QuestingforaQuest Reads Down Her TBR Pile 2016

Diskutera2016 ROOT Challenge - (Read Our Own Tomes)

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QuestingforaQuest Reads Down Her TBR Pile 2016

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1QuestingforaQuest
Redigerat: sep 18, 2016, 11:37 pm

Hi all,

Was so thrilled to find this group in the New Year's Resolutions edition of the LT newsletter, I have piles and piles of books I keep meaning to read that are just glaring at me in the most guilt-inducing way! I've been feeling pretty bad the last few years about my reading habits; in undergrad and then grad school I barely read for fun at all because I was reading for class and since graduating for good in 2013 I've been mostly reading comics and graphic novels. I consider them legitimate reading and log them as I would any textual book, but I'd like to read more textual novels and nonfiction, so the graphic novels and comics will have to learn to share my attention!

I'm aiming for 15 books, mostly textual, mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and some juvenile fiction (I've got a few YA and middle-reader books in mind), and I've sketched out a list of what I'd like to get at but I won't put them in any order. I have lots of reading goals this year and am only picking 15 since it's already April. Here's to a rip-roaring start!

Tentative Picks, in no particular order:

Crenshaw
Introducing Feminism--A Graphic Guide
Sally Heathcoate Suffragette
Running the Books
Things I Can't Explain
Frontlines
Insurgent
The Only Pirate at the Party
The Keeper
Mercury (GN)
Iscariot
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Inkheart
Farenheit 451
Stormdancer



2rabbitprincess
apr 9, 2016, 8:51 pm

Welcome aboard and good luck with your challenge! This group is a great motivator for getting around to all those unread books.

3Tess_W
apr 9, 2016, 10:47 pm

Welcome and good luck with your rooting!

4connie53
apr 10, 2016, 2:40 am

Welcome and Happy ROOTing!

5Jackie_K
apr 10, 2016, 5:19 am

Welcome from me too, I hope you find being in this group helps! (I certainly have!)

6QuestingforaQuest
apr 10, 2016, 10:59 pm

Thank you for your kind greetings, everyone!

Sally Heathcoate, Suffragette, by Mary Talbot et al is completed! That was quick...what a motivator this group is!

Also, is there a guide somewhere for what coding will work to format the font on my posts on this message board? I tried searching around for one both on LT and the wider Internet but LT's boards seem to be...exempt?...from a few of the rules I'm seeing used in most message board systems. I suppose I can't use a strikethrough tag on my list items? If only it would read plain HTML, I could jazz it up like a pro!:-/

For now I'll just do a dash like so.

7MissWatson
apr 11, 2016, 9:29 am

Welcome aboard and enjoy your reading!

8bragan
apr 11, 2016, 10:48 am

>6 QuestingforaQuest: You can use some basic HTML in your posts, although there's a limit to what's allowable. Italics and bold definitely work, but apparently strikethrough doesn't.

9Jackie_K
apr 11, 2016, 11:09 am

If you use 'strike' rather than 'strikethrough' it works: strike.

10avanders
apr 11, 2016, 11:42 am

Welcome & Happy ROOTing!

11bragan
apr 11, 2016, 1:15 pm

>9 Jackie_K: Ah, I was just using "s"! That's good to know.

12QuestingforaQuest
apr 11, 2016, 10:29 pm

Jackie_K and bragan thank you!!

13connie53
apr 17, 2016, 1:47 pm

Here is a thread that might help https://www.librarything.com/topic/177029

14QuestingforaQuest
apr 20, 2016, 8:05 pm

Started in on Running the Books: adventures of an accidental prison librarian yesterday...chugga chugga chugga chooooo choooooo!! (That's the sound of me plowing through my TBR pile!;-))

15QuestingforaQuest
apr 20, 2016, 8:06 pm

Thank you connie53 this'll be very helpful!:-)

16Tess_W
apr 21, 2016, 2:26 am

>14 QuestingforaQuest: Oh, that looks like a BB for me! I'm waiting to see how you liked it!

17QuestingforaQuest
maj 28, 2016, 10:45 pm

Done with Running the Books...I think I took so long because I was savoring it, I was really enjoying it and kind of didn't want it to end. I also got distracted by some library books...le sigh! Anyway, I want to get cracking HARDER on this list, so I think I'll finish Crenshaw next!

