2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Have to admit that I found completing 2016s challenge somewhat of a drag. Not the only being able to read books that I already owned, that was easy and in someways refreshing, but the having to read a set number of books in a year. I found that I was reading some books not because I wanted to read them but to try to get 50 books read.
2017 though will be the year of the no challenge challenge. Reading for the sheer pleasure of reading, no set numbers, no set topics, just reading.

Simon wrote: "Have to admit that I found completing 2016s challenge somewhat of a drag. Not the only being able to read books that I already owned, that was easy and in someways refreshing, but the having to rea..."

I'll join in on this one. I may go for some of the monthly challenges but I like to begin with reading for the fun of reading

Updated (31-01-2017)

Having set my self the challenge of not setting a challenge I've once again discovered the joy of reading for the sheer joy of reading. Long may this continue.

This month has been a great one and I have managed to get through 12 books very nearly a record for me.
Books Read in January

I think this is an amazing idea. Reading just because. Happy and fulfilling reading!

Another good month. I'm enjoying this challenge this year. Just reading what I want when I want.
I have noticed that so far this year I don't seem to have read much non fiction.

Another very full month and a very mixed bag of books.




Wow! This years non challenge challenge completed and everything else this year is a bonus. I don't think I've ever read this many books this quickly before. The freedom to just read is very liberating. That said I did have quite a book hangover after finishing A Tale For the Time Being and couldn't get into another book for a day or 2.

April nearly through and another 6 books read.

Another varied selection of books for May

June has been a bit of a slow month book wise though I did manage to get to 50 books so far with these last 3. For me that's a record.

July is, All Things Japanese Month.

Over the past few weeks BBC 4 in the UK has been having a Japanese season, which seeing as I am a bit of a Japanophile, has been great. Its therefore prompted me to make July a month of all things Japanese. All my reading in July will be either about Japan, be set in Japan, have a Japanese characters in it or have been written by a Japanese author.

I'm looking forward to this and am starting with, Japan: The Paradox of Harmony, to take me into the month

Hitting 50 by June is an accomplishment l, I think. Enjoying them is even bigger. Good for u!!

Thanks Gini. I've been enjoying this year's challenge a great deal and I'm amazed at how many books I've read. long may this continue.

Simon wrote: "July is, All Things Japanese Month.

Over the past few weeks BBC 4 in the UK has been having a Japanese season, which seeing as I am a bit of a Japanophile, has been great. Its therefore prompted m..."

If you haven't read it Nagasaki is a short read but I loved it!

Hi Simon.

I wanted to ask what you thought of the following four books that you read?

NOS4A2
We Should All Be Feminists
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
All the Light We Cannot See

Hi Zara
This might be a long reply but i thought the best way to respond would be to copy and paste my reviews.

This is a bloody good book and bloody annoying book in equal measure.
I haven't read an out and out horror story in a few years so wasn't as aware of the genre as once I was so I discovered this after an extensive trawl of the Horror section in Waterstones. I picked it up not really knowing anything about it other than it had an eye catching cover and the story looked interesting. Never having read any of Hill's stuff before and not knowing much about him, other than he wrote 'Horns' I picked it up paid my £9 and walked off with that post book buy glow.
When I finally sat down to read it I started to get that sense of deja-vu, that sense of this is all very familiar, that in fact this is all very Stephen King. It's at that point that I turned to Goodreads for an author bio and discovered, Hill, is King's son (told you I wasn't as up on the genre like I once was). Having discovered this it put me in a bit of a bind because I'm now, 'I can't compare Hill to his old man because that would be unfair', but hey as I tend to compare all horror writers to King anyway why not. So here goes.
Hill's book has a great premise; child terrorised by an evil escapes and has to come back to fight it as an adult. But wait isn't this all a little familiar, isn't this 'IT' in miniature. In fact there seemed to me to be too many King plot ideas tied up all the way through the book. There was the demonic car (Christine) the vampire (Salem's Lot) and the aforementioned 'IT'
Don't get me wrong I did enjoy the book though it was a slow read to begin with, it was only during the latter half of the book that the story really began to warm up. Once it did though it became unputdownable.
Hill writes well and there are some great characters in the book. I particularly liked Maggie Leigh and Lou. There are also some great creepy moments and the action when it really hotted up was well handled.
There were a few things which annoyed me though. Top of this list was his repeated use of the last words of a chapter being the following chapter's name. Not clever just silly. Another quibble is his telling of the same events through the eyes of different characters. It didn't really add anything to the story and, for me, slowed it up.
I did enjoy though spotting some of his other literary references especially Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (a fav author of mine).
OK, Hill is not King and there are obvious moments where he does try to steer his own path in what is a genre dominated by his father. There are moments though when he seem to spend time trying to be pay homage to him (directly referencing 'IT' and 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' to name but two).
This was, eventually, a really good read but sadly not a great one. I did enjoy it and though in no hurry to read his earlier books could be tempted by 'The Fireman', which again has a great premise.
4 stars for the nostalgia and the back half of the book.


