bunnygirl's 2010 challenge

1. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, Yukio Mishima (translator John Nathan)
2. The Art of a Beautiful Game, Chris Ballard
3. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
4. Roadside Picnic/Tale of the Troika, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (translator Antonina W. Bouis)
5. The Informer, Akimitsu Takagi (translator Sadako Mizoguchi)
6. Magic Under Glass, Jaclyn Dolamore
7. Perfume, Patrick Süskind (translator John E. Woods)
8. The Lost Fleet: Fearless, Jack Campbell
9. Bridge of Valor, Anne Lesley Groell
10. Justine, Lawrence Durrell
11. The End of East, Jen Sookfong Lee
12. The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson (translator Thomas Teal)
13. Brass Man, Neal Asher
14. Princess of the Sword, Lynn Kurland
15. La's Orchestra Saves the World, Alexander McCall Smith

How did you like The End of East? I have added it to my challenge list this year.

I received La's Orchestra Saves the World for Christmas and read it right away. I liked it. McCall Smith is so diverse in his writing. What did you think?

on The End of East-- It was okay. Someone I used to correspond with had an ongoing complaint about Canadian literature being about some boring woman on the prairies having a midlife crisis. I must be hitting the same subset of books by Asian Canadians about women in the west in their thirties having issues with their parents. I think my main issue with the book is that the mother-daughter dynamic was far too close to home for me and it got really intense.

on La's Orchestra-- it was a change from McCall Smith's previous books, although his female protagonists all have quite a bit of the same take-charge spirit; La just happened to be younger than Precious, Isobel, and Domenica.

16. 1635: The Tangled Web, Virginia DeMarce
17. The Dead Hand, David E. Hoffman
18. Brewers Essential, Tom Haudricourt
19. Dirty Water, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith and Jere Smith
20. I Hate New Music, Dave Thompson
21. Spinning Tropics, Aska Mochizuki (translator Wayne Lammers)
22. Gourmet Rhapsody, Muriel Barbery (translator Alison Anderson)
23. The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono (translator Alexander O. Smith)
24. Piratica, Tanith Lee

25. The Magus, John Fowles
26. Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt W. Beyer
27. Throwing Bullets, Roy Rowan
28. Polity Agent, Neal Asher
29. This Ain't Brain Surgery, Larry Dierker
30. Wind from a Foreign Sky, Katya Reimann
31. Miss Emmaline and the Archangel, Rachel Lee
32. Stealing Home, Sherryl Woods
33. Ill Met by Moonlight, Sarah A. Hoyt
34. The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, Bill James
35. Sixty Feet, Six Inches, Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson with Lonnie Wheeler
36. Starfarers, Vonda N. McIntyre

That's it for January; I've a few for February but I'll post those at the end of the week.

37. Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
38. The More Things Change, Chamein Canton
39. Phenomenal Girl 5, A.J. Menden
40. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop
41. Under My Roof, Nick Mamatas
42. Promenade of the Gods, Koji Suzuki
43. Sea Change, Aimee Friedman
44. Balthazar, Lawrence Durrell
45. Imajica, Clive Barker
46. The Lady Flees Her Lord, Michele Ann Young
47. Darkborn, Alison Sinclair
48. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino
49. Cauldron of Iniquity, Anne Lesley Groell

What did you think of Imajica? I have looked at that book forever and while I love the cover, I have never actually picked it up to see what it was about. Sad... I know.

It's a very complicated (and long) book. I don't know if you've read Pullman's His Dark Materials series, but this book is sort of the religious, adult version (and from far earlier.) I know Barker is known for horror, but this is more dark fantasy.

50. Babel-17, Samuel R. Delany
51. Crazy '08, Cait Murphy
52. The God Engines, John Scalzi
53. A Place to Rest, Erin Dutton
54. The Twin, Gerbrand Bakker
55. The City in the Lake, Rachel Neumeier
56. The Geometry of God, Uzma Aslam Khan
57. The Snowman, Jörg Fauser
58. Love Lasts Forever, Dominiqua Douglas
59. Breakaway, Joel Shepherd
60. Mountolive, Lawrence Durrell
61. The Chosen, Chaim Potok
62. The Magicians, Lev Grossman
63. The Love Charm, Pamela Morsi
64. The Game, Diana Wynne Jones
65. The Legacy, TJ Bennett

I think the length is why I never picked it up before. I will put it on the list and give it a go though. It sounds interesting.

