Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Hello PopSugar peeps! I am writing this from a high-rise in suburban Detroit. I've been working in my company's Detroit office (instead of West Michigan) this week and it's been great for my reading challenge. I have a 25-minute commute from my parents' home to my office so I've been clipping away at the soooooooooooooo long and dare I say boring One Hundred Years of Solitude that I am using for "Oprah's Book Club."

I haven't finished this one yet but have two hours left of the audio and will finish it on the drive home tonight (if my children do me the honor of sleeping for our drive). Fingers crossed!

I'm still at 34/41 (as of 10 a.m. EST).

Question of the week: The saying goes "don't choose a book by its cover" but have you ever done so with wonderful results?

I remember picking up Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg specifically because I loved the artwork on the cover. Sadly, I cannot find an edition with that cover to embed here on Goodreads but it was a beauty. Thus began my love of Elizabeth Berg novels.

More recently, I loved the cover of . And, the greatest book cover in the history of books, IMHO, is .

I thought of this question because I finally found my original copy of by Jay McInerney that I intend to use for my "last read in high school." I believe I read it in 1987 (ooh aging myself there) and as I looked at it this morning, I realized that the cover illustration includes an image of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. *tear* That piece of sentimentality aside, I do love the cover of this book.

Can't wait to hear from all of you! Fannie: Are you still sticking with One Hundred Years?

I read two books but I still feel like I didn't have a good reading week. Maybe because I didn't care for either book.

I read Double Standards for my occupation book. God it was terrible. The main character legit fell in love with the guy after meeting him for ten minutes. I'm not sure how I powered through that one.

I also read The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories. Unfortunately, I had to push my way through this one too. I feel bad about her situation, and I'm glad her work got publish but it just wasn't for me. Her speech in the beginning was excellent though.

I'm at 32/41.

QOTW I used to browse the library and bookstore wayyyy more often and I feel like cover reads were a thing that I would do. Now its more difficult, because I'm quick to look at reviews on GoodReads or watch YouTube videos about books. Honestly looking at my read shelf, I can't tell you the last book I went into blindly. That's not good...and I should change that ASAP. haha

I used to have an hour long commute (2 hours round trip) most of which I was alone for. I don't miss the gas and mileage, but I sure do wish I had that time available for audiobook reading!

I am at 37/41 after finishing one challenge book and two non-challenge books this week:

How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much - I will admit I only skimmed the second half of this one. It started out good, but then it fizzled :( This was my first book I saw in a bookstore.
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride - this was a reread for me but first time with the audio version. Highly recommend!
Love & Gelato - Cute, summer YA read. I enjoyed this one and will look for more books by this author.

Currently I am working on:

A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation - this one is slow moving. I want to love historical biographies more than I actually do. I'm fascinated by their lives, but the books can be soooooooo long and tedious (which is why I usually read historical fiction). This is my lunchtime read, but I keep socializing instead of reading so I haven't made much progress.
Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living - a new release from a favorite author. I'm trying to read one essay each night before bed
A Fatal Grace - Chief Inspector Gamache #2. Struggling to get into this one. So far the story seems very disjointed, but I am hoping it will pull together soon. This is my bedtime reading book :)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - trying to read this for my 20th century classic. I bought the ebook but wasn't making much progress. Just got the audio so hopefully things speed up. Everyone raves about this book, but I just hit "book 2" and I feel like nothing has even happened yet! Is the whole book like that? Is there an actual plot?

Question of the Week: I am definitely attracted by a well-designed cover. The only example I can think of right now where I really picked the book up because of the cover is which was a DNF for me. I plan to go back to it eventually.

I also love the covers of Kiera Cass's books with being my favorite cover.

Oh and I recently purchased from Barnes and Noble which is just GORGEOUS :)

Juanita, I can't finish One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not for now at least. I find it boring and it seems to go nowhere. I'll try it in few years.

So I have no progress for last week, but I plan to start Atonement for the book set in Europe or Gulliver's Travels for the satirical book.

QOTW: When I was in college, I was staying on the campus. One night I got bored and went to buy two books that I chose because of the cover. It ended well, since one of them is my top one (ex-aequo) best book ever and the other one probably in my top 20.

and

Still at 35/41 for this challenge - and I can feel a reading rut coming on :(

The good news is I finally finished One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The bad news is that my two-hour car drive home took four hours. With two children under age 7.

The further bad news is the book got worse instead of better. I REALLY wanted to love this book. I swear the only sentence I really enjoyed was the final sentence. That's sad.

