75 Books Challenge for 2012 : Take It Or Leave It Challenge - February 2012 - Page 2

For those new to this challenge: More info and monthly index can be found in post #1 of this thread or this TIOLI FAQS wiki.

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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Okay. You guys thought that my embedded animal challenge was too easy. You *laughed* when I said I might have a challenge “asking for an animal that's drinking a beverage” on a particular page. Are you ready for what’s coming…?

Your challenge is to read a book with an animal mentioned on the left hand page AND a beverage mentioned on the right hand page AND both page numbers must include the number three. These can be any pair of pages that face each other and meet the parameters. However, the animal must be on the left hand page, and the beverage must be on the right hand page. Not vice versa. List your book as follows:

A Handbook of American Prayer (136/bee – 137/tequila) – Lucius Sheppard – alcottacre
Gun With Occasional Music (34/ass – 35/wine) – Jonathan Lethem – pbadeer
The Lacuna (34/horse – 35/water) – Barbara Kingsolver - _Zoe_
Rash (136/bear - 137/Pepsi) – Pete Hautman – norabelle414
Sam the Cat (232/horse – 233/wine) – Matthew Klam – SqueakyChu
Sister Teresa – (130/clam – 131/water) - Barbara Mujica - katiekrug

To find a book to fit this challenge is actually easier than you might think at first. Begin your search with pages in the 30’s, 130’s, 230’s, etc. Then I’d recommend starting with a search for a beverage on the right hand page. Remember, you may (and are encouraged to) use embedded words, even those which stretch across more than one printed word. Look for water (easy to spot) or small words such as tea, rum, or gin (all really good embedded words). Then, on the left hand page, look for words such as pen, sow, ewe, cat, dog, pig, fly, bee etc. The animal word can also be embedded. You *can* do this.

…and, yeah, blood can be a beverage, but only if your book is about vampires. :O

Good luck…and have fun choosing a book! :D

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Other Fun Stuff (not part of the TIOLI challenge):

1. The February 2012 TIOLI Meter - Optional page on which you may track your TIOLI reading. FYI: This is not meant to be competitive - only fun!
2. I Know I'm a TIOLI Addict When... - Frog Logo is on this page!
3. Morphidae's List of Previous TIOLI Challenges - You may use this reference (Do a control-F scan) to avoid repeating a previous challenge. If your idea is similar to a previous challenge, just make it unique by adding a new "twist" to it. (Updated 02/04/12)

Wiki Index:

Challenges #1-6
1. Read a book with an animal on the left hand page, a beverage on the right hand page, and the number 3 in both page numbers.
2. Read a book by an author that you know
3. Read a book with a word of at least 5 letters in the title that is an anagram of another 5 letter word
4. Read a book that someone else has added to a list you created - thread
5. Read a book with an ungulate in the title or on the cover
6. Read a book whose author's surname has a "Scrabble value" of 12 or more

Challenges #7-12
7. Read a book published by a University or College
8. Read a book by an author who has a blurb on a book in your home or in your LT catalog
9. Read a book with a title that includes a particular person or people (by name or designation) AND a specific place or region.
10 .Read a Book with a Title written in the FIRST PERSON
11. Read a 2 Word Titled Book BUT the First Letter of the First Word Must Come After the First Letter of the Second Word (in the alphabet)
12. Read a book with a cover that depicts love

Challenges #13-18
13. Read a book set on an island
14. Read a work of *NONFICTION* from the NY Times notable books of 2011
15. Read a book that has the Letters in TIOLI (T,I,O,L) as doubles in the title or Author's Name
16. Read a book about economics
17. Read a book by or about Charles Dickens
18. Read a book originally written in a language that you do NOT speak and read

Challenges #19-22
19. Read a book that won or was nominated for the Nebula Award
20. Read a that can be categorised in at least two genres and is narrated in the first person
21. Read a book from the Over the Rainbow list, current or previous year
22. Read a book you started before Dec 25, 2011

No more new challenges until next month. Thanks!

