Take It or Leave It Challenge - January 2011 - Page 3

Continued from here.

For those new to this challenge: More info and monthly index can be found in post #1 of this thread.
Simple directions for posting to the wiki can be found at the bottom of each month's wiki page.


...logo by cyderry

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Hi Challengers!

It will soon be a new year so here's what I hope to accomplish in 2011. Keep the TIOLI challenge a mystery! You should give out information and links to it - but ONLY if someone asks. The reason for this is to keep the TIOLI from becoming too large for me to manage and yet keep it an open group.

In addition, please keep your challenges under wraps until the time the monthly TIOLI challenge is posted. Plan your creative challenges so most people will not be able to pre-plan their TIOLI reads ahead of time. This keeps the element of surprise within the challenges. Contrary to popular thought, all of your reads do NOT have to fit into a TIOLI slot, gang!! :)

So here's what you've been waiting for...

Your January 2011 challenge is to find and Read a 3.8 to 4.2 Star Book. The numbers refer to the star rating here on Librarything.

In order to know if a book is eligible for this challenge, look up its star rating first.

There are two ways to find a book's star rating:
1. On the work page of a single book: Just click on the book’s work page. The number (to two decimal places) is listed to the right of the stars.
2. On your personal Recommendation List: To get there, click on the “Profile” tab. Then click on the “Recommendations” sub-heading. The books you see listed there are recommended to you and also give you star ratings. Simply pick a book that’s rated from 3.80 to 4.20. That’s so easy!!

Add the star rating to the book information as you post your book, using this format:

The Hungry Tide (3.92) – Amitav Ghosh – SqueakyChu

Once your book is posted, you no longer need to check its star rating. It will remain qualified once posted, even if the star rating later drops below or exceeds the parameters. Do NOT change the star rating once you post it.

No, you may NOT add a book rated at 4.21 or higher (4.20 is the maximum).

FYI: Matching books need not have the same star rating, but they MUST be within the parameters set by this challenge.

Ready? Have fun with this and have a fabulous New Year!

P.S. Please note: Wiki index is in Message #2 below.

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Other Fun Stuff (not part of the TIOLI challenge):
1. The January 2011 TIOLI Meter - Some challengers use this page to track which challenges they're doing.
2. I Know I'm a TIOLI Addict When... - Frog Logo is on this page!

Wiki Index of Challenges:

Challenges 1-7:
#1: Read a Book with a 3.8 to 4.2 Star Rating
#2: Read any first book in a series - thread
#3: Read a Book with a Duplicate Word in the Title
#4: Read a Book that pre-dates the printing press - thread
#5: Read a Book You Received for any Christmas - thread
#6: Read a nonfiction book about Art/Artists or Antiques/Antiquities - thread
#7: Read a book where the vowels in the title are in alphabetical order

Challenges 8-14
#8. Read a book with an elected official or a title in the title
#9: Read a Book about a brain anomaly, emotional or physical - thread
#10: Read a Book with a proper noun in the title
#11: Read a Book ranked below 10,000 on LibraryThing Popularity Index - thread
#12: Read a Top-Rated Book of 2010 - thread
#13: Read a book about migration/movement between different countries - thread
#14: Read a book naming a colour in the title - thread

Challenges 15 and on
15. Read a book about Hungary or with Hungary in the title - thread
16. Read a book with a connection to Wonderland

No new January challenges may be posted at this time.

Alas, I am not a good thread maintainer, I never add up the points; but someone else usually does throughout the month. Is that you, Madeline? Sorry.

If it's not you, it's others or me. No problem, though. Eventually it gets done.

ETA: ...but, hey, you are a good topic introducer and discussion holder. We all have our strengths! :)

Completed All Passion Spent for #1. My first shared read - whoo!

Buying groceries instead of creating threads? How could you?

My family and I would starve otherwise. No one in my house would ever think to food shop or cook. ;)

I finished the amazing Cloud Atlas. Another one for Challenge 1. Only one week left? I may have to delete a book or two from the wiki for the first time!

I just finished The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett for challenge #2 (new series). I never thought I would be able to read the whole thing in 20 days. Considering it's a whopping 1000 pages, I'm pretty proud of myself right now.

I'm proud of you too.

:-)

I finished The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens for challenge #7 (Read a book where the vowels in the title are in alphabetical order), which is also a shared read with Kerry (avatiakh).

*wonders how many books there are that only have one vowel in a title that consists of three or more words*

Yea, norabelle414! I didn't think that could possibly be a shared read. But did you like it?