ETA: I enjoyed the final sentence, not because it was the end of the book, but because it FINALLY pulled everything together.

Fannie: You made the right call!

35/41

I commute a total of about an hour and 10 minutes every day for work, but I prefer podcasts to books. I tend to like reading books or Kindle and reserve audiobooks for long extended road trips (unless it's an audio book by Neil Gaiman, who has the best narration ever).

I'm at 36/41.

I finished two books this week:
1. The Longest Day for my book set in Europe, in preparation for my trip to Normandy this year. The book was fascinating and so, so sad at the same time. Cornelius Ryan was masterful at humanizing the men involved in D-Day.
2. Ready Player One for my science fiction book. I tend to be a big sci-fi fan and lots of people have told me I'll love this, but I honestly would only give it 3.5 stars out of 5. The world is awesome, but some of the supporting story around left a lot to be desired for me.

QOTW: Actually, my challenge book this year of book with a blue cover resulted in one of my favorite nonfiction books I've ever read. I looked through my to-read and was looking at authors I wanted to read and ended up finding a blue one by browsing at that level. The book was Shadow Divers. It followed a team of deep sea divers in the '90s who discovered a U-Boat off the coast of Germany that wasn't supposed to be there. So you got 1. the state of deep sea diving in the '90s, which was pretty darn dangerous, 2. info about U-boats, and the information around that one in particular and 3. the background on the divers themselves. It's one of my favorite books ever, and I only picked it up because it was blue!

You know how to sell a book Brenna. I just put that one in my to-read-list.

Fannie wrote: "You know how to sell a book Brenna. I just put that one in my to-read-list."

So did I!

Finished my first Monthly Challenge book. Black Like Me for Book not read since High School.

Got about halfway through Siddhartha for "Translated to English", which I'm enjoying, but my copy of I Don't Care if We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever showed up via interlibrary loan so I had to switch to that for our monthly challenge (no renewing allowed with interlibrary loans). That will be my "Book from the Library" since I've already done my road trip book.

32/41

I have no progress this week. I've actually had to go into my office for work to do some new hire training which has seriously thrown my whole schedule off and I remember how exhausting it is to go in to work. I much prefer working from home so hopefully I can get my rhythm back next week. I started reading The Sound and the Fury for my Oprah Book Club choice. So far I have no idea what's going on.

QOTW: Last year's challenge included choosing a book based on it's cover and mine was a home run. I chose . I fell in love with this cover. It's a great YA sci-fi and I plan to read the second book in the series for the sci-fi prompt for this year's challenge.

This week, I finished I Don't Care If We Never Get Back (road trip/monthly challenge), which I really enjoyed. I'm glad it tied for first in the poll for the monthly challenge, so I could actually participate this time around. :)

I also just finished a GIANT book in the wee hours of the morn, but I'll have to save that one for next week's update. ;)

QOTW: I can't deny that I love a beautiful cover, and it definitely influences my choices, but I mostly rely heavily on Goodreads reviews. The most beautiful cover won't be read by me if it has 3 stars on Goodreads. I have too many books to read to waste my time with that mess. Shamefully, though, I will say that it is harder for me to pick up a book with great reviews if it has an ugly/cheesy cover.

I'm at 37/41. Only 4 books to go! And I'm reading 2 of them now, so I should be done soon.

This week I finished:
1. The 19th Wife for my book set in my home state of Utah. I listened to it on audible, and the narration was great!

2. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two Because... Harry Potter.

QOTW: I love to browse the library or bookstore, especially used bookstores, looking for interesting covers. Although I can't remember one off the top of my head. I've been so intent on finishing my challenges this year that I haven't been doing any browsing.

Katherine wrote: "The most beautiful cover won't be read by me if it has 3 stars on Goodreads..."

That's so interesting! There are lots of books I liked just fine that I rate as 3 stars. Does 3 stars mean bad to you?

Thegirlintheafternoon wrote: "That's so interesting! There are lots of books I liked just fine that I rate as 3 stars. Does 3 stars mean bad to you?"

3 stars isn't necessarily bad to me, but I have so many books on my TBR that I sometimes judge pretty harshly on what is worth my time. When I rate something 3 stars, it means I believe it's an average book. And I can be pretty generous with my ratings. So if everyone else is giving it 3 stars...eh, I'm good; if I hear better things about it in the future, I'll reconsider.

And that's not to say that I never read books with bad reviews anyway. It's just way less likely that I'll pick it up in the first place.

Fannie and Mike, now I feel the pressure! I honestly loved it though, and am excited for an upcoming trip to Chicago to get to see the inside of a U-boat!