I need more experience in using LT's continuation feature. I'm still hitting some bumps in the road.

*sigh*

>3 SqueakyChu: What went wrong? It looks okay this time.

I fixed it. I keep creating multiples of the same post. I don't know why. I just need to be more careful. At least this time, I don't have two different threads that say the exact same page number! :)

Yay! Bravo, you did it with (hardly) a glitch! :-)

There was a glitch, but now it's gone! :D

Madeline overcoming glitches what a woman.

Thanks, Suzanne for the explanation of ROE. Yes, bad things are happening. You know how it is when you read a book and hope that what you know is going to happen somehow doesn't? I would say that these guys and gals deserve what's coming, but the rest of us don't.

Thanks for the question and answer about ROE in previous thread, Suz and Joyce. I just looked that statistic up on the two stocks (just a few shares) I recently bought and found (phew!) that both had ROE's over 10. :)

I have your book on Nook, Suzanne, and it didn't occur to me to look for a glossary It's there, yea.

So, Madeline, I guess Chasing Goldman Sachs has good news for you.

Well, I really need to get Suz's book and read it. Then I'll know for sure. :)

I think the stock market is fun - but ONLY if one doesn't invest more than one can afford to lose.

It's not YOUR glitch that creates two continuations, it's an LT bug.

How much of the narrative must be set on an island for challenge #13?

I'm reading an episodic fantasy novel in which the hero must rescue a maiden on the "Island of Tormented Virgins" to complete a larger quest. This is harder than it sounds, but that's beside the point.

OMG! I bumped Chatterbox out of the top spot on the Frog Meter!

This will last all of five minutes, I'm sure.

Morphy, you're Stasia in disguise!! LOL! You'll probably last longer than that -- or Luci will come and sweep us both away.

See, told ya. Already past me again. LOL.

Finally finished that book I started Feb.1. I'm more noting it so I can remember to fill out the rest of the information for it in the Island challenge. Here be Dragons being the book. Roughly a billion pages long.

I think that raises my total read this year to something like 5 books.

Appears to be a beloved book on here, but I found it kind of flat, boring, and with too much in the way of descriptive sex (more than none).

Eta: actually that was my ninth book. I'm on pace to read 54 books this year.

...and here we have the TIOLI stats for January 2012

In the month of January, challengers presented 23 challenges in which a total of 624 books were read. Of these, 177 (or 28%) were shared reads, giving us a total of 96 points for January and year-to-date. That's less than last year at this same time, folks!

The most popular book of the month was Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. That book was read by 9 readers.

The most popular challenge, in which a total of 104 books were read was cyderry's challenge to read a book with a word that could be used as a noun as well as another part of speech.

There was a tie for the challenge with the most TIOLI points. Two challenges each accumulated 14 TIOLI points. These challenges were (1) SqueakyChu's challenge to read a book set in a state mentioned in Dr. King's "I Have a dream" speech and (2) Samantha_Kathy's challenge to read a book that was short-listed, long-listed, or won the Orange prize.

Soon to come...
...the Awards for January 2012...

I finished The Secret River by Kate Grenville for the island challenge. Wasn't an easy read for me, but a good one in the end.

Okay, I'm going to make an effort to do more shared reads this year.

I just added Drawing from Memory by Allen Say to challenge #3 and have started on Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin in same challenge, if anyone wants to join me.

Yay! I finished Northanger Abbey last night. So funny...

So we all need to focus on shared reads...*rushes off to start Northanger Abbey*

I finished a reread of Northanger Abbey earlier this week too, so have added to the wiki. I now need to concentrate on my original TIOLI listings.