I finished Declan Hughes, The Wrong Kind of Blood - first in series challenge - today - a PI returns home to Ireland and a heap of trouble - not perfect but I enjoyed reading it and will carry on with the series.

Am reading The Invisible Bridge and can see why it got good ratings (Highest Rated books by LT members last year) and will probably finish Ben Pastor's Lumen this month, which is billed as a first in series though I haven't found any references to other books in the "Martin Bora series".

I finished You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness by Heather Sellers, and I'm sure it will rank as one of the best books I've read this year. I'll discuss it on the brain anomaly thread as soon as I process a little. Next up is Still Alice for the same thread.

>13 Citizenjoyce: I agree with what you said about The Pillars of the Earth, Joyce (somewhere in the last thread). I was soooo intimidated by it at first. But it was impossible to put down. I liked it a lot and learned a lot but I feel it should stand on its own. I might read the sequels at some point, but not anytime soon. I'm not even exactly sure what the sequel would be to a book that spans several generations.

Thanks for reading (listening to) it; I wouldn't've picked it up if it wasn't a shared read.

I've finished A Fatal Grace for the Star Rating challenge and have joined everyone and their dog in reading Cloud Atlas for the same challenge.

I've finished Dinge, die wir heute sagten and Briefe aus Schulzenhof (by the recently deceased East German poet Eva Strittmatter) for the Below 10,000 challenge. (I think pretty much every book in German -- or rather, languages other than English -- will fulfill this criterion, though. I wonder if the German interface at librarything.de is going to make a difference...)

But since I enjoyed Strittmatter's Letters from Schulzenhof so much, I dove right in with Juliet Barker's The Brontes - A Life in Letters, which fits into the Proper noun challenge. It's a great read, warmly recommended.
Susan

I finished The White Family by Maggie Gee for challenge #1.

I've moved Howard's End Is on the Landing from the Christmas present challenge to the proper names challenge to match another challenger.

Still hoping to get to it this month.

I finished and loved Marcelo In the Real World. Even though I put it in the brain anomaly challenge because of he main character's asperger's syndrome it fits much better in last month's, and Zoe's, religion challenge. Revolution came in, and I'm going to start it, but don't know if I'll finish by Sunday.

ETA: Sorry, I've deleted this message as someone thought it was spammy. We certainly don't want that! :-)

I finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for Challenge #12. Now it is on my top books of 2011.

Today I finished The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut for challenge #7, and Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes for challenge #11.

GASP - I had to pull another title from the challenge lists - but at least I didn't affect any points.

This has been a rough reading month for me with several longer than normal books - and more boring than usual books. If I'm lucky, I'll hit 10 for the month - which will be my lowest in quite some time - but if I bothered to count pages, I'm probably about normal. I'll try to crank through Author, Author for Linda's challenge, and I should finish listening to Eden, Ohio on my way home from the airport Friday, so that will count for the proper noun challenge. Then I get to start something NEW!!!

Looking forward to seeing the new challenge lists - I need a jump start. And I've got a challenge I want to post to meet Madeline's newest directive of making the challenges more "challenging"!

Two at one blow! I added Shantaram to the migrations challenge, and Case Histories to the first-in-a-series challenge.

I've finished The Various for the first in a series. Loved it.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through Revolution. The main character says of herself, "Shitty is my default setting." Yes indeedy, and not a setting I find appealing, but by the time she gets into the French Revolution I'm finding I don't want to stop listening.

I finished The Leper of Saint Giles for the proper nouns challenge. I recently started the Cadfael mysteries for the first time. This was my third in the series, and my favorite so far.

I finished reading The Bells by Richard Harvell last night. Was for Madeline's challenge. Really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down. Will review it very soon.

I just finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for Challenge 1. What a terrific read!

I'll definitely finish one more, possibly two, for the January TIOLI. Month-end is rapidly approaching.

I'm eagerly awaiting the posting of the Feb threads -- have a good challenge in mind! *snicker snicker*

Hope to finish four or five more, but certainly three. (Case Histories, Cleopatra bio by Stacy Schiff and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.)

I finished Sense and Sensibility for challenge 1, and Lottery:A Novel for challenge 9. I can't think of two more different reads! But I enjoyed each of them, and that's the beauty of TIOLI!

I hope to finish Oryx and Crake for my last TIOLI this month. Another great month of TIOLI; can't wait for February (just like you, Chatterbox!)

Karen O.

