EBT1002/Ellen Reads Four Thirteens

This will be my first time doing one of these challenges. I won't be doing a pyramid but will be reading thirteen books from four categories that I want to focus on in the coming year. I will read more than 52 books in 2013, so this allows lots of room for serendipity, bandwagon jumping, and susceptibility to recommendations.

Nonfiction

1. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman
3.
etc.

Booker Nominees

1. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (2002 Shortlist)
2. The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (2012 Longlist)
etc.

Short Story Collections

1. 420 Characters by Lou Beach
2. Stay Awake by Dan Chaon
3. The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor
4.
etc.

Selections for the Reading Globally Challenge Group

1. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (Poland)
2. The Line by Olga Grushin
3. A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski - translated from Polish, so even though it's a mystery novel, I'm counting it.
4. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski
5.

etc.

Apparently, every post in my new thread will be labeled as post #1.

Welcome to the group! Looks like your posts have fixed themselves, so all is good. Looking forward to following your reading!

enjoy!

good luck!

I have nonfiction and short story collection categories in my challenge too, so I will be looking for good suggestions here. I've just read The Man Who Loved China and really liked it.

Well, mamzel beat me to what I was going to say. Except I haven't read The Man Who Loved China yet, because I just added it to my wishlist after coming from her thread :)

Welcome!! Looking forward to seeing what you pick for your reads.

Hi Ellen, welcome to the challenge. I love all your categories and know I will be getting great ideas here! I wish I had had room for a short story category, as I am definitely lacking in that area!

For some reason, I was worrying about whether I could find 13 Booker Nominees that I wanted to read in the next year. Fear not. I have come up with a long list of possibilities (*=on my TBR shelf):

The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
*Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Accidental by Ali Smith
*The Secret River by Kate Grenville
*The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
*The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Unless by Carol Shields
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
*Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips
*Possession by A.S. Byatt
*The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
*Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
*Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

and, of course, there will be new ones added before 2013 comes to a close.....

The Remains of the Day was a beautiful read. I really hope to get to The Children's Book (of course, I meant to do the same thing last year) and The Sea, The Sea.

I agree with Tanglewood that The Remains of the Day is wonderful, and I'll add too that The Sea, The Sea is one of my favorites. I hope to get to Cloud Atlas and The Good Apprentice this year, so I'll be lurking! (Oh, and if you need short story recs., the short story collections by Ben Fountain and Keith Lee Morris are magnificent reads!

Good luck Ellen- I have my eye on you here too!

16> Thank you for the short story recs! I have been sort of wondering what I'm going to do with this challenge. I'll read Binocular Vision and might get a collection of shorts by Flannery O'Connor to read. I'll look for Ben Fountain and Keith Lee Morris!

The other day I picked up a collection called Psychology and Other Stories but only two other people on LT even have it in their libraries.... that could be a good thing, depending......

Paul, I wouldn't have it any other way. :-)

You're welcome! And let me know if you need some more short story rec.'s--those two are my favorites, but I do read a lot of short stories, so I could always come up with more! And, if you like the Flannery O'Connor, don't forget about Truman Capote and Carson McCullers--they do all go wonderfully hand in hand!

Looks good - 4 categories keeps it simple. & I'm sure you won't need any help finding Booker Award books at all, without even going to the short lists.

For short stories, there's a new LT group here:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/shortstories

Thinking about some of the nonfiction works I'm wanting to read, here are some nominees:

Nothing to Envy
Maus
The End of Your Life Book Club
Devil in the White City
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics

jennifer, thanks for the reminder about Carson McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my all-time favorite novels but I've not read any of her short works.

And Katie, thanks for the link!

Unbroken is high on my list for this year, too.

I am planning on getting to Unbroken this year as well, I had it on my list for last year, but never quite got to it. Have heard nothing but good things about it.

Highly recommend Unbroken and End of your life book club! So good.