I finished Chasing Goldman Sachs: How the Masters of the Universe Melted Wall Street Down...And Why They'll Take Us to the Brink Again by Suzanne McGee. For someone who knows nothing about finance, it was a difficult but worthwhile book with no easy answers. People who work on Wall Street are driven, competitive, intelligent risk takers, and that's what makes them both valuable and dangerous to the optimum flow of money. She says what is needed with the above characteristics is a sense of fiduciary responsibility. What she doesn't say is how an irresponsible, self serving person could develop such a thing. Now, for another economics book, I've started an audiobook of The Big Short which covers the same thing but supposedly with humor. Hmm, we'll see how that works out.
I also finished The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley in Madeline's catch all category. The first half is an excellent study of a 91 year old inner city black man in the midst of Alzheimers who lives alone with little support system. The first half is excellent, the last half, just kind of an ordinary story, though everyone in my book club loved the whole thing. Now I've started Property which I'm assuming is going to be another one of those uncomfortable Orange Prize winners.

I forgot to add that I finished In the Garden of Beasts. I was so infuriated with Dodd and his wild daughter Martha for their love of all things German and for his attempts to accommodate the German's "Jewish problem" by suggesting that Roosevelt should decrease the number of Jews who worked in embassies that dealt with Germans. He also assured Hitler that we too had a "Jewish problem" but we found we could deal with it using quotas. It seems, however, that most of the country was angry with him not because of his anti-Semitic stance but because he was too confrontational with the Germans and not willing enough to see their point of view or even to go to their lovely Nuremberg Hitler rallies. Our main concern seemed to be that if we were accommodating enough to the Germans they would pay back their war debt to us. Business is business after all. This is a great book that shows so many sides of the war issue. Finally, a Times Notable book I can rate a 5.

Awards for January 2012:

The What Happened to Tennessee Award goes to mbellerose for reading the only book set in South Carolina for the challenge to read a book set in a state mentioned in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream" speech. This challenger read More Than Petticoats by Lee Davis Perry. No, there were no books read for this challenge that were set in Tennessee.

The Brrrr! Baby It’s Cold Outside Award goes to countrylife for setting up the fun challenge and contest to read a book with the most beautiful winter scene pictured on its cover. It was great fun seeing the book covers that were part of this contest. Thanks to everyone who voted. This was definitely not the easiest contest for which to pick a winner.

The Best English Teacher Award goes to cyderry for her challenge to read a book where a word in the title can be used as a verb as well as another part of speech. That got everyone pulling out their dictionary in search of making their verb into another part of speech. Many challengers were quite successful and clever with this challenge.

The Teeniest Number Award goes to Jacqueline065 for reading a book with the smallest number in the title. She read Blanche Among the Talented Tenth by Barbara Neely for raidergirl3’s challenge to read a book with a fraction in the title.

The Letter Searcher Award goes to Anne DC for creating the fun challenge to read a book in which either a title word, or the first or last name of the author, has three or more of the same vowel. That challenge had us running to our bookshelves to puzzle over which books would qualify. Heh!

The Best Idea Award goes to Carmene for the challenge to read a book which has a beverage mentioned on page 10. I must give this challenger an award as she was my inspiration for creating February’s doozy of a main challenge. I could never have done that without her help in January! :)

If others have awards to give for the January, 2012, challenges, please jump right in now to award them. Anyone may present an award within the next 24 hours.

Congratulations to our January award winners!

Somehow seeing the awards has made me look forward to next month's TIOLI already. But it's only the 19th!

Congratulations to the winners!

Zoe, I'm looking forward to next months thread, also. :)

> 28, 29

I have another doozy of a challenge for next month. Just enjoy this month's challenges while you have them! :)

Would you consider Venice an island? So I could put a book set in Venice for that challenge?

Awesome! This was my first month of doing TIOLI and I didn't even know there were fun awards. I had to read a book set in SC since I just moved here. :)

I finished and REVIEWED Max Hastings' fabulous new WWII book Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945 for the NY Times Notable Non-Fiction of 2011 Challenge.

My first TIOLI award! I feel elated,and thanks for giving me a reason to finally pick up a book that has been in my TBR pile for a year!

31> Venice is definitely and island (or group of islands) in the ... lagoon? bay? whatever it's called.



also, I picked up another book for a shared read, as promised. Fair Play is fairly thin and so far is reading rather quickly, too. I'm really enjoying it. It's kind of like a series of character vignettes, I guess? But the writing is lovely.

