Reading Challenge Day 7 1st week Complete!

So after a couple of bumps in the road, I would say I've made it pretty well through this first week of my reading challenge. Yesterday I would say I actually made it through almost two hours of reading in fact. It helped that I had some more free time than usual, but I firmly believe that now that I'm back on track with a commitment to carving out some time each day for reading and I'm supplying myself with interesting material (keep an eye out for a glowing review of A Thousand Splendid Suns) is truly why I'm making some progress in this goal. But its not over, not by a long shot. I'm going to stay the course and keep to this commitment for the long term. Who thinks that I can make it for a month? I do! I hope I do because I had really forgotten the great feeling of reading something that both entertains and instructs and that truly wonderful feeling of using my brain. Technology can make us so numb, but books, books make us feel every emotion that exists under the sun. Well, now I'm being sentimental but its true. Keep a lookout for more updates on my reading challenge!

Happy Reading!

National Book Foundation Presents the 2013 Innovation in Reading Prizes!

The National Book Foundation (the group that gives out the National Book Awards) announced the 2013 winners of its Innovations in Reading Prizes.  These awards give out up to $2,500 dollars to groups or individuals who have created an innovative means of generating and sustaining a love of reading.  What I thought stood out among the winners this year was the extent to which each of these groups worked to not just connect with and encourage individuals to read but entire communities.

Check out the winners:

City National Bank for Reading is the Way Up (Multiple locations)  www.readingisthewayup.org

Little Free Library (Hudson, WI)  www.thelittlefreelibrary.org

The Uni Project (New York, NY)  www.theuniproject.org

The Uprise Books Project (Vancouver, WA)   www.uprisebooks.org

World Reader (Seattle, WA)  www.worldreader.org

Congrats to the Winners on helping to bring the joy to reading to as many communities as possible!  For more information please check out http://www.nationalbook.org/innovations_in_reading.html

Reading Challenge Day 5

Day 5 was another successful day in my reading challenge. I must have really enjoyed the Great Gatsby because I logged about an hour and a half for reading. I think the challenge with reading isn't that we don't want to read, I think the hardest part is getting started. Once you are invested in a book you want to finish it out. I think (hopefully) almost everyone has had the experience towards the end of a novel at least once of not being able to put a book down because the end is so close and you just want to know what happens. It is the dead time in between books that gets me most. If I'm not excited by the book, or don't have anything new to be excited about, I'm just not going put any time in to read and I'm less likely to get started on the next tale. Well hopefully I'll be able to finish out my week strong!

Is anyone else out there keeping up? Happy Reading!

Reading Challenge Day 4

Ok guys, I finally got some true success yesterday! I did read in between the periods and on the commercial breaks for the Sharks game, however, after the game I got in 40 more solid reading minutes so I'm estimating that my grand total was somewhere around 70 or so minutes for the day. I have to admit that it helped that reading The Great Gatsby is pretty easy and I managed to fly through the first 50 pages. In fact, if it hadn't been so late I probably could have read through at least most of the book. And I'm not scanning, I'm reading as carefully as I was trained to in all those college classes that seem forever ago. Oh and for you late comers that also want to re-read The Great Gatsby and don't have a copy laying around (and trust me its a pretty good bet all the library copies are currently taken, if you are in Orange County I checked) you'll be glad to hear that Barnes and Noble's version of the ebook is only $2.99 and Amazon's is only $4.99. While I tend to prefer real, solid books while I'm reading, you can't argue with the price difference.

So is anyone else keeping up with their own reading challenge? Update us all!

Happy Reading!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with my experience reading these tales. I knew absolutely nothing about Sherlock Holmes going into reading this collection. At first when I started reading, I was a little confused by the format, having at first expected a novel. It didn't help that I was reading on my Iphone and didn't have a sense at most points of how far into the book I was. But the stories I was reading were pretty interesting and what I loved most of all, surprising. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was clearly a clever writer who had a remarkable ability to guide his reader through his stories at his own pace. He never accidentally lets a clue slip so the reader can easily guess as to who committed what crime and why. And considering the sheer amount of these stories, it is remarkable that he was able to create such a variety of scenarios with which to entertain the public.

