Opening Pandora's box - Paws in 2015

My Category Challenge theme for 2015 is Ancient Greece and their gods and goddesses. Hopefully, I will manage to read a play or two actually FROM Ancient Greece but no promises made.

I've always had a things for the ancient civilizations but I'm not as well-acquainted with Greece as I wish I were. Hopefully, this will change in 2015.

I've joined up for a few challenges and group reads this year and I hope I will end up reading at least something for a majority of them, but I'm not putting pressure on myself, considering the enormous reading slump/funk/black hole I've been in for the last couple of years.

The 2015 Category Challenge

Aphrodite
The goddess of love, beauty, desire and pleasure.
LGBT literature and love stories.

Apollo
The god of music, arts, knowledge, healing, plague, prophecy poetry, manly beauty and archery.
Plays, poetry and others arts.

Ares
The god of war, bloodshed and violence.
World War 1 & World War 2.

Athena
The goddess of intelligence, skill, peace, warfare, battle strategy, handicrafts and wisdom.
The Cold War and spying/intelligence.

Artemis
The goddess of hunting, wilderness, animals, young girls, childbirth and plague.
Graphic novels and comics.

Demeter
The goddess of grain, agriculture, harvest, growth, nourishment and the life and death cycle.
Children’s books, young adult and short stories.

Dionysus/Bacchus
The god of wine, parties, festivals, madness, chaos, drunkenness, drugs and ecstasy.
Easy reading and comedic books.

Hades
The god of the underworld, the dead and regret.
Horror, crime and books with other scary things.

Hermes
The god of boundaries, travel, communication, trade, language and writing.
Fantasy and sci-fi books.

Zeus
Finally the god of the sky, weather, thunder, lightning, law, order and justice.
Classics.

The Erechtheoin caryatids at the Acropolis

BingoCAT

Don't be afraid to leave a message. I love talking to people - and remember that book tips are always welcome!

Yay! Found your thread! It can be so crazy at this time of year.... I always have to check to see if I am posting to a older 2014 thread or an new 2015 thread. ;-)

>7 lkernagh: Yeah, it's a madhouse this time of year. I have no idea how I'm going to keep track of things.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you get tho this year! I'm a fan of ancient Greece :)

Just popping my to drop off this ★.

Welcome back!

Hey Cousin Paws! So lovely to have 'family' in the group with me again. You've got a lot of reading planned, I see.

>12 Fourpawz2: Hi! Nah, I don't have ANY reading planned. Just a lot of challenges that seem like fun. If I read anything at all in any of them, that's a victory. I have no goals at all for next year. Just going to read and fit the books into whatever category/challenge they might fit.

Hi Paws, I managed to find you and I am dropping a star on your thread. Looking forward to following your reading progress again this year :)

Happy New Year, Paws!

Happy New Year - I like your ancient greek interpretation of the Category Challenge :)

Looking forward to follow your progress.

Happy new thread and New Year, Paws!

Hi Paws. I took a look over your book bingo and have to admit I'm curious how one reads a cat for the centre square. I'm not sure Mister Smee would be game for such things. ;)

>18 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Nice to have you here. I knew reading a cat would sound strange to people!

CAT is short for Categories and Themes, a sort of joint challenge over in the Category Challenge group. I'm not doing any of the major CATs this year but I am part of the HorrorKIT (KIT being a small, unofficial CAT) so I'll count that.

>19 PawsforThought: That makes much more sense. Now I must go snuggle a certain furry creature because he's being way too darn cute.

Whoohoo! I've been waiting for this day since New Year's and it's finally here! The book sale catalogues are out!

(For those who don't know, Swedish booksellers have an annual FANTASTIC book sale at the end of February and the big name booksellers send out catalogues a couple of weeks beforehand so you can check out what's going to be on sale (and compare prices!). The catalogues, and the online versions, came out today and I've spent most of the day perusing. Normally a hardback cost about 240 SEK, during the book sale that book can cost 70-100 SEK, and sometimes the early bird-offers are even better.)

There's some good stuff on offer this year, even if a lot is completely uninteresting to me. I'm going to make a list and compare different stors/sites. And I'll have to be really tough with myself - just because there's a sale doesn't mean I can buy ALL THE BOOKS. No. But there are some that I've been wanting to buy anyway and getting 60% off isn't too bad.

I love book sales! So exciting and it sounds like they have awesome deals!

