Fall Into Reading Challenge Wrap-up

The Fall Into Reading 2009 is coming to a close. My goal was to read 5 books and I finished with 7! Here's what I read: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (for the record, I don't recommend it), Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot, A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger, Still Alice by Lisa Genova, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano and Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk.

Thanks to Katrina at Callipidder Days for hosting this challenge!

Fall into Reading Challenge

Katrina at Callapidder Days is hosting a great challenge this season called Fall Into Reading. I haven't done a challenge since In Their Shoes, which I successfully completed by reading 10 memoirs. (All my reviews can be found here.) Since fall is my favorite season and I'm really loving what I'm hearing about this challenge, I decided to give it a go! By the way...she has the cutest button for this challenge! I love the colors =)



I do have to be honest and say that I'm not expecting to read very many books. I have 2 weddings to attend and a vacation to NYC coming up, so I'm going to be realistic. And, well, I can't lie - fall TV just started and it is sucking up some of my time. I'll be super happy if I can finish 5 books from now until December 20, when the challenge is done. Here are a few of the books I hope to read:

• Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol - currently on page 70-something
• Kathryn Stockett's The Help
• Lisa Genova's Still Alice
• Allen Kupetz's The Future of Less - my employer recently did a seminar with him and he had some excellent social media tips.

Anything else I manage to read will be icing on the cake. I haven't been in a reading mood lately, and between work, soccer, work, home, friends, work and life, I've just been so busy that I crash at night and forget what I read in the 2 pages I managed to make it through. When I'm not in the mood to read, it's best to let it go and come back to it. I'm thinking this challenge will help me.

One more thing about this challenge. I went to Katrina's blog to sign up, and realized that there are 200 book bloggers also signed up. I had no idea our book blogging community was so large, and now I have some new bloggers to read! How exciting!

Challenge Updates, Etc.

What can I say? Reading challenges might be taking the fun out of reading for me. I don't like the feeling that I need to read my books in order because then I cannot accommodate for those that friends lend me or that I pick up on a whim.

I just started the 10th book from my list of 101 books, and I've only completed 2 memoirs out of the 10 I want to finish by December 31, 2008 for the In Their Shoes Challenge.

In other news, I just picked up Stephanie Meyer's Twilight - I've heard many good reviews of this book and I want to see for myself. Not sure when I'll get to it though :) Also, my favorite author is, of course, Jodi Picoult, and her newest novel, A Change of Heart, was released on March 4. My reading buddy Kay actually bought the book and I'm sure she'll loan it to me when she finishes - so exciting!!

And that book I just started? Spooning, by Darri Stephens and Megan DeSales.

Challenge standings, etc...

I finished Candy Girl by Diablo Cody (who wrote the screenplay for Oscar-nominated Juno) and it was a very interesting and raunchy read. I cannot even give a review, it was that explicit. But, I am always drawn to memoirs in that I find it fascinating to see how others lived.

I have now finished 4 books in my 101 books in 1001 days challenge, and 2 books in the In Their Shoes Challenge. I've read 8 books so far in 2008; updated list is to the side of this post.

It took me longer than expected to finish Barack Obama's book, but it's no matter; it was an excellent but not easy read. I found myself re-reading passages and complete pages several times throughout the book.

For the first time in awhile, I don't know what I'm reading next! Stay tuned :)