I finished The Knife of Never Letting Go today, which means that the only book I won't be completing that I listed on the wiki is Mudbound, which I gave away to my brother after realizing how depressing it was going to be...

Off to go read The Ask and the Answer whether it fits the challenges or not. :)

I finished and reviewed the absolutely charming Major Pettigrew's Last Stand for the Read a book with an elected official or a title in the title.

I'm going on to read my ER book next, Solo by Rana Dasgupta. I'll check to see if it fits in anywhere but I don't think so.

I'm just a few pages away from finishing Black and Blue for the colour challenge and *have to* finish another non-TIOLI book I promised to send to someone, but I expect I'll probably be able to fit another TIOLI books in there before month's end. Maybe two? That might be pushing it, but with another read-a-thon starting tomorrow, you never know!

Finished My Jesus Year--thank you soooo much, Madeline, and reviewed it at the book site. It's a most interesting exploration of a young-ish man's seeking a rejuvenation of his Jewish fath through a path of exploring the varieties of christian churches avaiable to him. Intriguing and even emotional. Well worth reading.

> 24

And I've got a challenge I want to post to meet Madeline's newest directive of making the challenges more "challenging"!

Oh, yeah!!

> 32

have a good challenge in mind! *snicker snicker*

The snickers make it more enticing!

> 37

I'm glad you liked My Jesus Year, Gail. I didn't really think it would be as good as it turned out to me. The part I liked most about was, not the author reconnecting to his own religion, but the exploration of the various religions in the Bible Belt. I found Cohen's descriptions of them fascinating.

> 37

I liked your review, Gail.

Since he lives in Atlanta, which may be called the Buckle of the Bible Belt,

LOL!!

Oh, sort of cross posted here, Madeline; I left a message at your thread. I really enjoyed the book and was so glad to see his return to a deeper feeling for his faith.

This is a journey that many of us have taken; ritual can seem empty after all those years of childhood, being dragged/cajoled/forced out of bed and off to church or synagogue. But ritual does certainly have a place within one's spiritual life, I think.

I just finished my third challenge-fit book this month. :)

Between Shades of Gray is an ER win about the deportation of people from Balkan countries by the Soviets to Siberia - this specific story takes the characters all the way to the North Pole, with 16-year-old Lina as the point of view character. The author was inspired to write the story because of her father's family history (his parents were able to escape through Germany, but other relatives weren't so lucky), and a lot of research went into it, it looks like. There's a long list in the back of people and institutions that helped, including a few nonfiction books that I'm probably going to look into.

It's a very compelling story - once I started reading it, I found myself wanting to get to the end to find out whether or not Lina and her family make it out, but I also was curious about how bad could it get (very, horrifyingly bad), and I wanted to learn more about this thing that I only vaguely knew of, mostly thanks to the children's book The Endless Steppe and also to a friend who lived in the Ukraine during her high school years and from whom I've learned most of what I know about the region.

But it's also a very bleak story, because of the topic. I am very grateful for the epilogue that reassures the reader that the lives of Lina and her loved ones improves somewhat.

I finished Still Alice and think I need to drink a bottle of water to cure my crying induced dehydration. What a powerful book! Now on to Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent about her voluntarily admitting herself to a mental institution in order to report on it.

I just finished reviewing The Bells for challenge #1, which is a historical fiction novel about a young man who is blessed with both exceptional hearing and singing voice and becomes one of the most famous musicos (or castratos) of his time. The review is here, and I've also included a link to a recording of a modern-day male soprano to give an idea of what they must have sounded like.

I've finished Beowulf for the Book that pre-dates the printing press challenge and have read Snared Nightingale and added that to the Low Popularity Challenge, this one comes in at 1,144,167 so is pretty unknown here on LT.
I've still got two books I should be able to finish, Fatelessness and Meditations, but have taken Prague and Dark Matter off the wiki.

Ok, this is the time of month where I begin to burst with anticipation of what's to come in the new TIOLI challenge.

:)

I've changed my mind. Instead of adding Voluntary Madness, I'm going back to my original plan to read A Thread of Grace since I really want to read it, and it's shared.

I listed 15 books for various TIOLI challenges this month. I've just completed Black and Blue for the colour challenge, and will complete Oliver Twist for challenge #1 today also. I'll be starting The Kitchen House for challenge #12 during this read-a-thon which is starting now. Even if I don't manage to complete the latter, I'll still have finished 13/15 books this month, and if I do, I'll have to remove just one book from the TIOLI wiki. I'm sure others have read lots more books than me, but I still thought I'd brag a little since I was sure I was overdoing it when I listed all those books. Yay me! :-)

50: Well done!

