2016 Reading Challenge, Part 1

Last year, in an attempt to revive my love of reading and broaden my reading horizons, I did a reading challenge where I read twelve books that fell into specific categories. And it worked - I actually ended up reading a grand total of forty-one books last year, and remembered how much fun a good book can be.

This year, I decided to attempt a much larger challenge - one that has fifty categories, and fifty-two books (one of the categories is "a trilogy"). I'm also trying to have the majority of the books I choose be ones I haven't already read, to start whittling away at my incredibly long to-read list. Rather than blog separately about each book (because that didn't go very well last year, and I only got through seven of the twelve), I'm going to post them in groups of five. Some books I will say more about than others, but this way, I won't have to come up with a full-length blog post for each book.

I think that about covers it, so here are the first five:

1. A book with magic:
    Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
Last year, I finally got around to reading a few of Neil Gaiman's books, and loved every one of them. So when it came time to choose a book for this particular category, I naturally gravitated towards his work. I saw the movie a while back (before I knew it was based on a book), and thought it was good. The book was better. It felt fantastical in a way that few stories outside of the old fairy tales actually do, and the supporting characters especially were delightful.   My rating: 9/10

2. A book set in high school:
    All the Bright Places, by Jennifer Niven
Everyone keeps comparing this book to The Fault in Our Stars, but this one was like a gut punch, while that one was merely interesting. Maybe it's just because the themes of this book hit much closer to home for me, but this book moved me in a way that The Fault in Our Stars never did. It's hard to rate it, because it was hard to read. I likely won't ever read it again, but I couldn't put it down while I was in the middle of it. Make of that what you will.   My rating: 8/10

3. A graphic novel
    The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman

It seems to me that defining what makes something a graphic novel should be fairly straightforward, but apparently that is not the case. I personally am not convinced that The Sandman is actually a graphic novel, but it seems to frequently be referred to as such, so I'm going to count it for this category. It was very weird but very interesting, which is pretty much the basic description of everything of Neil Gaiman's that I've read so far. Character depth was somewhat lacking, but I get the impression that probably gets better as the series goes on.   My rating: 8/10

4. A book that made you cry
    Lost Boys, by Orson Scott Card

It's very unusual for a book to make me cry - I can count on one hand the number of books that have made me tear up - so I wasn't originally intending for this book to fall into this category. Then the last page of this book happened. That being said, this book was not at all what I expected it to be from reading the cover, but that's okay because it was better. And I really, really didn't want to read the last 25 pages or so (you'll understand if you read it), but at the same time, the ending was just what it needed to be.   My rating: 10/10

5. A book that takes place in your hometown
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Okay, it doesn't technically take place in my hometown, but my hometown is so tiny that there aren't really books about it, so I picked the closest city. Also, now that I'm moving around the country, I always say I'm from Pittsburgh anyway, because people have heard of Pittsburgh. No one has heard of Enon Valley. Anyway. My main issue with this book was that I felt like none of the characters ever existed beyond what was written about them. And yes, I know that fictional characters never actually exist, but most of the time I can see characters living on beyond just what's on the page. That wasn't true with this book, and I'm not sure why. It wasn't the writing; I really enjoyed both the style and the way things were woven together, as well as the imagery used. And the characters themselves were diverse and unique, even if they never really felt real to me. Overall, I did enjoy the book, I think. I just never really connected with it.   My rating: 7/10

Five books down, forty-seven more to go! And if you have any thoughts or comments on these books, or suggestions for books you love that I should definitely read, or thoughts on books or stories or life in general, I'd love to hear them :)