(yikes, that photo was way huge! edited to get a smaller version off Wikipedia)

I must say I'm enjoying this challenge stuff. It's helping me pick out which books on my (way too) large to read pile to read, and it's got me to read things I normally wouldn't. I'm not really mush into poetry, but I saw that an Kindle edition of Songs of Innocence and of Experience put out by Oxford University Press was only $.95, I decided to get it. Even though it wasn't really my sort of thing, I enjoyed it.

#33 In a year or two, I'd like to focus my reading on WW2 and will add that one to my list.

I finished the excellent Orange Prize award winner for 2003, Property by Valerie Martin which I was able to fit into Madeline's crazy challenge. Next up is the blue cotton gown for the rainbow challenge.

Wow! I've never been tagged as an inspiration to anyone! Thanks for the award, Madeline :0)

>34 jacqueline065: I'm glad math was able to help you read that book

>35 keristars: thanks! that's a great picture of Venice.

It's the 21st - The Quickie Reads Day!

Suggest some quick COMPLETED books that you or others have read this month that you think would be quick and fun for other challengers to read before February ends...

Should we suggest Northanger Abbey? Nearly everyone's completed it. :)

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan is only 127 pages, and a pretty quick if creepy read. I read it for the blurb challenge.

> 42

Should we suggest Northanger Abbey?

I probably won't finish it this month as I'm only doing a chapter a day (or night), but others can probably zip their way right through it

...and mention their intention (poetry!) on the tutored thread since it's now INTERMISSION! :)

I read War Horse last night -- it's excellent and only takes an evening to read. Challenge #5

>42 lyzard: And, of course, everyone should read Northanger Abbey! Challenge #7.

Edited to add that The Riddle-Master of Hed and its sequel Heir of Sea and Fire are both quite short -- and fit into Fantasy February. Challenges #9 and #6, respectively.

I just read Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee for Challenge #6. That's a pretty short book and a quick read, but, boy, is it ever depressing!

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall for the Someone of Something challenge (#9). It's short and highly entertaining.

I try to read one or two books each February for Black History Month. This year I read My Name Is Not Angelica, a short YA book that fits the title in the first person challenge (#10). It could probably be read in a single sitting.

I read Phantom Tollbooth in a few hours...it was great fun and fit the 15th Challenge double!

Even though Property is short it covers the idea of slavery and oppression from many different sides and gives us a look at slave uprisings that I wasn't aware of. Good for Black History Month, good for Women's History Month (just in case you don't get around to it until next month), good all the way around.

I finished Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin which is a short read, and which many readers loved. It didn't do much for me personally, but no matter.

I also finished the graphic novel Drawing from Memory by Allen Say this month. Both are under challenge #3.

Starting on Sea of Poppies tonight (#6).

eta: also just finished and recommend The Seeing Stone by Holly Black for a quick read.

I think The Wayward Bus is a quick read and I've already joined Cheli in reading The Phantom Tollbooth. I haven't read it since I was a child but am loving it.

I read The Enchanted Island of Yew for 13. It has the advantage of being short, easy, and fun (if you like children's fantasy). Also, since it's out of copyright, it's a free download in ebook form.

AHAHA. I'm going to "win" the Still(!) Reading challenge.

I found the copy of Patty in the City that I started in April of 2009 and misplaced and so couldn't read it. I dug through my Piles o' Books special for this!

(It so happens that it was amongst some stationery and art supplies, probably because I'd been using the cover as a straight edge...)

