Janoorani24's Modest Attempt to Tame the Shelves

This sounds like a great challenge for me. I have entire bookshelves full of unread books! I'll do it in conjunction with my 50 Book Challenge and my 101010 Challenge, but I'll set a goal to have at least twenty of the books I read this coming year be ones I already own.

janoorani24,

Can set any target goal of number of books to read already on the shelves ?

Is it a good idea to post a thread after completing
the reading of each book you have set a target for your 2010 reading list.(If you can list the books, it is liked setting a goal for yourself to achieve.) ?

In this format:

Date Started: Date Completed:

Book Title: No.of Pages:
Author:
Publisher:
Year of Publication:
Your Review:
Your Rating: ( follows LT's rating system)

Skoobdo
It looks like others in this challenge have set goals for their already owned books at anywhere from 10 books on up. Because I'm addicted to buying books, and I also use the library and bookswim for books, I thought a goal of 20 of my books that I haven't read yet would be good.

As it gets closer to 2010, I may start adding books I plan on reading to a post, and I will definitely keep track of books I have read here. I like the format you suggested. I use a similar format for my current 50 Book Challenge and my 999 Challenge minus the publisher and date info.

Welcome to the group janoorani24 and your answers to skoobdo are just what I had in mind for the group--up to individuals to set their goals. I wanted the group to inspire and challenge, but to allow for realistic flexibility.

OOO I am very interested in Bookswim but have never had an opportunity to talk to anyone who is actually using it. How do you like it? I have Netflix for movies, does it work pretty much like that? Which plan do you have? Is the turnaround slow or fairly quick.

Sorry so many questions but I have been waiting to find someone to talk to about this!

I don't like Bookswim at all, but I'm stuck with it because I prepaid for a full year, and they don't give refunds. I do believe it's a great idea if you read a lot of popular fiction (when I joined if the book you wanted hadn't sold at least 10,000 copies on Amazon.com, Bookswim didn't have it). I think they have a moderately larger amount of books than when I first joined, but it's still limited to pretty popular books. I'm on the three book plan, meaning I can send two books back at a time while I read the third book. It takes 2-3 weeks for them to send me new books. It is a lot like Netflix, and costs about the same (though they need to improve their turn-around time). My problem is that I read books from a great many sources, so it takes me forever to read the Bookswim books, so it simply is not cost effective for me. It would work best for people who read the greatest majority of their books from Bookswim. It has cost me about $25.00/book for the books I've read this year. I could have bought all of them for less than that!

wow that does seem pretty pricey. I think I will stick with buying my books, bookmooch and the library at this point. Thanks for the info.

I LOVE Bookmooch! I have received some great books that way, and I know that books I no longer want are going to good homes. After LibraryThing, it's my favorite thing on the web.

I also have a Kindle, and it's a much better deal than Bookswim. Most books are only $9.99 or less, and they have more and more books available every time I look. You can also listen to audio books on Kindle, although I tend to listen to them on my i-Pod most often.

If you live in an area with a great library system, like I do, you can get most books you want through their holds system. Free is always good!

There is a great library system where I live. Not nearly as good as SoCal when I lived there but here I hardly ever "browse" the actual brick and mortar library. I just reserve the books on the internet and then pick them up at my designated branch.

As a result, I have a huge library book table and my husband hates it. He doesn't understand why I don't just put the huge pile on my bookcase. I have tried to explain that they are not MINE. So they do not belong on the bookcases. Alas, he just doesn't get it.

Bookmooch was my #1 favorite thing on the web until I recently became obsessed with Talk on Librarything. (as you can see by the fact that I am posting at 1:30am when I should be sleeping.

> 1 Great idea to do it in conjunction with other challenges, that is what I am going to do to! Good luck!

Book #1
Date Started: 30 October 2009
Date Completed: 4 January 2010
Book Title: The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior
No.of Pages: 456
Author: Paul Strathern
Publisher: Bantam Books
Year of Publication: 2009
Advance Reader's Copy (Library Thing Early Reviewer's Book)
Non-fiction

Your Review:
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by Paul Strathern is a history of the period in the early 1500s when the lives of Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia intersected. Leonardo worked as Borgia’s chief military engineer during the same period that Machiavelli was Florence’s envoy to the Borgia court.

The book provides mini-biographies of the three main players as well as other minor players in European history of the period as a back-story to the central theme of intersecting lives. This is what makes the book worth reading. The “intersecting lives” theme is too speculative and takes away from the historical facts in the book. The speculation about possible meetings between Machiavelli and Da Vinci were the weakest parts of the book. There is no doubt that Machiavelli’s observations of Borgia influenced the development of his political philosophy, but imagining what Da Vinci and Machiavelli might have talked about during a possible final meeting in 1516 and other such speculative descriptions detracted from the value of the book.

