!!

So as I have said many times October has been a busy month especially the last two weeks. But in those two weeks I have finished two books first Broken Promise from Linwood Barclay and most recently Silent Creed from Alex Kava. So where does that put me on my various reading challenges. Well, the addition of these two books have brought the total number of books I’ve read to 41 which is 80% of my goal total of 51 books. Since the goal of 51 books was very lofty, I’m really happy with where I am right now!! So right now I can achieve my goal with 2 more books this month and 4 in each of the following months. But with so much competing with my time over the next few month i.e Eagles football, Sixers basketball and Flyers hockey plus the World Series I don’t know if I’ll reach my goal!! Anyway, here’s a tabulation of my reads!!

This afternoon I picked out several books to read, then I made the mistake of going to the library and now I have three different books to put into the mix!! So throughout the year I have tried to list five book per month that I planned to read. I know that right now I’m in the middle of the month, but here’ the current stack of five!!

I have been reading Jonathan Kozol‘s Amazing Grace and I will continue to read that book. The other night  I picked up George Burn’s Gracie A Love Story and started reading and I love the books, it’s full of typical George Burns humor and a wonderful biography of their life together. Right now I’m about a third of the way through the book. They are just breaking into radio!! Both of these books count towards my nonfiction reading challenge.

The three books that I picked up at the library are ……

Signal – Patrick Lee’s second installment in his Sam Dryden series. I love Patrick Lee’s Breach trilogy and the first Dryden novel Runner so I can’t wait to get lost in this adventure!!

Through the 80s and 90s Tony Hillerman‘s books were another staple of my reading. I loved Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn so I was intrigued when I saw that his daughter Anne Hillerman had released a new Jim Chee – Joe Leaphorn mystery Spider Woman’s Daughter  This afternoon I spotted Rock with Wings book 2 from Anne and picked it up. Tonight I thought that I should really read Spider Woman’s Daughter first so I requested that book from the library. Since there were no other holds it shouldn’t be long before I get the book. Overall that shouldn’t be a problem since I have lots of other books to read!!

The last book of the fab five is Secondhand Souls the new release from Christopher Moore. I’ve had a hard time getting into the last few books that Moore has written like Fool and The Serpent of Venice, but I loved his earlier book. Secondhand Souls is a sequel to one of them A Dirty Job!  so Secondhand Souls should be a good one!!