I finished The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir by Patricia Harman for the rainbow challenge. There wasn't really a lot of "rainbow" material in it. Patricia Harman is a Certified Nurse Midwife married to an OB GYN. They've established a practice in which, unfortunately because of the cost of malpractice insurance, they no longer deliver babies. Her husband, Tom, loves surgery. He's a laid back kind of guy, doesn't see the point in worrying about things, and just wants to spend his days in OR. Patricia is just the opposite, she worries about everything, she's kind of the tough guy in the practice and they face all kinds of problems: bad accountants, unexpected debt to the IRS, problems with meeting their payroll, litigious - or just the fear of - litigious patients. In between the accounts of her fears Patricia talks about their hippy days on the commune, the raising of their 3 boys, with all the accompanying problems, and the lives of her patients - one of whom is a FTM transexual., one is abused, there's some devastating results from a deliberately lost condom, an eating disorder, substance abuse, pedophilia, unintended pregnancy. Many scared and happy women. Many ways the pain of childbirth are continued in the pain of motherhood. She describes the care of and crises in the life of her transexual patient the same way she discusses her other patients - talks about her problems, how she relates, how she helps in both a medical and emotional way. I think she shows too much reliance on pharmacology both estrogen and antidepressants, but everything in her practice reads true. Everything in her relationship with her husband reads true too. They're two accomplished, intelligent people with different approaches to life. It's not an easy marriage or an easy practice. She does a great job showing many sides of life and many sides of those sides.
Now I'm about half way through The Vampire Tapestry for the Nebula Award challenge. This is sure different from the other Charnas books I've read.

I finished Doomsday Book by Connie Willis for the Nebula challenge (FINALLY!) and also listened to Études de Femmes by Honoré de Balzac which has two very short and very good stories, including La Grande Bretèche which is wonderfully gothic and therefore creepy. Loved it.

eta: Balzac is in the Scrabble value challenge.

eta2: I also completed The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís which I'm listing under challenge #15. A short read and definitely worth it!

Tighten Up!

What's that? It's an idea for those of you who are not able to think up a challenge for this coming month (March is almost here, guys!!) and want to post one.

If you are unable to think up a new challenge for future months, play "Tighten Up" with us. Take an older challenge and "tighten it up" by making it just a wee bit more difficult to do.

For example, for the challenge to read a book that had a star rating of 3.8 to 4.2, now make it a star rating of 3.9 to 4.2. In other words, twist an old challenge to make challengers word even harder to find a qualifying book.

Disclaimer: You are not required to do this. It's merely an idea. :D

I just completed The Shadow in the River by Frode Grytten for challenge 18 - it was originally written in Norwegian.

I also added The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare to challenge 3. Bridge is an anagram of begird, which means to encompass. Yes, I had to look it up :D

>57 SqueakyChu:

Are there really folks having trouble coming up with Challenges? I think I have one for each of the next six months!

Are there really folks having trouble coming up with Challenges?

I think it was only me for a while! :)

But Madeline, that's because you come up with spectacular Challenges -- most of the rest of us are aiming for something a little more mundane....

I honestly couldn't think of anything. I'm back on track now...I think! I have a fun one for March.

Ilana, I had a question about your challenge. For Nebula awards and nominees, the whole list includes novels, short stories, etc. plus another-named award for a young adult title. Does the Andre Norton Award count towards your challenge? I've put it on the wiki for now, but I'm not even sure I can get to The Girl of Fire and Thorns this month, so no sweat if it doesn't fit your parameters.

By the way, I'm getting a kick out of seeing the other "off-shoot" TIOLI challenges that have sprung up on others groups here on LT. That's sure to get newbies even more confused! :)

Food challenge*
March challenge*

FYI: These have nothing to do with the TIOLI challenges here in the 75-ers group.

63> If it doesn't work for Ilana's challenge, you could get it into the 1st person one. It could be adventure/fantasy/YA... maybe romance, though it's a lot weaker there. (I was tempted to list it on the wiki for adventure/fantasy, but since I didn't read it expressly for TIOLI this month, I didn't. But, just so you know, it's a potential shared read!)

Can anyone suggest challenges? How does that work?

> 66

Can anyone suggest challenges?

You do not "suggest" challenges. You, yourself, will decide what your challenge will be and add it to the wiki. There is no jurying process. All I ask is that you try to make, to the best of your ability, what you think is a "unique" challenge.