>22 lkernagh: I'm ridiculously excited! I'm usually a bit "meh" about the book sale, because I haven't been buying much of anything for the last few years, including books, but now I've made a turnaround and am really looking forward to it!

Oh, and I'll have to make sure to take a trip to my old home town at the end of sale season. The main bookshop there has an end-of-sale special where all remaining books are sold by the kilo, at an insanely low price (I think it's around £3, but I can't quite remember). Great for picking up unplanned goodies!

Book sale day! Whoohoo!
(Or as my friend texted me last night: "It's Christmas!")

I only bought four books today, which is actually quite a lot for me as I've been very restrictive with book purchases in the past decade or so. But they seem very good and the prices can't really be beat.
I got a world atlas (regular price 469 SEK, sale price 99 SEK), an art history/dictionary (regular price 429 SEK, sale price 139 SEK), a book about the iron curtain (regular price 299, sale price 89 SEK) and a book about WW1 (regular price 269 SEK, sale price 79 SEK).
And they had an extra offer of 4 for the price of 3 so I got the cheapest book for free.

If I had bought them at regular price it would have cost me 1466 SEK ($176/£114) but it now cost 327 SEK ($39/£25). One fifth! Pretty good deal, I'd say.

I will be buying a few more books but I'll get them online as the prices were better there. And I'll pop back into the book shop in a couple of weeks when the sale is winding down (and the prices have been cut even further and see if anything strikes my fancy - there were a couple more things I was interested in now, but not enough to buy yet. If they're still there when the prices are lowered again, I'll buy them.

>24 PawsforThought: Sounds like you made some excellent additions to your collection, Paws.

Book sale crop part deux:

So, I bought a few more books. From an online retailer this time except for one which I found when shopping with mum yesterday.
The list goes as follows:
Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton - orig. price 210 SEK, sale price 39 SEK
Spices and herbs encyclopedia - orig. price 269 SEK, sale price 129 SEK
5 biographies by Plutarch - orig. price 187 SEK, sale price 79 SEK
Biography about dying of cancer (2 parts)- orig. price 186 SEK, sale price 59 SEK (per part)
Book about Danish jews fleeing to Sweden during WW2 - orig. price 222 SEK, sale price 69 SEK
Vegetarian cookbook - orig. price 227 SEK, sale price 65 SEK
Book about the warship Vasa - orig. price 179 SEK, sale price 99 SEK

If I had bought them all off sale it would have cost me 1666 SEK (£130/$200). Now it cost me 598 SEK (£46/$72). That's just over 1/3 of the original price (36%).

I'm really excited about these books. I've been wanting to buy that particular vegetarian cookbook (it's a standard cookbook with EVERYTHING in it, and is from a publisher with very high renown when it comes to cookbooks) for ages but it was sold out at the sale last year and I don't want to pay full price for something I know is going to go on sale again. I have both the "regular" (non-vegetarian, all-encompassing) cookbook and the cakes/biscuits/other sweet things cookbook they make and they're amazing. Everything from "how to boil an egg" to gala dinners are in there. I'd love to buy the main competitor's work too, also very good (my parents have two copies and they've both been used so diligently they're in shreds).
Cookbooks always make for good deal during the book sale.

There are two more books I'd like to get but the online shop has run out. I'm hoping they'll get re-stocked soon, otherwise I'll buy them at the regular shop (if they still have them). And maybe something else that strikes my fancy when prices are lowered again.

If anyone is feeling envious over my book sale deals, there's a drive at BookDepository right now (I know they're Amazon, but still - and they have free worldwide shipping!).
Tons and tons of Oxford University Press books at 40% off or more. I nearly fainted when I saw The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar and Oxford A-Z of Grammar and Punctuation but then I realized they were paperbacks and I don't do paperback (*crying*).
You can find the sale here and here (there one page with Humanities and one with Science & Medicine)

In other news, I received my book sale package (they books I bought online) today and the books are marvellous and beautiful and I loved them all. And now I want to buy more books. This really is an addiction.

Happy Pi Day!

This is the best news I've had all year: http://www.themarysue.com/brontosaurus-real-after-all/

I love brontosauruses almost as much as I love dodos.

I finished a book! Incredible!

