So I didn’t finish every task on the 2017 Read Harder Challenge. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a book that kept my attention for task #4. But 23 out of 24 tasks complete, a couple in multiple ways, is pretty good in my book, so I’m ok with not reading one book that I maybe should have. I read a ton of other books this year on top of the RH Challenge anyway, partly for myself and partly because I was reviewing them, either for the Historical Novel Society or for Discovering Diamonds. All told, I read 85 books in 2017, though there are still a few days left. I might squeeze in one or two more.  

So my final list ended up as follows (my originally planned books are in parentheses):

1. Read a book about sports: Riding Lessons – Sara Gruen (The Sport of Kings – CE Morgan)
2. Read a debut novel: Scribe of Siena – Melodie Winawer (Cinder – Marissa Meyer)
3. Read a book about books: My Life with Bob – Pamela Paul (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – Katherine Howe)
4. Read a book set in Central / S. America by a Central/S American author: did not finish. I tried Perla by Carolina de Robertis, a collection of short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of Isabel Allende’s novels, and some random book I found in the library. I was just bored. It was the last task I got to. (I’d planned to read House of Mist – Maria Luisa Bombal)
5. Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative: Listen, Slowly – Thanhha Lai (Funny in Farsi – Firoozeh Dumas)
6. Read an all-ages comic: Phoebe and her Unicorn – Dana Simpson (read as planned)
7. Read a book published between 1900 – 1950: The Door in the Wall – Marguerite di Angeli (had also considered I Capture the Castle, And Then There Were None, 1984, or The House of Mirth)
8. Read a travel memoir: Wild – Cheryl Strayed (Gorge – Kara Richardson Whitely)
9. Read a book you’ve read before: The Door in the Wall – Marguerite di Angeli (didn’t have one in mind)
10. Read a book set within 100 miles of your location: Stargirl – Jerry Spinelli (I’d planned The Turquoise Ledge – Leslie Marmon Silko)
11. Read a book more than 5000 miles from your location: so many. Listen, Slowly – Thanhha Lai; Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Isaacson; the Du Lac Chronicles – Mary Anne Yarde; GoddessGirls 1-4; Deeds of Darkness – Mel Starr; Season of Blood – Jeri Westerson; A Secret History of Witches – Louisa Morgan; An Argument of Blood – JA Ironside; Down the Common – Ann Baer; Homegoing – Yaa Gyosi; Half Sick of Shadows – Richard Abbott; Hunting Prince Dracula – Kerri Maniscalco; The Colour of Cold Blood – Toni Mount; The Colour of Gold – Toni Mount; The Eleventh Hour – MJ Trow; The Inquisitor’s Tale – Adam Gidwitz; Daughter of Destiny – Nicola Evelina; The Thief Taker – CS Quinn; The Scribe of Siena – Melodie Winawer; H is for Hawk – Helen Macdonald. (Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala; Flirting with French; The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones; The World We Found; The Light Between Oceans)
12. Read a fantasy novel: Miranda and Caliban – Jacqueline Carey (didn’t have one in mind)
13. Read a nonfiction book about technology: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil Degrasse Tyson (Bringing Columbia Home by Michael Leinbach or Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt)
14. Read a book about war: Listen, Slowly – Thanhha Lai (House of Splendid Isolation – Edna O’Brien)
15. Read a YA or MG book by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel – Sara Farizan; Tattoo Atlas – Tim Floreen (read as planned)
16. Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country: The Color Purple – Alice Walker (The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood)
17. Read a classic by an author of color: The Color Purple – Alice Walker (Lakota Woman – Mary Crow Dog)
18. Read a superhero comic with a female lead: The Legend of Wonder Woman vol 1 (Captain Marvel – Kelly Sue DeConnick)
19. Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey: Labyrinth Lost – Zoraida Cordova (Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko)
20. Read an LGBTQ+ romance: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel – Sara Farizan (Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters)
21. Read a book published by a micropress: Deer Woman – Elizabeth LaPensee; Fig Tree in Winter – Anne Graue (read as planned)
22. Read a collection of stories by a woman: Prickle Moon – Juliet Marillier (Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri)
23. Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love: The Rubaiyat – Omar Khayyam (Old Norse Women’s Poetry – Sandra Ballif Straubhaar)
24. Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color: Listen, Slowly; Labyrinth Lost; The Color Purple; When Dimple Met Rishi; Little & Lion; The Hate U Give; Deer Woman (Association of Small Bombs – Karan Mahajari)

Overall, I am pretty happy with the end results, though I ended up reading less diversely than I had intended. I am planning to go back and pick up the ones I had wanted to read, like The Association of Small Bombs or an LGBTQ romance that actually fits the romance genre a little better and use those in the 2018 Read Harder Challenge. I am also challenging myself to use only books from my own bookshelf or, in a pinch, from the library. I refuse to buy more books this year (barring receiving a gift certificate or getting review copies from publicists).