How does that work?

At the beginning of the month of March, I will post a new thread. As soon as you see that my first challenge is up, you rush to the wiki for that month and add your own challenge (if you want, as this is optional). You have until the 4th of the month (in this case, March 4th) to add your own challenge.

After you post your challenge to the wiki, I will add it to the index on message #2 of the main thread. Look at the top of this thread to see how the challenges had been set up for February. It will work exactly like that for March.

I will NOT announce ahead of time when I'm posting the March thread. THAT is usually the trickiest part! :D

Madeleine, Don't forget February is a short month.... just sayin' :-)

Thanks, Squeak. I don't have anything in mind....I was just curious how it works. I'm really glad I found you guys...I've been having a lot of fun with TIOLI

> 68

Don't forget February is a short month

So true, Katie, except for the fact that 2012 is a leap year! Perfect for our TIOLI frogs, wouldn't you say? ;)

> 69

I've been having a lot of fun with TIOLI

Great, kittenfish!

I don't have anything in mind

Not to worry. You have nine whole days to think of something! :)

I concede, though! Katie's right. February is a very short month. That means...

It's time to clean up your February TIOLI challenges and be on the lookout for March's thread. :)

What To Do:
(for newbies and those who forget!)

1. Look over your February books on the wiki and remove any of those you are sure you will not finish by midnight February 29 (Wednesday night). Keep those books handy as they might fit into a March TIOLI challenge.
2. Think up a great new challenge for March and be prepared to post it just as soon as you see March's main thread go up.
3. Consider presenting a "Tighten Up" challenge in March. See Message # 57 above.
4. Don't be shy to post awards to anyone you think is deserving after you see that I've posted the (tongue-in-cheek) awards for the preceding month. I try to remember to include such an invitation each time I post the awards.
5. Post any idea or suggestions that you have to make this challenge more fun or itneresting.
6. Always...have fun!

Tapping foot impatiently, waiting for March.

It's there.

#63 I'm sorry Mary, but I'm going to have to say no to that one, even though I'd love more people to join my challenge. But if Nebula isn't listed in the Awards section of the work page, it doesn't count.

#73 It's there.

Yay, the fun begins all over again! :-)

Oh boy. Bring on the March challenges. :-)

>74 Smiler69: No problem! As it turns out, I won't have time for it this month, so I'll slide it over into the 2/4/8/16 challenge.

Edited to correct numbers. :)

Due to illness, I've been reading a LOT this month and have had my best month ever since I started tracking - 39 books so far. And I've matched them all with TIOLI challenges.

AKA Blew Chatterbox out of the water. Bwhahaha. Catch up with me now! :D

(I can't imagine ever doing this again, so I'm taking credit when I can!)

Wow . . . Is that a new record here on LT?

Wow! That's crazy amazing!

Well, I could beat that, Morphy - in about 4 months. What a job well done.
I finished the best vampire story ever, Suzy McKee Charnas' The Vampire Tapestry, that woman can write. I also finished The Big Short by Michael Lewiswhich leaves me waiting for the next economic shoe to drop. Next up reading is my last economic book Aftershock: the Next Economy and America's Future by Robert Reich, and I've started the audiobook of Dreams from My Father written and read by Barack Obama. He does a mighty good job. I guess I shouldn't be as surprised as I am.

It would take me 6 months to read that many books! :)

Hope you're feeling better, Morphy!

I'm sorry that you weren't feeling well, Morphy, but you certainly made good use of your sick time!

Congrats, Morphy.
Although, honestly, I'm not trying to beat anyone. I'm just reading.
Hope that the reading contributed to your recovery!

Hope you're feeling better, Morphy!!

>84 Chatterbox: Oh, I know you aren't! I'm just slightly competitive. Not a lot. Just enough for me to giggle a bit in glee. And to be honest, I wasn't trying to "beat" you anyway. I just got a little kick out of it when I realized just how many I had read! My previous high number of books in a month was 33.