I Will Repay by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

This is the second of the Scarlet Pimpernel novels and while I didn't like it as much as the first one it's a fun and breezy book. It's full of historical details and spilling over with satire of the French revolutionists. The main characters are not as easily likeable as the ones in the first book, which is the reason I'm not as fond of this one. Still, good fun and I'm definitely reading on in the series.

This will cover the bingo square for "A book centered around a major historical event" (the French revolution).

Congrats! :)

>31 Kassilem: Thank you! It feels like quite a victory. And it's making me much more enthusiastic about the other books I have either started but got far into or that are just waiting by the side of the bed.

Book #2

The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

This is the third of the Pimpernel novels and I had a really good time reading it. The story in this one once again revolves around the Percy Blakeney and Marguerite and I have to say I like it quite a bit better than the last one (I Will Repay).

This covers the bingo square "A book set in a country other than your own" (France).

Book #3

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

I'd never even heard of this Marple-mystery before but picked it up alongside a pile of other Christie novels when I checked out a small mountain of books from the library for some "light summer reading". Christie always makes for great reading in summer and I read this one in the wonderful sunshine we had this past weekend. It's a bit different than Marples in general, or at least I thought so, but it had to be considering the setting.
I thought it was interesting how rather off-handed Marple's nephew was about having a gay friend (though using what we'd think of as a slur to describe him), even though the book was written (and set) in the early sixties.
I did like it, but it's not my favourite Marple.

This doesn't cover any bingo squares for me.

Book #4

Hanging on to Max by Margaret Bechard

I initially liked this book, despite the incredibly "after school special" feel. I can't remember reading another book about a teenage dad taking care of his baby without the mother there, so that was nice.
And I liked it, until the ending. It just didn't sit right with me. I have no problem with the issue in itself, but it seemed to come out of nowhere and felt as if the author ended it that way because she'd decided it was going to end like that - not because it worked with the story and the characters.

This covers the bingo square "Read a book with a protagonist of the opposite gender" and fits into the category "Demeter".

I created a few lists the other day, mainly just as a reminder to myself but people are of course welcome to use them as suits their own needs. If you feel like it, please do add more titles as you see fit (just please don't add duplicates).

http://www.librarything.com/list/10367/all/Early-Modern

http://www.librarything.com/list/10366/all/Truly-old-classics

http://www.librarything.com/list/10364/all/Womens-reading-list (This one needs tons more titles but I haven't had time)

Book #5

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

This was recommended to me and I had very high expectation when I started reading but found it a bit slow and was irritated by the main character throughout so couldn't enjoy it as much as I wanted. I had a feeling all along how it was going to end and I'm glad I was right, because any other ending would have seemed strange.

This covers the bingo square ""Read a book chosen by someone else" (my mum) and fits into the category "Ares".

Book #6

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'd made a note ages ago about reading this but forgot all about it. It's been on several "must-read" list that I've looked up recently which spurred me to pick it up.
I really liked this. It's a short story so a fairly easy read in that sense but books about mental issues are never "easy" and this was very well written so I felt drawn into the delusions and hallucinations.

This doesn't cover any bingo square for me but fits into the category "Zeus".

I put in an order at Book Depository last week and the books are already here! It usually takes two weeks so I was very pleasantly surprised.
The books all look great and I can't wait to read them (though I'll have to, because I have library books that are due back).

This is what I got:
Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales
Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History without the Fairy-Tale by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age by W. Bernard Carlson
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Sandman: Fables and Reflections and
Sandman: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Joy in the Morning,
Thank You, Jeeves and
Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

Does anyone have any thoughts on Evelyn Waugh and his writing? I've been thinking about reading Brideshead Revisited because I love the mini-series with Andrews & Irons but I don't know. Is that the natural "first Waugh book" or would it be better to read something else first and work my way up to BR?
I know Waugh has a generally high rating on LT but that doesn't really tell me much.

I LOVE Waugh! Brideshead Revisited is probably my favorite but I might suggest starting with Vile Bodies and working your way up. Vile Bodies is hilarious, a bit Wodehousian, but it has a serious core of disillusionment that will set Brideshead Revisited up nicely. BR is more serious but it's also more rewarding in the end.

>41 leahbird: Thanks! That's great to know. Vile Bodies sounds interesting, and I just realised it's the work behind Bright Young Things, which I have seen (though it was ages ago) and liked.

Bright Young Things was what turned me on to reading Waugh! The novel won't disappoint.