This week I finished The V Girl for A romance set in the future. I was actually planning on reading a different book for this prompt until I happened upon this one. I wanted to shy away from the YA dystopian romances, but that's what I ended up reading anyways. And as expected, it was a let down. The writing was not great, the story was eh, and the relationship didn't come together as I wish it had.

Question of the week: The saying goes "don't choose a book by its cover" but have you ever done so with wonderful results?
I'm too picky to read a book solely based on the cover, so I can't say I have a good answer for this. But shoutout to The Martian, because boy does this give me book cover lust (is this a thing?) It's gorgeous. I want to own it even though I haven't read it yet just so I can display it on my bookshelf.

I have to admit I haven't read anything since I finished Wildflower on 8/10. I'm starting Night more than likely today, so hopefully I'll get back on track. The break was kind of nice actually.

I can't think of any book that I choose by it's cover that I absolutely loved, but I'll admit I do pick up books based on their cover most of time. I always end up reading the blurb on the back first though to see if I'm interested.

I finished Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys by #27, a prequel. I had finished Jane Eyre for #26 earlier. I loved Wide Sargasso Sea: 5 stars.

Also finished Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter for the Around the Year in 52 Books Challenge, a book on a summer/beach reading list. I also loved this book.

QOTW: Beautiful Ruins is a great example of choosing a book by it's cover and having it turn out wonderful. Sometimes it works!

I had quite a productive week this week, but only two of the books were for this challenge. I read Paper Towns as my book about a road trip, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl as my YA bestseller.

QOTW: I have never chosen a book exclusively by the cover. As part of challenges I've taken part in, I've had to find books with attractive covers although I still look at the plot summary before choosing anything.

I finished one book last week putting me at a total of 17/41 books complete! Quite a ways to go, but I've already surpassed the total number of books I read last year, so I'm happy! I read The Girl on the Train for my murder mystery. I read this one on the plane over vacation and just could not put it down! I really enjoyed it, even though I totally called the twist!

QOTW: When I'm bored or down or have some spare time, I tend to wander around the library or used book stores and look at a lot of book covers. However, since becoming a Goodreads member I find most of my books here after reading about them. But I think the last book I chose solely because of the cover was . I loved everything about this book! And the colors and graphics on the cover are really attractive to me.

I am so late it's almost next week! But I'm answering the QOTW anyway. YES sometimes (okay, often) I do choose a book just because of it's gorgeous cover. And I have really mixed results with this method.

Recent gorgeous covers / middling books:
Tithe which was a YA fairy story, and it was okay (I think I used this for "book based on its cover" category last year). And Fates and Furies kept calling out to me last year , the cover was so mysterious and sad. I hated the book. Similarly, the blue of Find Me caught my eye (this book was pretty good). And for this year's "first book you see" category, I ended up with The Past (if I did this right, it's showing the black cover with flowering vines, so gorgeous!). I guess I'm glad I read this, but I didn't *love* it. And then there was A Discovery of Witches , neat cover, I LOATHED this book; and Snow Like Ashes such an intriguing cover, such a dull book; and Hush , what an amazing cover! What a bad book! And Splintered , such a mysterious and tropical cover, but I did not care for the book.

But sometimes there are winners, like Cinder!

I have better luck choosing picture books by their covers, for obvious reasons. These were all winners for me: and and (anything by Muth is going to be gorgeous), and and

I forgot to post last week progress so let's do that before the thread is archived :)

Finished one book that week, and it was a pretty big one:

39. A book that takes place on an island (2): Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la mer , Gallimard, 1980 (1st ed. 1866).



That's a 600+ pages classic, written by Victor Hugo while he was living in exile on the Channel Islands. That is the setup for the book: most of the action takes place on the island of Guernsey, with one important part on an fictional islet somewhere South of Guernsey. Some chapters take place in France, but that's mostly contextual. So, this book matches the criterium quite well - I was very keen on that, especially my first book for this prompt matched it pretty loosely: it was set up in England, which is technically an island, but whose insularity had pretty little influence on the plot.

Even though it doesn't rise to the monumental level of Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer is a great novel of the romantic era, written in the somptuous and inimitable prose of Hugo. A very good read!

QOTW: I've been attracted by the cover of some books, and sometimes it had steered my reading choices. Generally speaking, I'm quite fond of the cover of Picador paperbacks, which I often buy on my trips to England. My choice for the "book chosen entirely buy its cover" last year was from that publisher: Waterland, by Graham Swift.