Library Challenge Update #2

One day to go in my  Four Week Library Challenge. The list is diminished, but not all items will be finished. A good effort though! Crossed off items have been returned.

Magazines
The Monthly - Issue 99
The Monthly - Issue 100

DVD's
Dexter - Season 7 - Disc 3-4
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 1-2
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 3-4 - So not happy with the way this ended!
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
My Place Volume 1

Non Fiction
Save with Jamie - Jamie Oliver
Band-aid for a Broken Leg: being a doctor with no borders and other ways to stay single - Damien Brown
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua
Ugly: my memoir - Robert Hoge
Fast Ed's Dinner in 10 - Ed Halmagyi
Blood Ties - John Suter Linton
The 17 Day Diet Cookbook - Mike Moreno
Dangerous Allies - Malcolm Fraser
Lazy Loser - Marie Bean

Fiction
Past the Shallows - Favel Parret
Six Impossible Things - Fiona Wood
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Hawkes Harbor - SE Hinton  - started this and gave up. So disappointed, one of my favourite authors as a teenager
The Cold, Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty
The Sky So Heavy - Claire Zorn
The Incredible Here and Now - Felicity Castagna
The First Third - Will Kostakis

Three, no Four Week Library Challenge

Earlier in the week I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook.

Then my friend Car, from Carrose Creations asked how many I could read in three weeks. That sounded like a challenge to me so I said let's find out!

Now to be fair, some of these books were already on their way back to the library, but it has still left a substantial pile of books, CD's and magazines to get through. So here's the challenge - get through as many of these items as possible in the next 3 weeks. Actually, lets make it a little longer - the latest due date on any of these items is June 11, so that will be my deadline - just under four weeks.

Just so we are clear on what's in the pile, I will list them. Some of the books aren't so much "reading" books, but looking through and pulling out the the stuff I like books, like the recipe books. To count towards my total, I must use the book to the purpose I intended. For example, the recipe books were borrowed to get inspiration from - go through and pull out the recipes I like. The DVD's need to be watched and the magazines finished with. So, here's my list. (By the way, I'm too lazy to link all of the books to their Goodreads profiles, or the DVD's to their IMDB profile. If you want to know more about a particular item, I suggest you go to one of those websites and search for it!)

Magazines
The Monthly - Issue 99
The Monthly - Issue 100

DVD's
Dexter - Season 7 - Disc 3-4
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 1-2
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 3-4
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
My Place Volume 1

Non Fiction
Save with Jamie - Jamie Oliver
Band-aid for a Broken Leg: being a doctor with no borders and other ways to stay single - Damien Brown
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua
Ugly: my memoir - Robert Hoge
Fast Ed's Dinner in 10 - Ed Halmagyi
Blood Ties - John Suter Linton
The 17 Day Diet Cookbook - Mike Moreno
Dangerous Allies - Malcolm Fraser
Lazy Loser - Marie Bean

Fiction
Past the Shallows - Favel Parret
Six Impossible Things - Fiona Wood
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Hawkes Harbor - SE Hinton
The Cold, Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty
The Sky So Heavy - Claire Zorn
The Incredible Here and Now - Felicity Castagna
The First Third - Will Kostakis

By my count that is 22 items. Let the challenge begin! 

Library Book Month Wrap Up.

 

Oh my goodness, what a month! As you may or may not remember, back at this post, I set myself the challenge of reading all my library books by June 24 - and to not borrow any new books! So, how did I go? As I did the challenge, I crossed each book off on the original page, and the date I finished it. It ended up looking like this:

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro Finished 27/5
Storm Peak: A Jesse Parker Mystery - John Flanagan Finished 11/6
Lockie Leonard: Scum buster- Tim Winton Finished 8/6

Ishamael and the Return of the Dugongs - Michael Gerard Bauer Finished 19/6
The Breaker - Minette Walters Finished 30/5
The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel - Brandon Sanderson Finished 23/6
48 Shades of Brown - Nick Earls Finished 19/6
*Bungawitta - Emily Rodda Finished 9/6
*Crow Country - Kate Constable Finished 2/6
*The Golden Door - Emily Rodda  Finished 6/6
*The Outcasts - John Flanigan Finished 9/6
* The Truth About Verity Sparks - Susan Green Finished 4/6
All My Dangerous Friends - Sonya Hartnett Finished 24/6 
*Nanberry: Black Brother White - Jackie French Finished 17/6

So yay! I did it...sort of...The idea was to not have to take any books with me when we boarded a plane on June 24. I ended up taking one - All My Dangerous Friends, so I came pretty close.

I am thankful that these books which I had on reqeust did not come in!

Between the Lines - Jodi Piccoult & Samantha Van Leer
Complete Peanuts 1967-1968 - Charles Schulz
Various Positions - Martha Schabas 

In fact Between the Lines and Peanuts are still on order, so am unlikely to see them for quite awhile. 