The first hundred or so pages held my interest very well, but then the narrative started to get bogged down in detail and several instances of speculation about possible meetings. The last 50 pages or so again held my interest, especially the section on Da Vinci’s last few years.

The biographical details about the three main players and how their associations with each other led to some of the later decisions made by Da Vinci and Machiavelli make this an interesting history. There is little to no description of how Machiavelli and Da Vinci influenced Borgia, but overall, I like the book enough to give it 3 stars.

Your Rating: 3 stars

A superb contribution to LT's website.
A first-hand review of a fiction book in a nutshell.

Why not quote a retail price you paid for the reviewed book?

I like that format for posting the books as you read them. Thing I might borrow it.....

#12 - I hope it was a mistake when you said it was a "fiction" book review. I do appreciate the compliment, but I'm embarrassed if I didn't make it clear that it was a non-fiction book. I'll add that to the information about the book, and also add that it is an Early Reviewer Book.

Also, this was a Library Thing Early Reviewer book, so it was free. Not sure if I would know the price of other books on my shelves, but could use the price on the dust jacket and add it to my information on the book. I buy a lot of books through Amazon and at used book stores, so what I've paid for them usually isn't what the book is marked as. I've thought about beginning to include prices paid in the private comments section of my when I add them to my catalog. I purchased far too many books last year, and might be able to cut back my biblioholism if I kept better track of the prices.

Book #2 - The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Date Started: 1 Nov 09
Date Completed: 11 Jan 10
Audio Book Narrated by Fareed Zakaria
Number of pages: 292
Hours: 8 hours, 28 minutes
Non-fiction
4 Stars

Excellent book on the political and economic world today. The preface to the paperback edition provides a nice update to the hardcover edition, as well as to the audio version. I enjoyed the audio version so much that I bought the paperback so that I could easily refer back to parts of the book. I especially enjoyed the parts on Chinese and Indian history and the six guidelines for America to pursue.

Book #3 - Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves
Date Started: 4 Jan 2010
Date Completed 17 Jan 2010
Number of pages: 209
Price: $14.85
Non-fiction
3.5 stars

This was for one of my book clubs, and I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was a surprisingly good book by the guy who does those cheesy travel shows on PBS. I agreed with most of his ideas that travel should be for more than just to spend money at Disney World. It should enrich your life and be a learning experience about others peoples' ideas, values and beliefs. The only chapter I didn't enjoy was the one on El Salvador. The ones I enjoyed the most were on Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. I also liked the final chapter where Steves talks about what one can do with the knowledge of the world one gains through travel.

Book #4 (#5 for the year)- Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
Date Started: 24 Jan 10
Date Completed: 25 Jan 2010
Number of pages: 117
Price: $14.99
Fiction
4 stars

This was delightful. It was really more of a children's book than young adult, which is what I had expected, but it still held my attention. The story is written in the style of a Norse myth, and stays pretty true to the style without being too prosy. I loved Odd, and hope Gaiman will write more about him in the future. Odd is the name of a crippled Viking boy who battles the Frost Giant who has taken over Asgard.

Book #5 (#13 for the year) - The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson
Dated Started: 17 Feb 2010
Date Completed: 28 Mar 2010
Number of pages: 497
Price: $7.99
Fiction
2.5 stars

This is an unrelentingly bleak and dismal fantasy quest story in which not much happens, but just about every gloomy and despairing adjective in the English language is used repeatedly, and the characters are subjected to great horrors and almost die more than once.

I first read both of the Covenant Chronicles in the 80s while living in Alaska. I was an immature reader and thought these were good at the time. Re-reading the first book of the second series (there are two series of three books each) showed me the error of my ways. This is a depressing book, and I don't know when, if ever I might re-read the others. The author's overuse of archaic adjectives is really annoying, and his obvious copying of themes from the Lord of the Rings is almost unforgivable (why didn't I see that the first time through)? Not recommended.

Book #6 (#12 for the year) - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Dated Started: 19 Feb 2010
Date Completed: 23 Mar 2010
Number of pages: 653
Price: £3.86
Fiction
4.5 stars

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was the winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, so I knew chances were good that I would like the book, since I’ve enjoyed other Booker short-listed and prize winning books I’ve read in the past.

Wolf Hall is a historical novel set in early 16th century England during the reign of Henry VIII. Instead of another retelling of Henry and Anne Boleyn’s story with the two monarchs as the main characters, this is the story of the rise to power of one of Henry’s greatest advisers, Thomas Cromwell.