I finished Eden, Ohio today for the proper noun challenge, but now that I see the February challenges, I wish I had let it linger a little longer so I could have counted it for the African American Women challenge. It's the story of a town founded by former slaves, and the generations of women descending from the founding family who look over the town's residents through progress and change from the Civil War and on into the late 20th century.

I finished up Waiting for Rain earlier this evening for challenge #1.

I've never heard of Eden, Ohio. Feel free to discuss it in next month's thread even if you can't list it. It looks fascinating.

I've just finished Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for Challenge #2. To my surprise, I have really enjoyed it. Conversational, sometimes colloquial but also intelligent. I learned some new things and it made me think about my own life.
Recommended.

For Challenge 1, I've read Calling on Dragons at 4.05

I've finished Fatelessness for the Hungary challenge and have taken Meditations off the wiki as once I started reading it I immediately realised this is a book to dip into and savour rather than try and read in just 2 days.
I have 50 pages left in The Heir of Night and it fits challenge #1 with a rating of 4.2 so have added it to the wiki.

I'm about half way through Thread of Grace and what an eye opener it is. I had no idea of anything to do with Jews in Italy, and if the Catholic church really did offer them so much support during WWII I'm amazed. I do love Italy, I hope it's true.

Finished The Kitchen House tonight for challenge #12. I didn't set a personal record, but I did read it within a 36-hour period. Only put it down to go to sleep last night and I'd say it was worth missing out sleep tonight for it too.

I finished The Dissemblers for challenge #1.

#58> Russell researched the book for 6 years and it's based on many testimonies. In the back of my edition, she lists a few books that were helpful to her research. From my thread comments:Russell was inspired by a story, The priest, the rabbi and the paratrooper in Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism and these characters all appear in the novel.

Thanks, Kerry. I haven't read her comments at the end of the novel because I didn't want to get any spoilers.

Did you like The Disemblers? I loved it.

#62: I liked it, but did not love it.

Finished my last TIOLI book this morning. I originally signed up for 6, but had to scale back to three. I read:

Still Life by Louise Penny for #2 (new series)
England, England by Julian Barnes for #3 (duplicate word in title)
I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali for #10 (proper noun in title)

I am now plotting my attack on the February TIOLIs!

I just finished my 5th (and most likely last) TIOLI book for this month, On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers for the first challenge. It has a rating of 4.16. I also read:

First in a series: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith and The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Top rated of 2010: Room by Emma Donoghue
Vowels in order: Fool by Christopher Moore

It was a very productive reading month for me.

Finishing up Gilgamesh for the prior to print challenge. I am going to have to remove several books from the wiki. My non-fiction is taking longer to read than I anticipated. But why rush it?

Am I the only one having trouble accessing the February thread? The link is taking me to 2010...

Madeline - do you think our shared read, Come from the Four Winds fits in Suzanne's non fiction travel category? I am really enjoying the book, but you were absolutely right. I don't want to rush.

>>67 nittnut: - make sure you are in the 75 Books Challenge for 2011 not 2010 (Maybe that's the problem???)

Here is the link:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/108561

I finished my last TIOLI for January - Author, Author by David Lodge for Linda's duplicate word challenge. It's a fictionalized account of Henry James' life, and I have a feeling if I were more familiar with the works of James that I might have appreciated the book more. For the rare cases where I knew the work, I realized that the book includes anecdotes, etc. which reflect where some of the ideas behind his titles came from. Not the easiest read, I struggled through the first half before it really started picking up, but again, I think someone more versed in Jamesian literature would have a more positive reaction.

I'm heading there using the link at the top of this page. I can get to the wiki, just not the thread.

Jenn,

Here's a link to February's thread. Bookmark it so you can find it again.

I don't think that Chasya Pincus's book really fits into Suzanne's "travel" challenge. Although, yeah, the kids travelled to a new place, the focus wasn't on seeing or appreciating the places through which the travel was made.

I'd say to just skip the TIOLI challenge ("leave it") and read the book slowly for the beautiful history that it is. I'm only about 2/3 of the way through the book, and I don't want to rush through it either.

There are several books I won't finish for January's challenges, but that's okay. I'm the kind of reader that picks up a book that I feel like reading. That's why it's so hard for me to get back to those ER books that didn't grab me right away. At some point, I am going to have to finish them. :(

I just added the link above

Patrick! You didn't leave me time to finish my message!! :)

I was editing - nittnut was missing out on TIOLI - All Hands On Deck!