I enjoyed this challenge and was really proud of the fact that I managed to not borrow any more books during it, although I am looking forward to filling it up again when I get home! I can see this challenge becoming a bit of regular feature. I've had a few ideas for other challenges so keep your eye out for those. As for now, I have this to get through before my next book group meeting at the end of July:

 At a mere 1500 pages it may very well take me all month!

The Breaker

Title: The Breaker
Author: Minette Walters
Genre: Crime Fiction
Audience: Adult
Format: Book - library

From Goodreads: When she revisited, always with astonishment, what had happened to her, it was the deliberate breaking of her fingers that remained indelibly printed on her memory . . ."

Twelve hours after a woman's broken body is washed up on a deserted shore, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away wandering the streets of Poole.
But why was Kate killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? And why weren't they together? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea?
Police suspicion centres on both a young actor, whose sailing boat is moored just yards from where the toddler is found, and the murdered woman's husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And why does their daughter scream in terror every time he tries to pick her up?

What I thought: Another book to cross off my library challenge and my quest to read all of Minette Walters' books! My goodness, but I am being productive.
I'm not sure what I can say about this that I haven't said about Minette Walters before. Great writing, great story, original so you don't feel like you are reading the same book again. If I have a critism of Minette Walters it is that her books have a lot of characters and I often have trouble keeping them straight. Not sure why, but I managed to keep control of them a lot easier than I normally do with this one. Either way, thoroughly enjoy it!
 
Challenges: Library Challenge

When We Were Orphans

Title: When We Were Orphans
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Genre: Fiction
Audience: Adult
Format: Book - library

From Goodreads: Christopher Banks, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, When We Were Orphans, has dedicated his life to detective work but behind his successes lies one unsolved mystery: the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy living in the International Settlement in Shanghai. Moving between England and China in the inter-war period, the book, encompassing the turbulence and political anxieties of the time and the crumbling certainties of a Britain deeply involved in the opium trade in the East, centres on Banks's idealistic need to make sense of the world through the small victories of detection and his need to understand finally what happened to his mother and father.

What I thought: I've been a little hesitant about reading any more Ishiguro since I was complete unable to get anywhere with The Unconsoled. This however was very different. I do find it hard to review Ishiguro's books because I feel so much of what I read goes above my head, but what I do love is the rich world he creates. Everything in this book seems exaggerated, brighter or duller than it would be real life, the characters larger than life and their experiences more significant. Whether I truly "get" these books becomes irrelevant as I am able to lose myself in beautiful language and a rich atmosphere.


Challenges: Library Challenge

Library Book Month

I love libraries. From the small suburban community library, right up to the huge grand State libraries - there is something about walking into one that instantly relaxes and calms me.

I consider myself lucky to work in a library - I love it! Although the down side is the number of books I bring home and don't get to read before having to return them! I currently have 12 books out, plus another 6 on request - and it's only that small because I have been very strict with myself! However, I want to read everything I have borrowed, so I am declaring from now to June 24 (when we fly to Canberra for 2 weeks) library book month. For the next month I will not borrow any new books (DVD's, CD's and magazines are the exception here) and I will read nothing but the library books I currently have out or on request once they come in!

Here's the list of what I currently have out.

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro Finished 27/5
Storm Peak: A Jesse Parker Mystery - John Flanagan Finished 11/6
Lockie Leonard: Scum buster- Tim Winton Finished 8/6

Ishamael and the Return of the Dugongs - Michael Gerard Bauer Finished 19/6
The Breaker - Minette Walters Finished 30/5
The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel - Brandon Sanderson Finished 23/6
48 Shades of Brown - Nick Earls Finished 19/6
*Bungawitta - Emily Rodda Finished 9/6
*Crow Country - Kate Constable Finished 2/6
*The Golden Door - Emily Rodda  Finished 6/6
*The Outcasts - John Flanigan Finished 9/6
* The Truth About Verity Sparks - Susan Green Finished 4/6
All My Dangerous Friends - Sonya Hartnett Finished 24/6 
*Nanberry: Black Brother White - Jackie French Finished 17/6


On hold I have:

Between the Lines - Jodi Piccoult & Samantha Van Leer
Complete Peanuts 1967-1968 - Charles Schulz
Various Positions - Martha Schabas

Anything marked with an * is part of my quest to read all the books short listed by the Children's Book Council of Australia for their Book of the Year Awards later in August. I've already read all the older reader books, so now am onto the younger readers. I'll also be doing the picture book and early childhood books - by they are all picture books and I haven't included them in my lists above although I do have a fair few of those out too!

So I am currently reading When We Were Orphans - lets see how many I can get through!

BTW, how many library books do you have out? Do you frequently return them unread??