Mantel depicts Cromwell as a powerful, yet sensitive man who rises from obscure beginnings to work tirelessly for an England free from control by the Pope in Rome. Little is known of Cromwell’s early life since he was not noble-born and details of commoners’ lives during this period are rare. Mantel manages to bring credibility to Cromwell’s history without being too speculative. Unlike most historical novels, this novel doesn’t contain completely fictional characters to round out a story about non-fictional characters. All of the characters really existed in history, though of course, their daily thoughts and actions are fictional. Mantel apparently spent years researching and writing the book, but still manages to make a very readable account of Cromwell’s life and the life of England. Her characters’ dialogue is at times humorous, and almost contemporary, but they still remain firmly in their own time. She doesn’t talk down to her readers, and expects them to catch her mentions of Luca Pacioli, Thomas More’s Utopia, Cesare Borgia, etc without explaining them. This aspect of her writing reminded me of my favorite writer, Dorothy Dunnett.

Dorothy Dunnett was, in my opinion, the greatest historical novelist ever. Her two great series were set at around the same time as Mantel’s novel (the Lymond series were set in the mid-sixteenth century, and the Niccolo series were set in the late fifteenth century). If I could ask Mantel one question, it would be whether or not Dunnett influences her writing. I see hints of both Nicolas Vander Poele and Francis Crawford in her Cromwell character. Dunnett’s masterpiece, King Hereafter, was set in early eleventh century Scotland and Scandinavia and is a fictionalized account of the historical Macbeth. It paints Macbeth in a much more sympathetic light than Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Mantel’s Cromwell is also much more sympathetic than he is portrayed by Shakespeare.

I go on about Dorothy Dunnett primarily because I compare all historical fiction to hers. She was a consummate story-teller who based her novels on decades of extensive research into the eras she set her stories in. Mantel has also used extensive research in the writing of Wolf Hall, but her story isn’t quite as good. This could be because she only used historical figures as her characters, and it’s harder to make a good story out of lives based on fact. It’s harder to feel the level of love for Cromwell (in spite of his good qualities) that I have for Francis Crawford of Lymond. Since Francis was completely made up, it was easier for Dunnett to create a mesmerizing story of his life. What Mantel does with great skill is show us an England that the history books don’t do justice to, with it’s sights, smells, fears, and faith. When I think of the English break with the Catholic Church, I think of it as a clean-cut act agreed upon by all. Mantel shows the agony and fears this break caused for many, if not most Englishmen at the time. She shows that this was a long process, and not an overnight success story. I am very happy to know that she plans a sequel to this book. I want to get to know Thomas Cromwell and his family better, though I do know that there is not happy ending to this story. I give Wolf Hall 4.5 stars, though it came very close to being my first five star book of the year.

I just read this book as well (it's not on my challenge list but a detour!) and agree with you totally. Fine literary writing, yet as riveting as any bestseller. Mantel is a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant book. I have Beyond Black but have not yet read it - perhaps my next on my next deviation from the liist!

Book #7 (#14 for the year) - Truly, Madly by Heather Webber
Dated Started: 28 Mar 2010
Date Completed: 29 Mar 2010
Number of pages: 316
Price: Free (early reviewer's book)
Fiction
3.5 stars

This was an Early Reviewers book and not the type of book I normally read. Romantic mysteries aren’t usually my thing, but this was a surprisingly enjoyable read. The book is the first in what I hope will be a series about Lucy Valentine who is the last of a long line of matchmakers. Unfortunately, Lucy lost her matchmaking gift at the age of fourteen, and has to make do with the lesser gift of the ability to find lost objects.

Lucy’s father runs a successful matchmaking business, and leaves Lucy in charge for a couple of weeks when he has to go out of town. Lucy meets the upstairs private investigator, and together they solve an old murder, and Lucy finds a lost child.

I enjoyed all of the characters in the book, especially Lucy and Sean (the PI, and romantic male lead). There is also the ditzy grandmother, the two best friends, the police detective, and the faithful family retainer). I don’t read a lot of romance novels, so I’m sure they are all pretty clichéd, but they were nice people who I wouldn’t mind getting to know better.

The book’s plot is pretty predictable, and the mystery at the end is resolved a little too conveniently, but it’s a quick read, and I didn’t have time to get annoyed at the lack of depth. I read it through in one sitting. It reminded me a little of Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding, which was another book I enjoyed a few years ago.

Truly, Madly was a nice break from my usual reading, and I would read other books with these characters.

You have managed to complete reading "Truly,Madly" in 24 hours ! All of 316 pages.Fantastic.

Actually, I started it about 9:00 pm on the 28th, and finished it at 3:30 am on the 29th. It's a quick read.

Book #7 (#21 for the year) - The Queen's Lady by Shannon Drake
Dated Started: 29 Mar 2010
Date Completed: 23 Apr 2010
379 pages
Price: $8.71 (purchased in 2008)
Fiction
2.5 stars

A mediocre historical romance set during the time of Mary, Queen of Scot's first few years back in Scotland following the death of her husband, the King of France. The main character is a fictional lady-in-waiting who has improbable adventures and lives happily ever after. Unremarkable writing and plotting.