I think mine was back about 18 months ago -- a month when the only "work" I had to do was promoting my own book, and when I took some time off in Toronto. This year is much slower than either 2010 or 2011! I wanted to have finished a total of 75 books by month's end (year to date), but that won't happen. So I probably won't hit my (revised downward) target for the year. Not that it really matters!

I thought I was doing so well with 13 books read in February (best monthly total for me since April of 2010) then I hear your totals and think, who was I trying to kid? Well, it was a good month for me anyway!

My typical month is 20, so February is near twice my usual total. It's unusual even for me.

**sigh** I know...I'm going to end the month with 14 books that fall into the TIOLI challenges. This is my 1st year with the 75'ers and TIOLI. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Guess I'm reading crappy books. LOL! I haven't found much discussion like I was anticipating.

I hope everyone had a successful February!

I started reading a book for March, figuring I'd never finish it by the end of today, but it is a wonderful little book, and I can't put it down, and I think it will be done by tonight! I'll have to add it to the February TIOLI challenge. The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax was an unexpected delight! It's going from March Madness 4 word title to February double letter TIOLI challenge.

It could also be samantha_kathy's new author, first in a series challenge, but she claimed G already.

90> 14 is more than me! I'm only up to 16 books all year :P

As for discussion, it really depends on where and what. I've had some good discussions of some of the books I've read on my thread, as well as Madeline's Northanger Abbey tutored read thread.

(And I'm pretty proud of my 16 (or 17?) books this year. That's more than I've read in a 2 month span in ages, which feels good. Now if only I could continue reading this much and carve out time for my other hobbies, too... except reading is my favorite of them all, so it's not too bad. And I can't afford to drive to Orlando more than once every other month.)

91> The Mrs. Pollifax series is a delight! The books are not to be taken seriously, they're just good fun with a little action thrown in :D

Cleaned up after myself on the wiki. I ended up with 3 books for 2 different TIOLI challenges this month. I read more than 4 books, but nothing that fit TIOLI.

I read The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare for challenge 3 and The Use of Man by Alexandar Tisma & The Shadow in the River by Frode Grytten for challenge 18.

EDIT: Whoops, my bad, one of my books ended up not fitting challenge 3, so I took it out!

Oh, I loved the Mrs Pollifax books!! Dorothy Gilman seems to have stopped writing -- is she still alive?? Don't miss her other books, either, some of them are equally or even more delightful. My faves include Nun in the Closet and The Clairvoyant Countess, both of which I absolutely adore and would define as mystery comfort reads....

The real challenge is against ourselves, I think -- pushing ourselves to try new & different books, to read outside our comfort zones or read more deeply. My quantity and range may be remarkable, but not neccessarily the depth -- I'd love to read more of the longer non-fiction tomes (mostly history) that are piling up here.

Dorothy Gilman died Feb 2, 2012, which is how I first heard of her. A library blog I follow mentioned her passing, so I requested the first book on a whim. It's charming and fun, and light, but not comical. It's the Cold War after all.

I finished my last read for February--The Wayward Bus for challenge 6. In doing my cleaning up of wiki entries, I discovered that The Night Circus was a shared read in challenge 3, so I quickly moved my challenge 6 entry of that book. Yay! Shared points!

I read 12 books this month, which is at the high end of what I usually do, but only 2 were shared reads. I hope to improve that stat, next month!

Karen O.

91: raidergirl3, I added The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax to my to-be-read list. I try not to pass by any recommendations like yours! Thanks!

Karen O.

Whew! I finished Our Mutual Friend and added it to the wiki. That was one long book but I wouldn't have missed a single word of it! I had one book in February that didn't fit a challenge -- it's been months since that happened. ;-)

Karen, definitely Mrs. Pollifax!

> 90

I haven't found much discussion like I was anticipating.

The idea of the shared reads was so that you could visit the threads of others who are reading the same book as yourself and talk to each other about that particular book.