That sounds very promising! Looking forward to reading his works later on, then.

Book #7

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks)

This book is crap. I can't believe the publishers tried to pawn it off as "true story" because it's painfully obvious that it was written by an adult to warn young people of drugs. And it does a terrible job of it. Not only is it clear as day that do teenager writes the way this "diary" is written, and you don't have to have much knowledge of drugs to point out the glaring mistakes regarding drug use (WHO would, after having tried LSD once - by mistake - offer up their arm to a complete stranger and have them inject you with speed?), but it's also incredibly moralizing about sex and sexuality.
I realised after reading that it was written in 1971, which makes perfect sense, but I think it's amoral of the publishers to keep this book on the shelves.

This covers the bingo square "Read a book that's completely outside your comfort zone" and fits the category Demeter.

Since the weather is going to be rather awful here this weekend I've decided to have myself a readathon. I made a thread for it and anyone who's interested is welcome to join me!

Book #8

At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie

Ah, it's so nice to get to read a book you really enjoy! There's been to many boring and/or frustrating ones lately that this really was a breath of fresh air.
It's not Christie's greatest but it's different from most of the ones she's written (that I've read). It isn't about someone getting murdered and Miss Marple figuring things out and telling the police who did it. The murder doesn't happen until almost the end, you realise quite early on more or less what is actually happening (not the details but the gist of it) and the majority of the sleuthing is done by an actual police officer!

This fits the category "Hades" but doesn't cover any bingo squares.

Book #9

Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham

I love Fables and I can't work out why I haven't finished this one sooner. I started on it right after I read volume 1 but stopped about a third of the way through. I'm glad I picked it up again and finished it.
The minds of the people behind these stories are great - there's really not much more I can say about it. The first book was great and this one too, I know there are less stellar works further along in the series but so far I'm enjoying it greatly.

This fits the category "Artemis" and covers the bingo square "Read a book based on a fairy tale or a myth".

The very last volume is due out on Tuesday and I don't think I'm ready to read it! I was not totally sold on the previous volume and now I'm terrified! How much I'd give to be back where you are now with so much goodness ahead of me.

>49 leahbird: Oh, is it about to be over now? I completely understand how that'd be both exciting and nerve-racking.

I'm a big fan of Saga and so far it's all been excellent but I'm scared it'll go belly up some time in the future. The problem of getting sucked into an ongoing series. It's much safer to read a series that's already finished, then you can check out how each volume has been received and set your expectations accordingly.

Book #10

Fables, Vol. 3: Storybook Love by Bill Willingham

Yet another great installment. I love the detail that goes into these stories, and the nods to various stories even when they're not part of the main plot. This one has a bit more blood and gore than I recall from the first two (there was gore in the second volume too, but there are pages coloured red in this one), though it's not too much, I don't think.

This fits the category "Artemis" and covers the bingo square "Read a book with a mythical creature".

I always used to add pictures with my book "reviews" in the thread - don't know why I haven't done it this year. It's looking a bit grey and boring here without them so I think I'll add them in one of these days. Possibly tomorrow but we'll see if there's time.

Book #11

Double Sin and Other Stories by Agatha Christie

I read this one really fast on the train down south. It's a collection of shorts and while some are less than stellar (the one about the medium) some were really great and on the whole, I enjoyed the read. Both Poirot and Miss Marple show up and while I usually have no favourite of the two, the Poirot stories in this one were better, I think.

This doesn't cover any bingo squares but fits into the category "Hades".

I've been absent lately but I have good reason. I was away on holiday from last Thursday until today (I am very tired right now) and the week preceding that I was very busy preparing everything about the trip, which was rather stressful. My feet are full of blisters from all the walking I did but I had a lovely time and that's what matters.

Glad to hear you had a good trip!

Thank you! I wish I could go on more trips but I've got work again on Monday.

Book #12

Smiley's People by John le Carré

I don't think i'm smart enought for these books, or at least not attentive enough. I missed a ton of small details that later proved to be important and forgot a ton of others. There's just too much for me to keep track of, which is a shame because the books are good, if you can really stick with them. I particularly like Smiley himself (who I now can't imagine any other way than as Gary Oldman) - he's a phenomenal character. I had a hunch about the ending and was very proud of myself when I turned out to be right.

This fits into the category "Athena" and covers the bingo square "Read a book with correspondence or letters".