> 70

Addendum to Jenn:

It doesn't really matter that it won't be a "shared read" in February. What *is* important is that you discovered it from me, we are talking about it together, and sharing it in this way.

You have to realize that I learned about this book 30 years ago and didn't even read it until this year! So now two of us are reading it instead of just me alone.

The TIOLI points? They're really just a starting point (no pun intended) to get us talking to each other about shared books by hopefully encouraging us to read them in a similar time frame. It helps in talking about shared books that they are fresh in our mind (especially my forgetful mind!).

> 73

nittnut was missing out on TIOLI - All Hands On Deck

LOL!!

Not that it impacts me, but Regarding Come from the Four Winds, I noticed that it was originally published in 1970, so it would qualify for my "Big 4-0" Challenge from October which I don't think either of you participated in. So if you can pair it with another challenge (maybe the "Making a Difference" challenge), you could list it as part of the TIOLI Remix challenge.

Jenn, I fixed the link that was broken. Thanks!

> 76

Bingo! We can do "Read and review an unreviewed book/A Book published in 1970". That would work! Thanks, Patrick!

Patrick needs to win the help-a-fellow (or sister)-challenger-find-a-challenge award..

Finished up Sense and Sensibility a few minutes ago (uh-oh, touchstone not working) for my last TIOLI for the month. At first, and for quite a while actually, I didn't like it very much at all, just a bit of wit here and there. Since I was doing a group read, I stuck with it. I liked it in the end, but probably would put it at the lower part of Austen's production. Too much drama from Marianne made be a l bit bored. Still, worth a read, if just to show how she began and developed over time in her other works.

Oh: I just realized Have His Carcase fits into Madeline's challenge (#1) this month as well.

Patrick needs to win the help-a-fellow (or sister)-challenger-find-a-challenge award

Indeed!

Folks, we're coming up to the last day of January. Remember to review all pages of January's wiki (and use Control and F if you need to) so that you can remove all books that are not COMPLETED by midnight of January 31st. Don't rush through your books. Simply remove them and see if they fit a challenge for February. If not, don't grieve. :) I'm sure you'll eventually find another book to slip into February's superb challenges.

I just wanted to say that there is great variety and increasing difficulty in February's challenges. I like that! As we progress in our TIOLI challenges, we're going to try to keep this up. Thanks for working so hard on thinking up new and challenging challenges. Keep up the good work!

I finished Yalo by Elias Khoury just before midnight, for challenge #7. It was a novel about a young Lebanese man imprisoned and brutally interrogated in post-civil war Beirut, who is forced to write a testimony about his past life and the crimes he is accused of committing. It was a so-so read, and not up to the level of his outstanding novels Gate of the Sun and White Masks.

I am deleting Supreme Courtship from the wiki. I have not even started it yet and given the books I am currently reading, I do not think I can get the book read by midnight tomorrow. I hate to lose the point though :(

I hate to lose the point though :(

No guilt! That's required!!

#85: OK, I will try not to feel guilty. The good thing is that, despite not reading Supreme Courtship, I did manage to read 17 other books of my own this month.

A couple of questions:
For challenge 13 - Different Countries - can I count "Sleeping Arrangeme nts", which is a chicklit novel about 2 families on holiday in Spain, (although it's more about how they interact)?

For challenge 16 - Wonderland - can I have "Calling on Dragons"? Though there's no direct reference (that I remember), there is a rabbit that gets larger, changes colour, starts to float and so on. How about "The Courts of Chaos"?

#73 - Thanks for having my back!

#79 - I second that award nomination.

Madeline - not to worry, making the book fit TIOLI isn't my main goal, just thought I'd ask. Now, thanks to Super-Patrick, not only can I find the TIOLI thread, but we have a challenge to fit our book into. We can always find a new one for March if necessary. I will be visiting your thread this week to discuss. I have a couple questions. I could totally Google it, but I'd rather ask you...

88: I don't think being on a short family holiday counts, it's about migration and different cultures. I expect it fits in the less popular book challenge?

> 88

Looking forward to your questions, Jenn.

>89 elkiedee:: It was a long shot; just trying to cover as many challenges as poss.

Whew! Thanks to the LT problems yesterday afternoon, I was able to read one of my Christmas books, Gweilo. I enjoyed this realistic look at Hong Kong in the 1950s and posted a short review here.