Some might call this brief but I think more acurately incisive. It doesnt labour its point it just says what needs to be said, no more and no less and is all the stronger for it. A must read for everyone.


When I started reading this a number of my friends raved about it, saying what a great book it was and how they'd enjoyed it. for some reason though this set alarm bells ringing in my head. Alarm bells that said I was going to be disappointed and disappointed I was.
This has to be one of the most preposterous novels I've read in a good long while. I couldn't connect with any of the characters at all. It was a Forest Gump for the millennials and was just not funny.
Not a book I'd recommend at all, ever.
so then how come 2 stars I hear you ask. Because it was at least an easy read and that's about the only thing it had going for it.


Late last year when the book club I’m a member of was deciding on books to read for this year a couple of the group suggested Doerr’s book. It seemed to tick all our collective boxes; we were a group of men so anything about WWII always seems to go down well. A number of my other friends had read it and said it was a really good book and it had garnered a considerable reputation on both Goodreads and Amazon. For heaven’s sake it was even a Pulitzer fiction Prize winner. What’s not to like about this book I thought and I was really looking forward to reading it. It should have been an absolute shoe in for one of the best reads of the year. Unfortunately though it wasn't. I have to be honest and say that this was a seriously irritating book and had I not been reading it as a book club read it would have been consigned to the abandoned because life's too short bin before I’d made it through a third of the book.
If everything seemed aligned to make this a great book what then was my problem with it? I suppose I have two main problems with the book:
1. The chapter lengths. They were way to short and disjointed. There are ways of telling simultaneous stories; this for me though isn't a satisfying way. I felt that every time I started to get a feel for one of the main characters I was being dragged away from them and back to the other one. There was never enough time to get to know any one of the characters properly. I know some have praised this narrative style, I though can't praise it, it's annoying and was massively distracting to the point of irritation.

2. How good the final 100 pages were. Hang on a minute I hear you say, how can you say something is annoying and good at the same time. Let me elaborate. The final 100 pages of the book were good and by that I mean very good. I really didn’t want to put the book down which was odd as for most of the book I really didn’t want to have to read it and therein lies my problem, I had to wade through over 400 irritating pages to get to these final great 100 pages. The thing is though I may never have known how good the book, at its best, could be because I came so close to wanting to bin it before I got there.
So there you have it 2 stars and that's only because the final 100 pages are the only thing that saved this book from being a 1 star razzie award winner. All I can say is that 2015 must have been a really lean year Pulitzer wise if this was the winner.

Lindsay wrote: "If you haven't read it Nagasaki is a short read but I loved it!"

Hi Lindsay, thanks for the suggestion. This looks interesting and will definitely make it to my wish list.

A bit of a slow month but I have enjoyed the challenge so much I'm going to continue my all things Japanese challenge another month

Books Read

I have really enjoyed the past couple of months and the "all things Japanese" sub challenge I've been doing.

6 books read, bringing my yearly total to 61


This last, "The Samurai" is quite simply brilliant, better by far than Silence, though that's still an amazing book.

I've just decided that September will be a month for signed books; or will be when I've finished the KMBC read for Aug/Sept:
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

Books to read
Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold
War: An Enquiry
Norse Mythology
Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

Wel I managed to get through 3 of the 4 signed books I hoped to read.
Books read
Non signed


Signed




Next month its back to the joy of just picking up a book any book with no pre concieved plan. If it grabs me then it gets read.