If you want to discuss (and learn about) a book in depth, I highly suggest that you sign up for a tutored read for a book that you yourself find to be challenging or else something that is outside of the usual genre that you read.

Club Read is a group that often discusses books more in depth than we do in this group. You might try checking them out as well.

Just finished A Monster Calls (wonderful, wonderful book) and it fits into February TIOLI challenge 15! Now I think that really is my last book for February (however, there are still several hours left in the day!)

Karen O.

@100 Thanks, Squeaky. I'll check both of those groups out.

> 102

More information on tutored reads can be found here.
More information about Club Read can be found here

Midnight's coming...

Finish your Febuary books by then and mark them COMPLETED or delete them from February's wiki and try to tuck them somewhere into March's challenges. Now follow me into next month.

I just managed to get number 28 in for the challenge (plus 5 others that I couldn't fit into any of the challenges, but wanted to read anyway). Not a bad start.

Well, I'd hope to finish Aftershock as my last economics book of the month, but got busy. Fortunately it will fit my unexpected consequences challenge for March. Robert Reich is just a phenomenal thinker who can make even the economy understandable. I could read now, but Top Chef is on. I do love Reich, but I gotta see who wins.

Ah, another Top Chef fan! Did your favorite win?

No, but the favorite of 92% of the online voters did. The food looked pretty yummy.

Can we please have a little bit of the first of the month to finish up posting our reads?

> 109

Yes, you may, Morphy. If a "final tally" is wrong (for example, you're entering another shared read for February), just delete the words "final tally" on the wiki, and I'll recalculate the totals again later.

>110 SqueakyChu: Okay, thanks. I've got them in now but I typically don't add the last books until the morning of the first and sometimes I've seen you've already done a final tally.

I read 4 in Feb. Combing with Jan I am on a pace for 72 this year. Read something north of 200 last year.

112: MikeBriggs, sometimes non-book things get in the way, right? 200+ is amazing! I managed 153, and had a splendid year of reading. I've already read some wonderful books this year, so I'm happy even if I don't get the numbers.

I read somewhere that today (March 1) is Book Day! Yay! Although I think we might call every day, Book Day.

I wonder if there are any special Book Day traditions?

Karen O.

I didn't know today was Book Day. I better get reading.
March 21 is Storytellers Day.

Belatedly adding all my February reads to the wiki - so far I have managed to fit all of them in somewhere, though none of them are shared reads, sadly.

> 111

sometimes I've seen you've already done a final tally

If you see that, unmark the "final tally" and just leave the number of points. In that way, I'll see that someone tampered with it when I go to do the real totals. I usually do those a few days later.

>116 SqueakyChu: Oh good. Thanks.

113) I've been reading magazines and the like, but I also did in 2010 (281 total books read), and in 2011 (292 total books read). New city to explore, but I've been here a year. I'm trying to think of anything else I've been doing, but I can't think of anything different. Just a slow period.

I did start a new book on book day.

I managed to fit 13 books into the February challenges.

6: Read a book whose author's surname has a "Scrabble value" of 12 or more Damned - Chuck Palahniuk (18)

10 .Read a Book with a Title written in the FIRST PERSON While I'm Falling

15. Read a book that has the Letters in TIOLI (T,I,O,L) as doubles in the title or Author's Name Little Earthquakes AND Little Bitty Lies: A Novel AND To Kill a Mockingbird AND Getting Rid of Matthew

13: Read a book set on an island The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

8: Read a book by an author who has a blurb on a book in your home or catalog. The Graveyard Book Neil Gaiman (on cover of TGWCFIASOHOM)

2. Read a book by an author that you know Sugar and Spice: An L.A. Candy Novel Lauren Conrad

11: Read a 2 Word Titled Book BUT the First Letter of the First Word Must Come After the First Letter of the Second Word - Friendship Bread - Darien Gee

17. Read a book by or about Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

3. Read a book with a word of at least 5 letters in the title that is an anagram of another 5 letter word Death by Pantyhose (death/hated) AND Night and Day (night/things)