A challenge of relative ease and merriment discussion

Did you read a great book for this challenge? Do you want help finding something for a specific category? Did you really hate what you just read?

I will take any recs for microhistory/banned books/award-winning books. I think I've got some potentials for microhistory (one of Barbara Mertz's Egyptian non-fiction), and banned (Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), but nothing is jumping out at me for award-winning, yet.

For banned books I'm definitely going to read The Catcher in the Rye. I've wanted to read it for some time and my brother got me it for Christmas, so it's happening this year! For award winning books I'm not sure. I don't usually look up awards at all. I'll probably do some googling on this subject until I find something that speaks to me.

Maybe I'll just pick an award in a genre I don't normally read and pick from that. I am bad about getting into reading ruts, which is partially why I am doing this challenge.

I find that pretty much any interesting book as been banned somewhere, and there are so many awards out there. I am curious about a book my mother is reading that won a Swedish book award last year, so might pick that one up. I'm also going to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo and that has definitely won awards, and all his books are banned in Iran XD I'm really just going to leave those categories and kinda see what falls in by accident.

As for microhistories I highly suggest looking at this list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1... and just picking whatever strikes your fancy. I have the first five already lined up actually.

With regards to banned books i would like to recommend "Lolita" if can stand being disgusted while reading. Even today i would rank it high on the "ban-worthiness" scale since it theme is pedophilia. But its greatest point is Nabokov's way of showing old-world European clash and distaste for the modernistic, idyllic but also grotesque and unrefined bubblegum-society of 50's USA (Which is ironic because the refined, worldly European is a pedophile).

I read Lolita and really liked it! It's a hard subject, and I guess the kids today would hashtag it as trigger warning. But it's a great book because it wont leave you untouched (NOT in a literary sense here).

As for 2016 releases I am considering this:
I don't know anything about the book or author, more than what's said here in GR. I found it on a list of 2016 releases, it sounded interesting, and it has a pretty cover. Welcome to my decision making process.

I am currently reading this: and it's not at all to my taste. I'll try to finish that brick this week, and then file it under fantastical as it is one of the most popular fantasy books out there. I can't really recommend it since I don't like it myself :P It's a cheap but glorified Tolkien rip-off.

Sofie, I think I told you when you picked it up that I found Wheel of Time beyond boring when I read it in my teens. Glad we can agree on that one ;) And so looooong.

These are all books to be released this year that I want to read or at least check out. All possible to fit into other categories as well:

@Pocki Yeah, but I don't always trust you because we don't always share the same taste in books. It's not necessarily boring. It's just so very obviously a copy of The Lord of the Rings story-wise that I can't believe that ANY fantasy reader would ever think this is the peak of high fantasy fiction. The characters are kind of bland, and it feels very cliché. The pace of the story is fine, but if I wanted to read Tolkien I'd read Tolkien. Because he's way better.

Cathrin wrote: "If you're talking about Jonas Hassen Khemiri, DO read it. "

Ah no. I am talking about a couple of books for younger readers by Jacob Wegelius which received the August prize for children and youth litterature. So rather prestigious.

Cathrin wrote: "Pocki wrote: "I find that pretty much any interesting book as been banned somewhere, and there are so many awards out there. I am curious about a book my mother is reading that won a Swedish book a..."

Which of his book do you recommend? I looked up the author and recognize some of his works, but don't know where to start :)

Cathrin wrote: "Sofie wrote: "Cathrin wrote: "Pocki wrote: "I find that pretty much any interesting book as been banned somewhere, and there are so many awards out there. I am curious about a book my mother is rea..."

Thank you! I might take a walk to the library after this fantasy book. I feel like reading something with a little more substance. I have ordered two short story collections that I have really high hopes for, but they will probably arrive next week with my luck, so I might need something to read in between there :)

Pocki, Tom and Sofie, thanks for the recs!

On another general topic: How do you choose books to read? It might sound like a simple question but i find that i usualy follow a pattern on what i read. Its like a ripple on water effect when i am choosing new books to read. I choose book who's author or theme is associated with a book or author i liked. I almost never venture outside the limits of the ripple effect however, confident that i will get there soon enough ;)

So, how do you choose which book to read next?

Goodreads seems to be involved a lot of the time. I see what my friends read and sometimes that looks interesting. Or I click a book and I see what else is related to that. Or find a list. Or I feel like I want to read more about death and I find books almost by accident related to some book I've read or heard of. I follow a few authors on Twitter and sometimes they post about booklists they've been included in and I find books there. And sometimes I look for a book for a friend and I find books for myself (like Sofie hadn't heard of cozy mysteries before and I tried to find her one about knitting, which I've never bene interested in. And I found one that mixed cozy mystery with witches AND knitting and thought it sounded like they crammed everything in there at once and I got curious. And then I read it in one single day) Basically it's a mess and I always have way more books that I can read.

It's all about the cover, baby! And the blurb. But mostly the cover! Also the title. And, you know, GoodRead rating. Sometimes I also listen to friends' recommendations.
Usually I am in the mood for a specific genre, and then I go all in and add ALL the books in that genre in my to-read-list, and then I kind of pick the prettiest one and go from there. Or if it's anew genre I might try the most popular one.
I try to set som goals for myself every year though, which of one is to read at least a handful of the books I already own but have not read. So that happens sometimes too.
And right now I'm super in to book reviews on youtube, so I watch a lot of those and add a lot of books that seem really interesting to my to-be-read.

