kaylaraeintheway: 2014 TBR Challenge!

This is my first TBR Challenge, and I'm so excited to finally start reading books that have been on my shelf for an embarrassingly long while.

Here's my list (in no particular order):

The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Giant by Edna Ferber
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
11/22/63 by Stephen King
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

My goal is to read more than 12, so even though this is my "alternate" list, I want to read a few of these books, too:

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Lasrson
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I'm also doing the ROOT 2014 challenge with completely different books!

Ah so many good books! I loved/hated House of Leaves, lol. I thought it was silly/frustrating with the craziness of the text, but I enjoyed most of the actual contents, but then... well, I'll wait until you read it to discuss :P
I got 11/22/63 from the annual sale thing here earlier this year, haven't read it yet though.
I plan on reading books 2-5 of the Wrinkle in Time Quintet this year, since I read 1-4 as a child and Wrinkle was my favorite book ever, which I just reread late this year. I got the new slipcased edition of the Quintet that came out late last year (plus the 50th anniv ed. of Wrinkle) :D
Have you read any of the mashups? I read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies a couple years ago and found it delightful, hahaha. I've been curious about the others.
I've been wanting to read Do Androids... for ages now and have yet to acquire a copy. I hope you enjoy it!
Devil in the White City was really great. It probably doesn't hurt that I have a thing for true crime, and Chicago (it's my city :P), though... hahaha.
Lolita is friggin' amazing. Nabokov is our... March? author in the Monthly Author Reads group, and at least one person is planning on reading Lolita and I'm going to be reading my Annotated Lolita and sharing stuff from it, so feel free to join us over there for that! :))

Okay, I think I'm done! LOL. Welcome to the group and good luck! :D

I've heard so many different things about House of Leaves, I figured I had to read it for myself. I'm confused just flipping through it! But I'm up for the challenge.

I've re-read Wrinkle and Wind in the Door over and over, so it's time for me to move on to the next book in the series! I'm really looking forward to it.

My sister tried to read Lolita and she could never get through it (she said she was creeped out by it haha), but I'm excited to read it. I'll be happy to join you all for the Nabokov discussion!

Basically I'm super stoked to read all of these books haha I hope I can keep up with the challenge.

Thanks for the welcome and good luck with your reading!

January

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

February

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle

I remember liking L'Engle's first two books well as a kid, then getting disinterested in the third for some reason and never went back to it. Maybe your adult self can convince my adult self after you've read it. :)

Can't go wrong with Martin's series. Cloud Atlas is one I read from my list last year. The movie is probably tough to follow without it.

House of Leaves, Devil in the White City and Lolita have all been on my lists previously but I didn't get to them. They're back in TBR pile rotation and will come around again. Wuthering Heights is on my TBR pile, too.

That's exactly what happened to me with book 3! I started reading it, and it just seemed too complex for me at the time. I even felt that way about book 2 at some parts.

I got through GoT, CoK, and SoS pretty quickly, but for some reason I slowed down (way down) when I got to FfC, much to my boyfriend's disappointment haha. He wants someone to talk about it with (and we're huge fans of the show). I tried reading Cloud Atlas last year, but I couldn't get past the first 20 pages. I really want to read it, though, and I'm determined to finish it this time around.

Welcome and Happy New Year, kayla! I have Stephen King (From A Buick 8) and George R. R. Martin (A Game of Thrones) titles on my lists this year as well. Also eager to hear your thoughts on The Gangs of New York as I am a big Martin Scorsese fan. 8)

Thanks Art! I'm looking forward to Gangs of New York as well. Should be an interesting read, since it was written in 1928!

kaylaraeintheway reads House of Leaves

1/5: Holy moly. This book is nothing like I have ever read. There are footnotes, and footnotes within the footnotes, appendices, exhibits, upside down/sideways/overlapped text...it's quite amazing. But I couldn't even begin to describe the plot of the book. Suffice it to say that I am now scared of dark hallways. I still have about 400 pages to go, but since a lot of the pages have only a few paragraphs (or even just 1 word), I expect to finish before the end of the month.

I was really sorry I couldn't fit it in last year, I'm looking forward to the struggle. :)

I loved House of Leaves! I have a fun time reading quirky books like that.

We must have similar reading tastes, as I've read almost every book on your lists, and the few I haven't (Devil in the White City, Giant) are books I would like to read someday. Maybe I should add them to my alternate list, which I haven't made yet.

>12 abergsman: You should! I also recommend the movie version of Giant, with Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson (if you haven't seen it already!)

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
4.5 out of 5 stars

You can't really explain House of Leaves. It's an experience. It's thought-provoking. It's maddening, frustrating, terrifying, and not completely satisfying. It's a most unusual and fascinating. It's a psychological thriller. It's a horror story.

It's a love story.

The novel takes the form of a non-fiction book that examines a film called The Navidson Record, which was written by a blind man, Zampano, and discovered by a young man named Johnny in the author's L.A. apartment after his death. The thing is, the film itself probably doesn't even exist. Yet Zampano writes hundreds of pages describing the events documented in the film, namely the discovery of an impossible dark hallway in a house where none existed before. As the hallway grows in size and scope, Will Navidson becomes more obsessed with the space. Johnny, and by extension the reader, become obsessed as well. Johnny's edits of Zampano's manuscript begin to echo the house explorers' descent into the vast nothingness, with sentences and paragraphs written upside down, backwards, in the corners, and along meandering lines.




What is in that house? Is it some kind of monster? A portal to another dimension? The reflection of the crumbling psyche's of the house's inhabitants? Don't think about it too hard. Navidson did, and well...you'll see.

By the way, has that hallway always been there?

