March 2014 Roundup

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Reading Bingo 2014

Updated on March 17, 2014

As I was browsing through some book-related news via my feed reader, I came across the Reading Bingo Challenge 2014 from Retreat by Random House. I know I’ve signed up for a few reading challenges already but I thought this would be fun.

As I go along, I will be updating this post with the links to my reviews.

as of March 17, 2014

A book with a one-word title: Ring by Koji Suzuki

A book you heard about online: The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

A book by a female author: The Giver by Lois Lowry

A book that became a movie: Watchmen by Alan Moore

A book with a blue cover: The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa

A book published this year: Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen

A book with non-human characters: Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

A book your friend loves: Blankets by Craig Thompson

A book of short stories: The Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg

A book of nonfiction: Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

A book that is more than 10 years old: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The first book by a favorite author: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I think I will fill up the whole card just to make it a little more challenging. Also, I’ll use one book per space.

If you have any book recommendations for the spaces left, let me know in the comments :)

Have you joined this challenge?

Tackling The Book Series

Here’s a confession: the only book series I ever completed was The Hunger Games. I almost completed The Diary of Wimpy Kid books too but somewhere in the way I became a wimp and never touched another book from the series. I also have a bad habit of watching movies inspired by a book series then forgetting reading the book all together. Case in point: The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. When I finished reading the first book (which I really, really, really loved) I found out that it was made into a movie starring Noomi Rapace and I got hooked. I finished the trilogy watching the last two titles, forgetting the books.

ALong with all the reading challenges I joined for next year, I also set a personal challenge to tackle a few book series. I’m not expecting to read all the books though. A book or two will suffice, I guess.

Book Series For 2014

First up is the Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood. I’ve never read a book written by her so when Maddaddam was released this year, I was tempted to read it. Then I found out it was part of a trilogy. I know some readers go ahead and read the most recent ones but personally, I want to start in the beginning.

I haven’t tried reading a book about zombies but since I’m on a mission to try new genres/ topics, I’m going to start with Mira Grant’s Newsflesh Trilogy. I am not particularly fond of zombies. First, they scare me. They scared me when I played Resident Evil and Silent Hill when I was younger, and they still scare me now. Second, I usually don’t know what to expect from these books. Does it involve consumption of humans? Creepy vocals? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Guess I’ll just have to read this to find out.

Next up is Mira Grant’s Parasitology series, starting with the first book: Parasite. I’m on a science fiction roll here. Now, tapeworms do not fancy me in any way. (Zombies just now, and now tapeworms?) But this tapeworm seems harmless until we later find out in the synopsis that they have now become, surprise, surprise, “restless” (whatever that means). Restless is never good, right… Right?

One of my favorite books of all time is The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. I usually do not like movie adaptations but I found the movie to be excellent too. I plan to read “Red Dragon“, the first book in the Hannibal Lecter series.

To top it all off, I really want to read Koji Suzuki’s first book of The Ring Trilogy in 2014. This book inspired the creepy movie that raised hairs and voices during those late night horror movie marathons. They say it isn’t really creepy compared to the movie. Now I’ll be the judge of that. Then again, I become selectively wimpy at times so I hope I have the guts to finish reading it. Or maybe read in broad daylight. That always helps, right… Right?

What I Talk When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

This is not the book cover. Image above made with Phoster and Percolater apps.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
Published July 29th 2008 by Knopf (first published 2007)

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A Few More Reading Challenges

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their loved ones! I guess for most of us, we’re still having a slight hangover from the celebrations. I resumed reading A Tale For A Time Being just now and while I rest for a while, I decided to post two more reading challenges that I will join next year.

First up, the  Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014 created by Amanda at Opinions of a Wolf. Please click on the image below to know more about the challenge.

The reason why I got interested in this challenge is because I am a nurse (although I’m not practicing the profession now), and during my duties in a mental hospital, I had witnessed the struggles people with mental illnesses have, whether it is physical or emotional. In modern society, even with all our technology, a lot of people treat mental illness as taboo. Many people avoid talking about it. People who suffer from these illnesses are shunned and often misunderstood. When I was still in nursing school, Psychiatric Nursing was my favorite subject. I may have been lousy memorizing Medical-Surgical nursing notes but Psychiatric nursing was different. In fact, while I may have disposed most of my nursing books, my Psychiatric books are still with me. The mind is highly complex and so are the conditions and struggles people have when it comes to their mental health. I want to join this challenge to help me understand their conditions more – what are the precipitating factors, the emotions that these people go through… What kind of help do they need, how do their conditions affect their loved ones? I hope to have more insights, perhaps even enlightenment of the subject matter after completing this challenge. Understanding them is the first step. Most importantly though, I hope I can be of help to people who suffer from these illnesses.

Here are the books I hope to read for this challenge:

2014 Mental Illness Awareness Reading Challenge

The other challenge is Book To Movie Challenge: The Sequel. This is hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey and Sergio of Tipping My Fedora. If you want to read more about the challenge and join, please click on the image below.

Aside from books, I really enjoy watching movies. I especially like movies that aren’t too mainstream. I like films by David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson and Wong Kar-Wai. I also like watching old movies, Japanese and other foreign films. I watched Ballad of Narayama this year. It’s a 1958 film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. It was a completely different movie for me and I loved the story.

Here are the books I hope to read for this challenge:

For 2014, here are all the reading challenges I plan to join:

1. 7th Annual Graphic Novels and Manga Challenge
2. 2014 TBR Pile Challenge
3. Banned Books Challenge 2014
4. Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014
5. Books To Movie Challenge: The Sequel

Also, I am planning to write a few more reviews of Japanese literature I read this year, until the end of the Japanese Literature Challenge 7 hosted by Dolce Bellezza.

I didn’t enumerate different books for each challenge. Since it’s okay to ‘overlap’ challenges, I did some planning (and research!) so I can minimize the number of books for the challenges. That way, I can still read any book I want throughout the year.

Will you be joining reading challenges next year?