18connie53
jun 5, 2016, 11:48 am

>17 QuestingforaQuest: yeah!! Your (kind of) back. How is Crenshaw doing?

19avanders
jun 6, 2016, 12:30 pm

>17 QuestingforaQuest: oh it happens... :) Just keep plugging away!

20QuestingforaQuest
Redigerat: jul 17, 2016, 1:20 am

::sigh::I've been reading but not updating this thread!::hangs head in shame::

Finished Crenshaw, which, despite being by my favorite author, was a slow read because it was a tough one. Not a very happy book, dealing with a 10-year-old boy whose family is struggling to keep their heads above water financially, and frequently dealing with food insecurity and the threat of having to live in their minivan. Applegate is a good writer and it certainly could have been worse, but her protagonist is a very serious little boy who has trouble "finding the magic in life", and that's what he has to learn how to do. So needless to say, between zoning out thinking what grown-up me would tell young Jackson about why adults lie to kids like his parents are lying to him about their situation and then going, "Augh, god, I'm one of those ADULT people now!!" to things actually going on in my daily life (work got crazy and my cat passed away), it was one I had to use some determination to complete. It ended on a positive note, though, and Applegate is my favorite author for several reasons, so it wasn't so much a BAD read as a long and tough one.

Also got through Iscariot today, a graphic novel by an artist whose work I'd liked in other projects and so this one intrigued me. A lot of reviewers on Goodreads panned it, and I see some of what they were saying, but it wasn't THAT bad, I thought, although it might have been better told as a hand-animated short film. Crossing both off now, deciding what off the list I'm going to read next, probably either Front Lines or Insurgent...I need more prose in my life!!

Although I was excited to see, when I went to ALA Annual in Orlando this past month, that the authors of Sally Heathcoate, Suffragette have a new book out! It's another historical graphic novel, this time about a real person (I believe), a French female socialist who led an armed uprising against an oppressive regime. I ordered a copy of The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia and it's in the mail for me!:-)

21connie53
jul 29, 2016, 5:37 am

> 20 ::sigh::I've been reading but not updating this thread!::hangs head in shame::

I'm doing the same thing. With the weather so nice and being on vacation for a short week I'm hopelessly behind everything LT-ing, the reading and the threads off Fellow ROOTers. I need to work on that the next couple of days!

22Familyhistorian
aug 28, 2016, 3:11 am

>20 QuestingforaQuest: It's hard to keep up with reading and LTing especially when RL (real life) throws you a curve. Sorry to hear about your cat.

23avanders
aug 30, 2016, 1:37 pm

>20 QuestingforaQuest: and >21 connie53: yep, perfectly valid excuse ;)

Also very sorry about your cat :(

24QuestingforaQuest
sep 18, 2016, 11:34 pm

Thank you for the sympathy about my cat, everyone, very kind of you all, and I really do appreciate it!:-)

I was under the impression one of the books I just finished was on my ROOT list but it appears it was not! Welp, more reading done, more knowledge gained, regardless...although it means I only have one book to cross off the list right now.:-/

Things I Can't Explain was refreshing for me. It was a genre-change--I usually don't read chick-lit--but I needed the nostalgia pandering to Millenials struggling to figure out adulthood, and the story actually was pretty engaging for me. I had to interrupt my reading of it because that stupid not-Harry Potter book came out and I had to finish the whole thing ASAP so no one would spoil me, but then I was back to find out what went down with Sam and hear that big-sister-of-the-1990s voice telling me that no one really gets adulthood, at least not in their 20s. And that was what I needed.

Well, here's a good excuse to re-read my list and pick from that this time! I was bad and bought FOUR shiny new books about books...well, actually, I bought two on the history of paper, one on the history of writing, and one specifically on the history of the book. I want to tear into those but I should snag something off my list first...maybe a nice quick graphic novel as a palate cleanser before easing my way back into nonfiction with the comic book primer on feminism, AND THEN one of my new ones?

The life of a reader, it is a chaotic one of conflict and struggle, woe!

25avanders
sep 22, 2016, 12:05 pm

>24 QuestingforaQuest: ... so, it wasn't on your ROOT list, but was it still a ROOT? Either way, congrats on more books read! :)

26connie53
sep 27, 2016, 2:03 pm

The life of a reader, it is a chaotic one of conflict and struggle, woe!

So true!