Upon finishing this set of tales, I wanted to find out which exactly of the Sherlock tales I had read so far and how many others were left. I knew there were others, I had heard of the Hound of Baskervilles but I wasn't sure of the amount of additional titles. Now let me just say, clear and organized information about Sherlock Holmes is not easy to come by. Which to be fair to those who attempt to explain Sherlock Holmes, the problem is most of the stories are short tales that were released over time in a variety of publications that were then later complied into the volumes with the titles most people are more familiar with. These short stories were broken up with intermittent longer novels about the great detective. From my own detective work this is the overall breakdown and chronology of the tales:

Complete Sherlock Holmes. (source http://www.sherlockian.net/canon/index.html)

A Study in Scarlet (novel, 1887)

The Sign of the Four (novel, 1890)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A Scandal in Bohemia, 1891

The Red-headed League, 1891

A Case of Identity, 1891

The Boscombe Valley Mystery, 1891

The Five Orange Pips, 1891

The Man with the Twisted Lip, 1891

The Blue Carbuncle, 1892

The Speckled Band, 1892

The Engineer's Thumb, 1892

The Noble Bachelor, 1892

The Beryl Coronet, 1892

The Copper Beeches, 1892

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Silver Blaze, 1892

The Yellow Face, 1893

The Stock-broker's Clerk, 1893

The 'Gloria Scott', 1893

The Musgrave Ritual, 1893

The Reigate Squires, 1893

The Crooked Man, 1893

The Resident Patient, 1893

The Greek Interpreter, 1893

The Naval Treaty, 1893

The Final Problem, 1893

The Hound of the Baskervilles (novel, 1901-02)

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Empty House, 1903

The Norwood Builder, 1903

The Dancing Men, 1903

The Solitary Cyclist, 1903

The Priory School, 1904

Black Peter, 1904

Charles Augustus Milverton, 1904

The Six Napoleons, 1904

The Three Students, 1904

The Golden Pince-Nez, 1904

The Missing Three-Quarter, 1904

The Abbey Grange, 1904

The Second Stain, 1904

The Valley of Fear (novel, 1914-15)

His Last Bow

Wisteria Lodge, 1908

The Cardboard Box, 1893

The Red Circle, 1911

The Bruce-Partington Plans, 1908

The Dying Detective, 1913

Lady Frances Carfax, 1911

The Devil's Foot, 1910

His Last Bow, 1917

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The Illustrious Client, 1924

The Blanched Soldier, 1926

The Mazarin Stone, 1921

The Three Gables, 1926

The Sussex Vampire, 1924

The Three Garridebs, 1924

Thor Bridge, 1922

The Creeping Man, 1923

The Lion's Mane, 1926

The Veiled Lodger, 1927

Shoscombe Old Place, 1927

The Retired Colourman, 1926

Reading Challenge Day 3

So....ok well maybe I only got in about 45-50 minutes of reading today. I got about 10 or so in in the morning and then another solid half an hour in the afternoon and then my evening ended up definitely not being about reading (though I did manage to get quite a few episodes of That 70's Show). I did however, finish The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes! And even if I didn't quite hit my time goal for this challenge, I did finish my 4^th book this year towards my goal on GoodReads of completing 20 books this year, a goal I'm hoping to demolish. Next, I'm on to what everybody in the entire country is probably reading either again or for the first time, The Great Gatsby. Considering that I haven't really read it since high school, I want to give it a fresh read through so I have a baseline to judge the movie by. So keep your eyes out a review of Sherlock Holmes and The Great Gatsby! Anybody else manage to make it 3 days?

Happy Reading!

New York Times Bestsellers

So here is the latest from the New York Times on what the latest top sellers are:

THIS WEEK		LAST WEEK	HARDCOVER FICTION	WEEKS ON LIST
1			THE HIT, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central.) The government hitman Will Robie uncovers a serious threat as he attempts to take out a fellow assassin who has gone rogue.	1
				Buy
2		1	WHISKEY BEACH, by Nora Roberts. (Putnam.) A former criminal attorney who has been acquitted of his wife’s murder retreats to his family home on a New England cliff.	2
				Buy
3			FLY AWAY, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin's.) A woman must deal with her personal issues before she can keep her promise to help the family of her deceased friend.	1
				Buy
4			PARIS, by Edward Rutherfurd. (Doubleday.) Characters real and imaginary in the City of Light.	1
				Buy
5		3	LIFE AFTER LIFE, by Kate Atkinson. (Little, Brown.) A woman appears in different versions of the same events, centered on World War II.	4
				Buy
6			WEDDING NIGHT, by Sophie Kinsella. (Dial.) A woman tries to break up her sister’s impulsive marriage.	1
				Buy
7		2	DADDY'S GONE A HUNTING, by Mary Higgins Clark. (Simon & Schuster.) Two sisters are threatened by a dark secret from their family's past.	3
				Buy
8		4	GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn. (Crown.) A woman disappears on her fifth anniversary; is her husband a killer?	47
				Buy
9		6	THE BURGESS BOYS, by Elizabeth Strout. (Random House.) Two brothers, both lawyers, come together in a small Maine town to defend their troubled nephew.	5
				Buy
10			THE MYSTERY WOMAN, by Amanda Quick. (Putnam.) The second book of a new Victorian paranormal series, Ladies of Lantern Street, by Jayne Ann Krentz, writing pseudonymously.