Are there any poetry lovers here?

My bookshelves are severely lacking in poetry so I've been browsing the poetry sections of my go-to online bookshops but I seem to have a bit of a brain freeze coming up with ideas of poets to look for. I like poetry, even though I don't read poems very often (that probably has something to do with the fact that I barely have any poetry books at home...)
I generally prefer older, rhyming poems to more modern stuff but I'm not an absolutist.

So far my embarrassingly short list of names includes:

Byron, Shelley (Percy) and Keats - the "trio of lyrical treats", as the wonderful Dorothy Parker put it
Dorothy Parker herself
Sara Teasdale
William Blake
Wordsworth & Coleridge

And that's all my poor mind can conjure up at the moment. I DID say it was embarrassingly short.

Just by happenstance I came across this on my library's new book list:

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

I've got it on my short list.

>59 drneutron: Thanks for the tips but I'm just looking for the original poetry, not books discussing or analyzing poetry.

Emily Dickensian and EE Cummings are favorites of mine, but I'm not very well versed in poetry myself.

Thanks you. I'd completely blanked on Cummings (whose name I always spell with capital initial letter, no matter what people say).

I also just realised I'd forgotten about Housman.

For the record, and so you can prove those people wrong, Cummings signed his name with capital letters. ;)

>63 leahbird: Ha! I love being right!

I wish more hardbacks were printed with covers as nice as the paperback editions. So many more nice paperback covers than hardback dittos. And I can't stand paperbacks.
If these Bulgakovs were available in hardbacks (with these covers) I'd buy the lot, immediately. But alas!

I am soooooo with you on this. I'm still waiting on an affordable on demand printing option so I can specify the cover I like in the format I prefer! I just can't bring myself to buy paperbacks anymore but the covers I like are so often later editions that only come out in paperback. It's very frustrating.

Also, have you watched A Young Doctor's Notebook, I think from the BBC? I really really loved it.

>66 leahbird: Oh, please yes! That'd be amazing! Only pretty covers in lovely hardbacks.
I do occasionally but paperbacks, but only during specific circumstances. Books specifically purchased to be read while travelling and not likely to be kept, books for uni courses not available at the library and that are not likely to be re-read, graphic novels and books I really want but that aren't available in any other version. This doesn't accumulate to very many books.

>67 leahbird: No, I haven't yet. I've heard about it and it's on my list of things to watch. I have a lot of telly watching time ahead of me (sick leave) so I hope I'll get to it. Thanks for the recommendation. I didn't even know it was Bulgakov who'd written it until I saw those covers.

It's a very darkly comic show. It's bleak but I just thought it was perfect.

Book #13

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

I read this a few days ago - I had to analyze it for coursework so I didn't really have a choice. I'm not sure what I think about it; it's rather strange. I think I liked the story itself well enough (especially the very typically Gothic ghost story beginning) but the writing wasn't quite my thing. And it ended very strangely. I've only read James once before (that was also a short work) and I had similar feeling towards that one so I'm not sure how I feel about reading any more by him.

This fits into the category "Zeus" and the bingo square "Read a CAT" (I was intending to take part in the HoororKIT but life got in the way).

Today was my thingaversary. 3 years, so that'll be four books for the thingaversary and a couple more as a late birthday present for myself.
Anyone have any tips?

Happy belated Thingaversary! I always forget mine.

>73 lkernagh: I only remember it because it's right in the middle of a whole heap of birthdays and other occasions. And thanks!

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Finally.
I love these books so I don't know why it's taken me so long to finish this one, or rather, why I've kept putting off finishing it. It's great to be able to read a novel where you really don't know what's going to happen. A lot of the time, especially with fantasy novels, you know roughly how it's going to end but not with this.

This fits into the category "Hermes" and the bingo square "Read a book where an animal is of importance".

Book #15

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Audiobook read by Jeremy Irons, and I doubt anyone could ever do it remotely as well as he did. Wonderful reading.
I loved the first part of the book, when Sebastian was there and the relationship between him and Charles. Was bored to tears by the second half with Julia - such a dreary character.
Also didn't feel as if the book had a proper ending, which is obviously how life actually works, but it felt very unsatisfying in a novel.

This fits into the category "Zeus" but not into any of the bingo squares.

>76 PawsforThought: Oh, I like the idea of Jeremy Irons reading...

Have a lovely holiday, Paws