The Reading Challenge Group discussion

My Goodreads challenge is 72, I'm slightly ahead but I have some long reads ahead.

Here's how the last 3 months looked:

read in Jan 2024
Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery) --- What a surprise, it was good to finally meet Anne Shirley. 3*
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck) --- A fantastic read, earthy and profound in the same breath. 5*
The Children of Jocasta (Natalie Haynes) --- In Natalie Hayne’s retelling Jocasta is put back into centre stage of her own story. 3*
How to Read Oceanic Art (Eric Kjellgren) --- I’m new to this subject, an interesting read. 4*
The Complete Ripley Radio Mysteries (Stephen Wyatt; Patricia Highsmith) --- An audio drama adaptation of all Ripley novels. 3*
The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas) --- I didn’t like most of the characters but its exploration of some interesting social issues kept me reading. 2*
Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries (Alan Rickman) --- Interesting but didn’t say as much as I hoped about the working process of a movie or theatre. 2*
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) --- The Bell Jar’s crisp writing, and its modest telling of a heroic tale, is what keeps bringing me back to read this again. 4*
Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1) (Hilary Mantel) --- I like the writing more than its portrait of Anne Boleyn.
Electra (Euripides; Janet Lempke; Kenneth J Reckford) --- Not a leisurely read but interesting in one of the things that happen after the Trojan War. 3*

read in Feb 2024
Sylvia Plath: A Dramatic Portrait: conceived and adapted from her writing (Barry Kyle) --- A drama written as a companion piece to Sylvia Plath’s poem Three Women 2*
Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices (Sylvia Plath) --- A long poem of 3 monologues by Sylvia Plath that was broadcasted as an audio drama. 4*
Kindred (Olivia Butler) --- I liked this more for Alice’s story than Dana’s experience when she travels back in time. 2*
The Design of Books: An Explainer for Authors, Editors, Agents, and Other Curious Readers Revealed (Debbie Berne) --- An ARC read that highlighted how much goes into a the design of books. 4*
Sylvia Plath: A Biography (Linda Wagner-Martin) --- One of the two biographies I read this year about Sylvia Plath. 4*
Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief: How to Better Manage Pain and Regain Function (third edition) (Bruce Sutor; Wesley P. Gilliam) --- ARC read, shows medical pathways in the US for management of chronic pain. 3*
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) --- I've listened to this several times now and each time I discover something new. 5*
Art and Perspective (Trevor A White) --- An ARC read with a generous number of examples to get a better handle on perspective in art. 4*
War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad (Christopher Logue) --- Good to finally read Christopher Logue’s adaptation of parts of Homer’s The Iliad. 4*


read in Mar 2024
The Hollywood Behind the Lens: Treasures From the Bison Archives (Marc Wanamaker; Steven Bingen) --- An ARC read loaded with photos that give a flavour of the old Hollywood studios. 4*
Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth (Natalie Haynes) --- This is the book wish I had to hand when reading Homer, Ovid and Euripides was daunting. 4*
Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) (John Milton) --- More fascinating than enjoyable and I would read again. 4*
Reading Lessons: The books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark and Why They Matter (Carol Atherton) --- An ARC read showing why books and literature still matter. 4*
Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual (Kathleen Connors; Sally Bayley) --- Discusses and includes the art by Sylvia Plath. 4*
The Elements of Art: Ten Ways to Decode the Masterpieces (Susie Hodge) --- An ARC read that I would have found handy 10 years ago when I was still trying to make sense of art. 4*
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous; N.K. Sandars) --- A more accessible translation of Gilgamesh in Prose form. 4*
The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man: An Opera (John Dryden) --- Just different to John Milton’s Paradise Lost and available in the public domain. 3*



Lined up tp read in April 2024:

Looking good!
Welcome back!

Rosemarie wrote: "Looking good!
Welcome back!"

thanks :)

read in April 2024

R.U.R (Karel Čapek) --- Second read, I enjoyed this the last time but not as much as this time. 4*
Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (Gwendolyn Leick) --- I expected this to be a tough read but found it to be an enjoyable read. 5*
Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1) (Chinua Achebe) --- The second read is as sharp and punchy as the first. 5*

read in May 2024

Orestes (Euripides; Frank Nisetich; John Peck) --- The violence and rage in this revenge tragedy still catches me out. 3*
The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath (British Library) (Sylvia Plath) --- I loved hearing Sylvia Plath reading her own poems, chatting and laughing. 5*
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Philip K. Dick) --- I love the movie, not the recent one, and have been meaning to read this for ages. It didn’t disappoint. 4*
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Heather Clark) --- My focus this year was Sylvia Plath and this is one of the biographies I had lined up. It’s over a 1000 pages and what comes through is staying impartial and the care it took in its research. 5*
The Princess and the Goblin (Princess Irene and Curdie #1) (George MacDonald) --- When I was reading about JRR Tolkien there was a mention of George MacDonald and his Curdie series. 3*
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S Thompson) --- I enjoyed this more for its style and innovative use of form.
The History of Colour: A Universe of Chromatic Phenomena (Neil Parkinson) --- Book about books but books that look at colour theory. 5*

read in June 2024

We ((Momentum Classic Science Fiction)) (Yevgeny Zamyatin) --- I enjoyed this classic, it was an impulsive buy where I knew nothing about the author or book. 4*
The Iliad: A New Translation by Peter Green (Homer; Peter Green) --- It’s been an amazing journey reading this, and with each read it’s getting easier. 4*
Paradise Lost: A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation (John Milton) --- An audio dramatisation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost starring Ian McKellen. 4*
The History of Titus Groan (Mervyn Peake; Brian Sibley) --- A Dama adaptation of a trilogy by Brian Sibley. 4*
Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities (Kieth Houston) --- Just fascinating, the how an why some of the punctuation we use came about. 4*
Life for Sale (Yukio Mishima; Stephen Dodd) --- Minus its view of women, it’s clever in how it delivers big ideas through comedy.
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: and other prose writings (Sylvia Plath) --- Interesting to read works by Sylvia Plath that are other than The Bell Jar or her poetry. 4*

read in July 2024:

The Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker) -- adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, this didn’t work for me
The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus; Justin O'Brien) -- philosophical essays, fantastic read and want to read again
The Vampyre (Polidori John William) 3.5* -- short story
A Dog's Heart (Mikhail Bulgakov; Antonina W. Bouis) -- novel, science fiction, and want to read again
Biographical Stories (Nathaniel Hawthorne) – moral tale for young people, enjoyable read
Vincent: A Graphic Biography (Simon Elliot) -- ARC read 4*, I liked it for how it put Johanna van Gogh-Bonger and her husband, who was Vincent’s brother in the foreground.

read in Aug 2024:

Les Misérables (Donougher Christine; Victor Hugo) -- novel, historical, French revolution, I enjoyed reading it, I want to come back to it
Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life (Anna Funder) -- faction with biographical details, not v objective but interesting

read in Sept 2024:

Circe (Madeline Miller) 1* -- adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey
The Florentines (Paul Strathern) 4* -- nonfiction, covers the many Florentines including Dante
Lavinia (Ursula K. Le Guin) 3*-- novel, adaptation of Virgil’s Aeneid
Not I (Samuel Beckett) 4* -- drama
The Aeneid (Virgil; Bernard Knox; Robert Fagles) – 4* -- epic poetry
A Hunger-Artist: Four Stories (Franz Kafka; Michael Hofmann) 4* -- collection of short stories
The Labours of Hercules (Poirot) (Agatha Christie) 4* -- collection of short stories

read in October 2024

Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour (Fay Blanchard; Anthony Spira) --- I like Vanessa Bell’s art, and I liked this but would have liked it more if the accompanying text had more depth. 4*
Republic (Plato; Robin Waterfield) --- I enjoyed reading this, parts of it I found challenging but I want to read this again. 4*
Tanglewood Tales (Nathaniel Hawthorne) --- I liked this more for how it told its stories then how the women were portrayed. 4*
The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary (Sarah Ogilvie) --- Fantastic find, reading this led me to discover how it was ordinary people who helped to compile OED and others. 3*
The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood) --- Second read, I still liked it but having read more myths, I wanted it to dig deeper as it retells The Odyssey by Homer. 3*
To Room Nineteen (Doris Lessing) --- It’s been a while since I’ve read anything by Lessing, I must correct that. 4*

read in November 2024

The journals of Sylvia Plath (Sylvia Plath) --- I wanted to read this to make up my own mind and found it to be an interesting read. 4*
Myths from Mesopotamia: creation, the flood, Gilgamesh, and others (Anonymous; Stephanie Dalley) --- The most thrilling part is to read something so very old and has miraculously survived. 4*
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars (Francesca Wade) --- This I found to be interesting in how it showed what writers like Dorothy L Sayers and Virginia Woolf were up against for being women. 3*

reads in Dec 2024

📖 ✅ Jamaica Inn (Daphne du Maurier) ---As a whole this didn’t gel for me but in parts this has left an impression. 3*

📖 ✅ Ringworld (Larry Niven) --- The comedy is a surprise, this isn’t perfect but there are some interesting parts to it. 3*

📖 ✅ Measure for Measure (William Shakespeare) --- A second read. Easier to read then the others, I'm thinking it's because of its small cast. 3*

📖 ✅ The Lifted Veil (George Eliot) --- I'm new to George Eliot and starting with this short, and it was a good start. 3.5*

📖 ✅ The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath (Jo Gill) --- second read, this year the author I have been focusing on is Sylvia Plath. 4*

--- One of the books I've lined up to get a little more familiar with Mesopotamia.

📖 ✅ The Aeneid by Virgil (David West translation) --- this year I’ve read this twice 4*

📖 ✅ The Tale of Genji: abridged (Murasaki Shikibu; Suematsu Kencho) --- This abridged version of 224 pages, I enjoyed and gets me closer to read the unabridged novel. 4*

📖 ✅ The Castle by Fraz Kafka (narrated by Allan Corduner) another one delivered by Libby unexpectantly. 3.5*

So, I've been thinking about 2025, and it being the year that celebrates 250 years of Jane Austen, I have these lined up for next year:

--- I found this helpful last time, and it will be good to read again.

--- I’ve been wanting to come back to this one. And watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_a..., I think it captures the book better than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_%... but this won’t stop me watching it.

--- A revisit, Cowper was one of Jane Austen's favourite poets. I'm not sure if I got it completely last time and trying again.

--- I'm looking forward to reading this. And watching the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_a..., the screenplay is written by Emma Thompson.

--- I've been wanting to read this for some time.

--- I came across this month's back, and sounds like it could be a fun read.

I will post the rest non-Jane Austen reads as soon as I get them together.

I have 2 books left - added an abridged audio to Northanger Abbey, 10 days to go, with next week being chaotic and not knowing how much reading time I'll have, here's a link to my this year's wrap up

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...