Onward to February and its challenges!

I finished Revolution this morning and ended up liking it a great deal. For most of the book the main character is so whiny and self absorbed I hated everything about her, but the French Revolution and the catacombs sucked me in, and fortunately her too.

I finished of The Case of the Missing Servant, which officially closes out January TIOLI for me.

I ended this month finishing out After the Quake by Haruki Murakami late this afternoon. That's a good thing, too, since that was my entry in my own challenge. :) I didn't like this as much as other Murakami books I've read. The last two stories ("Superfrog Saves Tokyo", "Honey Pie"), were good, though.

Hey, the fourth story even had a giant frog in it! What more could I ask for?! :D

I've finished The Lacuna, for challenge #13 on migrations, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand for challenge #8, a compilation of Aesop's Fables for the pre-dating the printing press challenge, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for the connected to Wonderland challenge, and I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay for the Duplicate Word in the Title challenge. Enjoyed them all!

I went a little challenge crazy and read books in 13 of 16 January challenge categories (and might have done them all with a few more days).

D'oh! Finished up The Mayor of Casterbridge and then saw that my former fellow readers had deleted their entries from the wiki. Thought I'd squeezed in another shared read! Well I hope y'all get around to it soon, 'cus it was fantastic. :)

I finished my last TIOLI read for January this evening. Solo by Rana Dasgupta was my ER book and just happened to fit into the Read a Booked Below 10,000 in Popularity. I'll review it tomorrow.

I challenged myself to read books in 15 of the 16 challenges. I came up one short, but am pleased to have read a number of books from my shelves and books I would not have otherwise read:
#1 The Map of True Places
#2 All the Pretty Horses
#3 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
#4 Symposium
#6 The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal The World's Greatest Works of Art
#7 Zeitoun
#8 Lord of Misrule
#9 Left Neglected
#10 Survival in Auschwitz
#11 In a Strange Room
#12 The Lotus Eaters
#13 The Warmth of Other Suns
#14 The Yellow Wallpaper
#15 The Invisible Bridge

For February?

As all of you finish up your January TIOLI books this evening, come join us on the February thread.

Well done to AnneDC and Brenpike for reading in so many challenge categories.

>99 brenpike:: Wow, Brenda, you don't mess around! Congratulations on a great month of reading.

That's great Brenda! Did you have a chance to enter your books onto the wiki? I didn't see your book in Challenge #6, and when I scanned some others, it looks like you'll actually help earn a point for Linda's challenge by being the second reader of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Let us know if you need help. It would be great to see all of your work captured in the wikis.

I finished my last book for the month A Thread of Grace. What a great book. I never even knew it existed until it was recommended on LT. I don't like war books, but this one with the tale of all the different factions fighting in Italy was excellent. I have renewed respect for Mary Doria Russell. I was pretty disillusioned with The Sparrow and Children of God, but she did an excellent job of both research and writing on this one. She does have a thing for martyrs though, doesn't she?

I really enjoyed The Kitchen House, which I read for challenge #12: read a top-rated book of 2010. I had a hard time putting down and read it within a 36-hour period. My review is here. That makes a total of 14 books read for this month's various TIOLI challenges. In the end, I only had to remove one book. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't have to remove a whole lot more of them! Now let's see if I can keep this up! :-)

Good review, Ilana.

I'll have to remove Beowulf as I started it but got distracted and didn't finish. But I did complete all my other planned reads, and indeed all 8 books read this month fitted into one or other TIOLI challenge, with (though only 2 shared reads, and not with such a wide spread of challenges as some of you).

Now let's think about February!

My last read for January was Gilgamesh. I didn't read a scholarly version though. I read a version in three parts, adapted for children and I read it to my kids (4, 6, 12). They all really liked it. The artwork is really neat. I recommend it.

#106 Thanks, glad you liked it! I just tried out the book quiz and found out I'm Watership Down. I can live with that! :-)

Book quiz?

Before the January thread closes, I just wanted to update my reading list and find challenge homes for my January books:
The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny - challenge 1, rated 4.08
Sleeping Arrangements by Madeleine Wickham - challenge 11, at 20,716
Bedknob & Broomstick by Mary Norton- challenge 11, at 12,443
Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede - challenge 1, rated 4.05

I work backwards and usually try to fit the challenge to the book than find a book for the challenge!)

#110 Just go to my profile. You'll see towards the bottom a big cover of Watership Down and just below that a link to the book quiz.

Thanks! Sounds fun.