I liked it well enough, up until the last bit. The stories had been going fine until then. But I thought it was incredibly anticlimactic and after all that buildup ...it just fell totally flat. So then I felt annoyed at having been made to read through all that ridiculousness on the pages for such a lousy ending. Heh.

Pretty great way to get your year started - congrats!

>15 .Monkey.: I know what you mean. I figured we wouldn't get complete closure/all the answers (in fact, I would have been mad if the whole mystery was solved for us). But I was hoping for a little more for the ending. However, I'm still really glad I read it, and it sparked a lot of thought and discussion.

>16 Cecrow: Thank you! I think I'm going to pick a lighter, less stressful book next haha. I need to recover!

February is going to be a busy month for me, so I'm going to read something shorter: A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle. I read the first 2 books in the Time Quintet many times, but for some reason I never moved on to #3. I'm looking forward to reading about what happens next for the characters.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
4 out of 5 stars

A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third book in L'Engle's "Time Quintet" is typical L'Engle (and I mean that in the best, most loving way possible!). She explores big themes in this book, among them good vs. evil, brother vs. brother, and, of course, time travel. In order to prevent nuclear holocaust, Charles Wallace must go back in time, aided by an ancient Welsh rune and a time-traveling unicorn called Gaudior.

I felt that this book was a lot more ambitious than the previous two, but that also could be because I found myself getting confused or lost at some points in the book. The fact that many of the characters L'Engle names have very similar (if not identical) names as everyone else didn't really help. However, despite some confusion, I really enjoyed this story. While the Murry/O'Keefe's are all present for this story (except Calvin, who is in England), the focus is really on the various ancestors that Charles Wallace observes and inhabits. It was also really cool that the action took place pretty much in the same place (just not the same When). Although I knew how this all was going to end, it was exciting to discover just how exactly it was all going to happen.

I'm eager to go out and buy the last 2 books in the series, as well as the other books L'Engle wrote (I think the other series is about the Austin family...). But A Wrinkle in Time will always be my absolute favorite.

* * *

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish my TBR book this month, since I have been so busy with traveling and school and all of that. This book was a quick read, though, so I was able to make it!

She wrote about the Austin family, yes, but she has far more books than that, quite a bunch. I'd love to have all of them some day, but it's way too much for my wallet at the moment. ;)

I'm sort of glad that you found it confusing, I feel better for having thought so when I tried reading it as a kid.

>20 .Monkey.:: To the bookstore!!

>21 Cecrow:: I can't imagine trying to read this is a 12 or 13 year old...I would be so lost!

I only fairly recently ordered Dragons in the Waters, The Arm of the Starfish, and A House Like a Lotus (they were part of my birthday buys late last year haha), I never read them when I was younger. They're probably in line for next year's reading :P

I honestly don't remember the Wrinkle books being confusing when I read them, but then I also have generally not had much difficulty letting things above my head just wash over me without getting in the way, so it's possible that's why. I'll be reading books 2-5 sometime later in the year and will see then! Lol.

March TBR Book: A Feast for Crows!

The new season of Game of Thrones starts this month, so I want to try to get through the rest of FfC (even though they probably won't get to the events of FfC this season, but you never know).

Also, Happy Oscar Day! My favorite day of the year :)

Yay for reading George Martin! I was up until midnight watching the Oscars too. :)

It'll be interesting to see what the series does about FfC and DwD, since the events in those two books all happen simulatenously. Before the fifth season you should probably ensure you've read both if you want to stay ahead.

>25 Cecrow:: Oh right! I forgot that the events from the last 2 books happen at the same time...thanks for the reminder haha

Happy (slightly late) i Year Thingaversary to me! :D

Feast for Crows is taking me forever to finish! This one might have to trickle into April...

It moves a bit slower than the previous ones, and lacks for most of the best characters. This is like the middle chapter of the series, a regrouping after the madness of the first three before we start building towards the series' ending.

>29 Cecrow: Excellent way of putting it. That's why it's so hard for me to get through it...no Jon Snow or Daenerys!

Still making slow but steady progress with A Feast for Crows. Now that season 4 of GoT has started, I'm more motivated to finish this book!!

So I don't get behind on my TBR Challenge, I'm starting my April book, Giant. I love the movie, so I'm anxious to read the book :)

I think Brienne's story might tip into A Feast for Crows already this season, by the looks of things, so you're playing it smart.

>32 Cecrow: thanks haha. I won't finish by next episode, but my goal is finish my the 3rd or 4th...we'll see how it goes!

I am falling woefully behind on my TBRs! I'm still chugging through Feast for Crows and Giant, but I plan on finishing both before the end of May.

Now that school is out for the summer, I'll hopefully have a lot more free time (plus a 6 hour plane ride to New York in June--yay!) to catch up and read sooo many books!

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
4 out of 5 stars

I finally finished by TBR book from March! It took me a while to get through this book, since a few of my favorite characters didn't make an appearance, and I tended to get bored with Arya and Brienne's storylines. However, everything really picked up the last 200-300 pages, so I blazed through the last part pretty quickly.

The latest season of GoT is starting to get into this book, so I'm glad I finished it, and I look forward to reading A Dance with Dragons, which takes place at the same time as A Feast for Crows, just with different characters (DwD also moves forward once the two timelines are caught up).

Winter is coming! Bring it on.

I'm still working on Giant, which is my TBR book for April, so I'll be overlapping months/books again.

I'm not quite sure what book I want to read this month yet, so I'll wait a bit before deciding.

Glad you enjoyed FfC; I think it's a step below the first three but if looked as as a regathering after the storm, you can sort of understand why it has to do what it does. Too bad though, about the FfC/DwD split.