Did you do any reading challenges this year? If so, what one(s) did you do and how did you fare?

The Last Hours  by Minette Walters

I read it as a: paperback

Source: my own collection because of Book Depository! Otherwise, I would have had to wait until Aug 2018 to be able to read this in the US.

Length: 547 pp

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Year: 2017

 

The Last Hours is the account of one demesne, Develish, and its occupants as they struggle to survive and make sense of their terrifying new world in the grip of the bubonic plague. Lady Anne of Develish is left behind with her daughter, Eleanor, when her husband, Sir Richard, heads out to the neighboring demesne of Foxcote, intending on securing a husband for Eleanor. Instead, they encounter the pestilence and death. Lady Anne, convent raised and well educated, knows enough about health and healing to understand the importance of cleanliness and quarantine, and so orders her serfs within the walls of the manor and then seals off the manor, not allowing anyone to enter or leave. Sir Richard and his retinue return to find the manor barred against them and all but one of them die outside the walls. Anne surreptitiously send her steward, Thaddeus, a bastard serf, outside the walls on reconnaissance with the surviving member of Sir Richard’s retinue, Gyles, the captain of the guard. Eventually, Gyles is allowed to return within the walls when it is clear he does is not sick with the plague. Within Develish’s walls, serfs unused to inactivity are beginning to get stir crazy, stores are running low, and then a murder occurs. Thaddeus takes five young men, sons of the leading serfs, with him outside the walls to go in search of more supplies, and to help cover a scandal that could shatter the fragile peace Anne has created and which her daughter Eleanor seems determined to destroy.

This was a fast-paced and fun historical novel overall. The descriptions of the land and clothes were vibrant, and the effects of the plague were terrifyingly real. It seems that Walters did some thorough research on both, which is much appreciated. There were quite a few other areas that required a huge suspension of disbelief, and which were a bit too much to overcome – noblewomen with basically modern sensibilities teaching their serfs to read comes to mind – which draw away from the historical quality of the story. I think the same effect could have been achieved simply by acknowledging historical fact – so many deaths did occur that skilled serfs and farmers were needed and they could move up the social ladder in ways that hadn’t been open to them prior to the plague. Fact. Teaching the serfs to read isn’t necessary for that to have happened within the story, and it would have been more believable in the end. Just my two cents.

The characters were well developed and all were interesting, even the ones you love to hate. Anne was a more complex character than she first appears, and it becomes more apparent as the plot comes to its climax. Some intriguing questions are posed about her character and personality and I hope that they are answered in the next book. Thaddeus is intriguing, even if I don’t believe that such a man would really have existed, or not very likely, and I hope to know more about him as well. Gyles is one of my favorites and I want him to get more of the limelight. Eleanor is odious and I want to know how she ends up. There are too many unanswered questions and I am really excited that the book specifically said “to be continued” at the end, because I would be so unhappy otherwise.

I am eagerly looking forward to the next instalment, literate serfs and all.

The Breathless by Tara Goedjen

I read it as an: hardcopy

Source: Blogging for Books

Length: 368 pp

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Year: 2017

So, I was hoping for super creepy, atmospheric Southern Gothic, maybe a YA version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But this wasn’t remotely creepy. To be fair, I tend not to read a lot of YA – I find most of it simply too young (i.e., too immature, because I’m a grown woman with bills to pay and children to tend and I have little time for fictional teenage love triangles) – and I do read a lot of true crime and things that are actually scary. So I could be jaded. But this just wasn’t scary or creepy to me at all.

The writing style was rather off-putting as well, bouncing around between tenses and the changing perspective – the frequent use of you and we was just weird to me. Who is narrating? I thought at first it was pre-editing typos and such, but the copy I received appears to be a finished edition, not an ARC. However, the author does have some excellent descriptive writing of her scenery and it could be atmospheric and creepy if done in a different way. It’s like she was trying too hard and it just fell flat.

The racism that was laced throughout the novel is gross but should be taken with a grain of salt. I am not sure if it was because of the setting – it IS in the Deep South and there ARE parts set in antebellum South – or if it is because racism is still rampant in the country today and it was intended as some kind of social commentary. But, like, what diversity? Most of the characters were white. We have a more diverse society than that. I want my literature to reflect that.

Overall, I didn’t loathe this book, but I definitely didn’t love it. It just had too many unanswered questions, plot holes, unsympathetic characters, and just wasn’t my cuppa.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.