Okay, first book in my little challenge completed: Team of Rivals for the Nonfiction thirteen. Very good. Still, I hope to read one or two slightly shorter works for this challenge.

Congrats, Ellen, for getting through that chunkster. I know you've been working at for awhile.

Good to hear that you liked Team of Rivals. I received it as a Christmas gift and hope o get to it this year - especially after seeing the movie.

Read Writing in the Dark. I want to know if it's good and worth my time.

Identifying some short story collections to read (*= on my TBR shelves):

*Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
Stay Awake by Dan Chaon
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock
*Tenth of December by George Saunders
*Call It What You Want by Keith Lee Morris

I completed The Street of Crocodiles for my Global Reading category. Amazing novel.

30> I obtained my copy of Writing in the Dark and it looks quite interesting. I'll try to get to it in the next month or two and give a report.

I read 420 Characters for my Short Story challenge. Weird, in a good way.
A quick read, each "story" using no more than 420 characters, presumably having been posted on Facebook prior to being collected into this series of "stories." At times humorous, at times poignant, at times almost brilliant, the whole amounts to a series of snapshots of moments of life. I kept searching for threads and found one or two, but overall this was just an amusing look at the depth and shallowness of everyday life and fiction.

Restricting a short story to 420 characters..... reminds me a bit of the flash fiction I read a few years back. Never quite knew what you were in for. Some were brilliant, some good, and some made you wonder what was going on in the author's head. Sounds like something that would make a good "purse" read - to read in snatches when stuck in a line-up or waiting for the bus. ;-)

I completed The Line by Olga Grushin for my Global Reads thirteen and have started Dan Chaon's Stay Awake for the Short Story Collection thirteen. So far, so good.

Completed and enjoyed Stay Awake: Stories by Dan Chaon. Comments to follow.

#10. Stay Awake by Dan Chaon
3.5 stars

This is a worthwhile collection of short stories, providing a complex and interesting exploration of loneliness, anxiety, and grief. The protagonists are uniformly white midwestern men but Chaon uses various voices - and unlikely circumstances - to create depth and breadth of character. One story is even written in the second person, which I have encountered before but not as effectively as Chaon's effort here.
There are recurring themes and content giving coherence to the collection (watch for two-headed babies to show up at least twice, as well as loss, plenty of loss). The men in Chaon's collection struggle and strive for meaning, for feeling, for authentic intimate connection. That may sound trite, but Chaon gives meaning and feeling to the characters' striving and struggle. He avoids the melodramatic and creates an emotional response in his reader with nuance and irony. Only one or two stories left me cold; overall this is very good work.

A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski

A mystery novel, translated from the Polish. I'm counting it even though it's not really "literature."
My brief comments can be found on my 75-in-2013 thread.

The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor
4.5 stars

This exquisite collection of short stories is one of my favorite reads of 2013 so far.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (2002 Booker Shortlist)
5 stars

In Ireland in the early 1920s, there are troubles and the Gault family decides to move to England after a series of ugly local incidents make them afraid for their lives. Young Lucy (age 9 or so) doesn't want to leave the seaside farm and estate on which she has been growing up. She expresses this sentiment but her parents insist that they must go. The day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away. A set of unlucky coincidences lead her parents to conclude that she is dead, drowned in the sea she has always loved. This is the story of their lives after this ill-fated series of events. This novel is beautiful and heartbreaking and absolutely enthralling. William Trevor is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

I read this for my challenge to read 13 Booker nominees in 2013. Lucy Gault was nominated in 2002, the year that Life of Pi won the award. I loved them both but I would probably have placed Lucy Gault higher in my own rankings. This one took my breath away.

Glad you're enjoying William Trevor so much. He's one of those writers where it feels like every word has been carefully chosen.

Rhian, I completely agree!

I need to write "reviews" for Brothers and Keepers and This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen but not this evening.

@ 43 -- I know how you feel; I've got 3 reviews to write myself! Stupid life getting in the way of my LT time. :)

I read This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen last year, so I'll be interested in reading your review.