2021 Reading Challenges

 I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a year like no other, and many people will be glad to put it behind them. Reading wise, it was a strange year for me and I did not progress as well with some of the reading challenges that I signed up for as I would have liked. Even so, I have decided to sign up for two reading challenges in 2021, The Nonfiction Reader Challenge and one that I have been doing for so long that it feels like an old friend, The Aussie Author Reading Challenge.


The Nonfiction Reader Challenge


Hosted by Book'd Out the Nonfiction Reader Challenge is to encourage readers to make nonfiction a part of their reading experience. I have to admit, I don't read a lot of nonfiction. In fact, I can probably list all of the nonfiction books I have read in the past five years on both hands. Consequently, I am signing up in the Nonfiction Nipper category, which asks participants to read three nonfiction books from any of the twelve listed categories. I'll decide which categories as I go. 


The Aussie Author Reading Challenge 2021


Hosted by Booklover Book Reviews, The Aussie Author Reading Challenge is now in its 12th year! The objective of the challenge is to showcase the quality and diversity of Australian authors. There are four levels of participation, and readers can choose the level that best suits them. Although I didn't read as many books for this challenge as I would have liked in 2020 and I fell just short of meeting the requirements I am going to try for Emu level once again.

I look forward to joining others in both challenges and sharing my reading journey with you all. Good luck, everyone!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more