The calendar tells us that fall is over (looking out the window at snow falling onto an already ridiculously deep bed of snow, with no plans of stopping soon – that also tells me fall is over, but you know, details shmetails). That means that the Fall into Reading 2008 Challenge hosted by Kat @ Callapidder Days is also over. How’d you do with your reading lists? I’d say I did not bad – I didn’t finish all of the books on my list, but I did read OTHER books that weren’t on my list (which is silly, because I could have edited the list to include them, but I didn’t because I like to be overly difficult to myself). Anyway, here’s the list I wrote up in September:

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – [update – mission aborted]
• Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde – [update – read]
• In The Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce – [update – read]
• Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick – [status – ‘currently reading’]
• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld – [status – not read]
• Home by Julie Andrews – [status – not read]
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch – [status – not read]
• Rumors (Sequel to The Luxe) by Anna Godberson –  [status – read]

So I read three of the books, attempted but didn’t finish two and haven’t gotten to three others yet. But like I said earlier, I did read other books during the fall – here are the non-challenege books that I read when I could have been reading challenge books:

• The Woman Who Rides Like A Man by Tamora Pierce – Finished October 30, 2008 – SO good. Clearly, since I again devoured this book. I’m really looking forward to reading the last in this quartet and considering reading a LOT of her other works now. But you know, get in line.
• Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult – Finished November 26, 2008 – This book was an incredible experience – Picoult is such a gifted writer, I couldn’t help but be in awe of her and loved the intricacies of this story – each piece woven into the next. Brilliant.
• Death: A Life by George Pendle – Finished December 4, 2008 – While I didn’t love this book, I did enjoy it – it was funny and well written and gave a very interesting perspective of life and death and all that other stuff in between.
• Boomtown by Nowen N. Particular – Finished December 13, 2008 – This story had the potential to be amazing – so many genius anecdotes and tales – but it fell flat and made it very hard to want to continue reading.

And right now I’m reading The Mysterious Benedict Society – which I might have finished had I given into my urge to stay up late last night reading until I passed out – unfortunately I’m pregnant and sleep was inevitable and probably necessary. So that’s an extra four, almost five books on top of the three that I finished for the challenge – so that’s not terrible, right?

Of the books that I read for the challenge, I think Rumors by Anna Godberson was probably my favorite – I loved the first book and the second was possibly even better, although the ending seemed horribly unfair and I kind of wanted to kick things, still I’m looking forward to the next book, Envy, which is due to come out in January I believe. My least favorite was a Jane Eyre, obviously as I didn’t finish it – I know some people love this book, I’m still not sure why. I thought it was awful and depressing and ridiculous to boot.

I think it’s interesting that I read more non-challenge books than the challenge ones – I think my brain doesn’t like reading lists – like it almost feels like homework, because these were books I CHOSE and I still seemed to abandon them in favor of spontaneous reading. I’m not sure what this says – I still like the idea of keeping a running tab of books to read, I have several methods of doing that already, especially with goodreads.com, but I guess for me, this was one step too far in the planning route?

I am still thinking of joining the Spring Reading Challenge, if only to see if lightning strikes twice, you know? I’ll certainly still be reading – that’s for sure! Perhaps if the goal were simply to read x number of books I’d have done better – I did read 7 books this fall which is fairly impressive, don’t you think?

So that’s all folks – hello Winter, good bye Fall Into Reading 2008.