Now, what looks interesting to is Paris, Life after Life, and the Burgess Boys (which I keep hearing about and still haven't read) because they seem different than anything else that I have read.  Any votes or opinions from the public?

Reading Challenge Day 2

So for Day 2, I got in my hour of reading, but just barely. After work yesterday, I must admit that between cooking dinner and watching play-off hockey (yes, book nerds can be sports fans too) most of my evening evaporated pretty quickly. However, I remembered my promise to myself to keep reading and about halfway through the game, (when things started to go downhill for the Sharks) I started to get some reading in on the commercials and in the last couple of intermissions. Now I'm not superstitious and I tend to make fun of sports fans who really think sitting in the exact same spot every time they watch a game helps the team win, but I find it encouraging to think maybe me living up to my own promise to myself helped in their comeback. Just kidding. But I did manage to get in the last half hour of my reading in before bed and jump again much further ahead in Sherlock's adventures. So much so that I think I may be able to finish the tales in my reading for tomorrow.

Has anyone else met their reading challenge for his or herself? Share and let us know if you have!

Happy Reading

DAY 1 READING CHALLENGE

So day 1 of challenge to read an hour a day was a success. I managed to squeeze in about a half hour through out the day in all my little down times and then another full half an hour last night before bed. Now I'm a good chapter and a half further in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes than I was the day before, rather than just moving forward by a couple of pages at a time like I had been. I'm finding that I love GoodReads free ebook feature. Its making it easy for me to read on the go because I do have my Iphone at pretty much all times so I can take advantages of all those random wait times that tend to come up in the course of a day.

Overall I'm finding myself to be a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Somehow I made it through my entire adolescence without reading through even a small piece of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work and I'm now realizing what I was missing out on. I've been a fan of the Sherlock movies featuring Robert Downy Jr. and I recently got into the show Elementary, but I had never really thought to seek out the original stories themselves. They really are a great read for pretty much any reading group. Each individual is a nice quick read and basically entirely self contained. But they have that element of surprise which most mystery tales ironically lack. If I manage to stick to my challenge and get through this volume I'll have to seek out all the Sherlock tales. Happy Reading!

THE BOOK NERD IS BACK! After a long and highly unnecessary hiatus, I have returned to my literary roots. For you see, even a true book nerd can be distracted into our modern world of techno-stimulation of Netflix, Facebook and Iphone games. To be perfectly honest, since I stopped posting, I almost entirely stopped reading. Maybe I picked up a gossip magazine or news article here or there, but I didn't engage in that mind and soul improving and fulfilling true act of reading. I scanned things. I didn't put in the time to truly take in their meaning, whatever sort of text I read.

So here is my new pledge, I am going to make sure that I read for at least 1 hour per day. At first this seemed like a lot to me. I'm always so tired at the end of the day, that when I attempt to read, I almost always fall asleep within 10 minutes. And let me tell you, 10 minutes a day will not get you through the modern novel (even a short one) in a time frame that will keep you interested. But then I looked at all the time I spent watching TV or scanning through Facebook and I realized if I took a little time out of those activities, an hour was much more feasible than it first appeared. Now to some of you an hour may not seem like that much time at all. But reading is like exercise for your mind. When you are getting started back up again, you want to make it a realistic and sustainable part of your daily life. Not just something you overkill on once and don't do again for another month.

Now who wants to join me in regaining back usage of their full brain capacity? How much time are you willing to pledge a day towards reading? Encourage your friends to join you and share your progress on Diary of A Book Nerd. Happy Reading!