Fall Into Reading 2008: The End

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.