It seems I don't have a very clear pattern when it comes to book choosing.

I agree with Sophie: it's so much about the cover and title! Which I think might be why non-fiction appeals to me so much right now. The titles are always so enticing.

I get about half of my books from the library, so a lot of times it's the spine of the book that gets me to pick it up. ;-) Then I'll look at the cover and the blurb. The cover isn't a deal-breaker, but if I'm not feeling the blurb, I usually pass on it.

I am also a sucker for nice covers i think. But also i am afraid that the gap between cover and content is to large (either way i am afraid). When i read about how you guys choose books i feel like such a coward!

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. After a while you kinda learn to read the covers somehow. I mostly use it to gauge the genre and "atmosphere". Of course there are always exceptions, but it mostly works for me.

Hehe, I have had some cover disappointments in my life. Two of those from recent times are "The Night Circus" and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" . The pretty covers together with the absolute hype, which was real (!), set me up to a big disappointment when I found out that these books were not half as awesome as I was led to believe :( So sometimes you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But mostly I do because that's what covers are for.

I think GoodReads and other recommendations sites, like Amazon, were the biggest influence on me having too much to read instead of not enough. I used to walk into the library wishing a good book would reveal itself to me and failing, but now I feel like I have a much better handle on things! I started looking at recommendations based on books I already knew I liked, and the blurbs and samples sounded so appealing that I would immediately read those books, and I kind of branched off from there into insanity. I have SO MUCH I want to read!! ^_^

One thing that also works for me is to go to a physical bookstore. Even if I don't buy while I'm there, they are making a real effort to market the books, so I always see a lot of things I might want to check out at the library, or even buy, if I'm sure enough I will like them!
I also like to look at lists of books on sites like Buzzfeed Books, io9, etc. The lists here are fine, but the other sites compiling the lists describe the books a little differently, which can be more persuasive. I almost always come out of a book list with new things I want to read. ^_^ Examples (yes, I bookmark these lists!):
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lincolnthomps...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthou...
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5924625/10-sci...

The covers thing works for me sometimes, sometimes not. . . I think it's important to give yourself permission to stop reading something if you hate it. An old friend once said that her dad told her she had to read 10% of a book to give it a chance, and I've always thought that was fair (though writer friends tell me that if you stick it out until 25%, you're more likely to find the thing that's supposed to grab your interest--I just think that's too much to ask if I hate it enough to abandon).

And, of course, if you're looking for something in a certain genre, and browsing the shelves here isn't helping, ask! We'd all be happy to recommend things, but sometimes I think it's even better to ask someone in real life. . . all of us here have been sipping the same GoodReads Kool-Aid, but if you ask a coworker, sibling, parent, etc., sometimes they recommend something you might not have heard of otherwise. ^_^

So one of the goals here is to read a graphic novel. Do you guys generally log graphic novels/comics you read here on goodreads? I have read some rather large amounts of manga albums in my short life, so I decided not to log them on goodreads, but I'm curious about how other people do.

I log graphic novels and manga, but not single issue comics (which makes Star Wars Shattered Empire annoying cause I have read the single issues that are included in the collection, except for an old comic they threw in as an extra, and I don't feel like buying the collection just for that). But then again, I also log picture books for children!

I usually compromise on single-issue comics by waiting for the trade to be entered into GoodReads, and log that instead of each issue. However, I did log a single-issue comic last night, because there have been a lot of delays with the series, and I fear a second trade will never come out! It's the only one I really read regularly, so it doesn't make me feel too much like I'm "cheating."
As far as graphic novels that are a little more lengthy, like Allie Brosh's book, or Fun Home, or books by Daniel Clowes, yes, I definitely log those.
I haven't read manga, so I can't speak to that directly! I imagine I would count it, as long as it's new to me. The only things I don't really count are children's books that I read when I was a child and don't feel the need to log just because I re-read them. (If they make an impression on me, though, sometimes I do review them.)

I see, so NOT adding my manga albums is the weird thing to do. I did add them once, but my goodreads looked like I read way more comics than novels. Which might be true, and I did not want that reminder ;) And I also felt like it was a bit hard or pointless to star rate separate numbers in a 20+ albums long manga series. I have become a bit more selective when it comes to manga nowadays though, so maybe I could start adding what I read from now on.

While we're at this: How do you guys do with audio boks? Do you add them as audio books without any page count, or do you ad them as a book book with a page number that will add up to your total of read pages on goodreads? (Hope this makes sense).

It might be the less common thing to do, but I think any way you want to log your reading is valid!

With audio books, I just log them as whichever edition is the most popular one. As I make progress, I mark it as percentage. . . the fact that I'm not technically reading pages in text doesn't bother me. ^_^

I'm like Laura I suppose. If I listen to an audiobook I pick whatever edition is the first/automatic when i search for the book. I like to have audiobooks count as pages. I mean I spend even more time on them than I probably would when reading with my eyes.
I usually have an ebook version of it too where I can check the page count for where I'm at, and I use that for adding progress (since I usually read on my iPad I need to do some math anyway and mark whatever page is appropriate compared to the correct page number)