The KMBC quandry

It comes to that time of the year again when the KMBC (Kidlington Men's Book Club) chooses its books for the following year. Admittedly the group tends to use the reading of books as an excuse for an evening out and a few pints but we are all married men so what can you expect. We have over the past couple of years read a diverse genre of books, including Plays (Educating Rita), political non fiction and biography (Dreams from My Father), as well as fiction of all types (Vernon God Little, The Long Earth and A Tale of Two Cities).
There are about 6 full time members of the group with a couple of others who come when they can and most of the group go to the same Church though there are members who don't so we're a broad church. As one of the full time members I have to come up with a choice of a book which is something I always find difficult because there are always so many books I want to read. I'm also conscious that the book has to be something that appeals to the others in the group as well as to me. This year is no different I have about 6 books that I want to choose:

We are all pretty much left leaning so this would be a good read though its a bit of a weighty tome so may turn some off.

This is one I've already read but thought it would be a good read for the group looking as it does at the Catholic Church's missionary practices in feudal Japan.

Science fiction dystopia normally goes down well but Dick is a acquired taste.

WWII, its a men's group so whats not to like

Le Carre, my new reading obsession

Again one I've already read but I would love to see what others made of it.

There we go, that's my quandary which should I choose one of these or something else?
Any ideas

Six for October which makes 70 for the year so far.

Simon wrote: " Admittedly the group tends to use the reading of books as an excuse for an evening out and a few pints"

Hahaha, that's what happens with women's book clubs too, just substitute "pints" with wine. :)

Your list looks pretty good to me. Do you check with your other members to make sure you're not all suggesting the same genres? The WWII/LeCarre look like a safe bets but are any Blade Runner fans in the bunch? Then they might like to read the Phillip Dick, as that inspired the movie. :)

D.G. wrote: "Do you check with your other members to make sure you're not all suggesting the same genres?"pin..."

We tend to be pretty free in terms of Genre and take whatever the big six pick. That said one or two of us do sometimes bring a couple of books and let the group as a whole pick which of the two to read.

I think this is what I might do this year though I've made it harder by coming up with two more possibles:
and

Going to spend a month in American politics In Novemeber.
One year on from The election of "He who must not be named" it seems appropriate to look what happened and why.

Books to read:


Probably won't get through them all but let's see how it goes.

Shouldn't ever make grand plans like this one as life tends to get in the way of grand plans.
Lets just say life has just delivered a kick and the idea of trying to understand Trump's America is not something I care to expend energy on at this time. So its back to just reading whatever works for me, one book at a time.

Simon wrote: "The KMBC quandry

It comes to that time of the year again when the KMBC (Kidlington Men's Book Club) chooses its books for the following year. Admittedly the group tends to use the reading of books..."

Well the big six met and we have 6 books for 2018







Two books I've read before, but that's not a problem, two books I've been wanting to read for a while and two I would never have thought to read. Its going to be an interesting set of reads.

You've been reading a lot this year, Simon. Not setting a goal definitely works for you!

Ilona wrote: "You've been reading a lot this year, Simon. Not setting a goal definitely works for you!"

Thanks Ilona, Its been a good year book wise, I've read more books this year than any year previously. I've enjoyed not setting any goals and just reading what has tweaked my interest.

Planning for next years reading challenge I'm going back a year to last years challenge.
I have somehow managed (well that's not true I know exactly how its happened) to amass a large pile of unread books at home, so its going to be a year of reading only what's already in the house.

Another good month.
Some short ones here but a couple of longer reads too.

Final Post of the year.
30 books pledged and 93 read (a personal record)
Here are my last 7 of 2017

Congratulations on the personal record Simon!

Simon wrote: "Final Post of the year.
30 books pledged and 93 read (a personal record)
..."

Wow, impressive Simon! Congratulations!

Thanks Ilona and Susy. I've enjoyed this years challenge. looking forward to next year and making my "to read" pile a little smaller.

Because I am a stats nerd here are my reading stats for the year.

Books Read: 93
Pages Read: 23,902

Fiction Read:48
Non Fiction Read: 15
Biographies Read: 4
Graphic Fiction Read: 22
Poetry Read: 1
Plays Read: 3

Bookreads Scores
1 Star: 2
2 Stars: 5
3 Stars: 34
4 Stars: 38
5 Stars: 14
Average Score: 3.61
Modal Score: 4