66. Hespira, Matthew Hughes
67. Halfway to Heaven, Susan Wiggs
68. Translucent Tree, Nobuko Takagi
69. A Wind Named Amnesia, Hideyuki Kikuchi
70. The Einstein Intersection, Samuel R. Delany
71. Invader Summer, Hideyuki Kikuchi
72. Rien Ne Va Plus, Margarita Karapanou
73. Line War, Neal Asher
74. The Many-Colored Land, Julian May
75. Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster
76. The Lost Star, H.M. Hoover
77. When Demons Walk, Patricia Briggs
78. Clea, Lawrence Durrell
79. A Dream in Polar Fog, Yuri Rytkheu
80. Time Dancers, Steve Cash

2/5 of the way through...

81. Voyageurs, Margaret Elphinstone
82. The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin
83. Killswitch, Joel Shepherd
84. Valentine's Change of Heart, Elisabeth Fairchild
85. The Harsh Cry of the Heron, Lian Hearn
86. The Promise, Chaim Potok
87. Transition, Vonda N. McIntyre
88. Wild Things, Charles Coleman Finlay
89. Woods and Waters Wild, Charles de Lint
90. Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih
91. Tainaron: Mail from Another City, Leena Krohn
92. The Commons, Matthew Hughes
92. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1
93. Wherever There's a Fight, Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi
94. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, Charlie Huston
95. Living Oprah, Robyn Okrant
96. A Summer Affair, Susan Wiggs
97. Punktown, Jeffrey Thomas
98. We Who Are About To..., Joanna Russ
99. The Old Man and Me, Elaine Dundy
100. Hidden Camera, Zoran Živković

101. Night Song, Beverly Jenkins
102. Prince of Storms, Kay Kenyon
103. Death at the Ballpark, Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks
104. The Golden Calf, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
105. Inverted World, Christopher Priest
106. Shalador's Lady, Anne Bishop
107. Beauty Salon, Mario Bellatín
108. The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante
109. The Trade of Queens, Charles Stross
110. Stories in Stone, David B. Williams
111. The Last Wish, Andrzej Sapkowski
112. The Book of Heroes, Miyuki Miyabe
113. The Wild Places, Robert Macfarlane
114. The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010
115. Evaluating Baseball's Managers, Chris Jaffe
116. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
117. I Am a Cat, Soseki Natsume
118. Socrates in Love, Kyoichi Katayama
119. Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

120. 2010-04-07 The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, Justine Larbalestier
121. 2010-04-08 Ramage and the Drumbeat, Dudley Pope
122. 2010-04-09 Living with Someone Who's Living with Bipolar Disorder, Chelsea Lowe and Bruce M. Cohen
123. 2010-04-11 The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2
124. 2010-04-12 The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3
125. 2010-04-12 Names on the Land, George R. Stewart
126. 2010-04-13 The Future is Queer
127. 2010-04-13 The Folding Knife, K.J. Parker
128. 2010-04-14 The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair, Haruka Takachiho
129. 2010-04-16 Last Letters from Hav, Jan Morris
130. 2010-04-16 The Elements, Theodore Gray
131. 2010-04-16 What the Librarian Did, Karina Bliss
132. 2010-04-18 The Hostage, Susan Wiggs
133. 2010-04-18 A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner
134. 2010-04-19 Wicked City: Black Guard, Hideyuki Kikuchi
135. 2010-04-20 A Murderous Procession, Ariana Franklin
136. 2010-04-20 Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
137. 2010-04-23 High Heat, Tim Wendel
138. 2010-04-23 The Slynx, Tatyana Tolstaya

Are you a speed reader? I am retired and feel good if I read a book in a day but you sometimes do 2 a day, how?

I started putting dates in because the rest of the people here have--I don't read the entire book in a day, it's that I alternate books over several weeks and may finish more than one on a given day.

reading habits: 2-hour commute on public transport + 2 hours break + lunch a day at work (and I read when I eat) + reading in between innings of baseball games on TV = lots of reading. I also took the bus to and back from two Twins games this month and read a book while waiting for Target Field to open up (and also read between innings.) I can read 25 pages every 20 minutes, more or less.

139. 2010-04-25 Superluminal, Vonda N. McIntyre; 1983; 298p.
140. 2010-04-26 Baseball Prospectus 2010; 2010; 652p.
141. 2010-04-27 The Baseball Gospels, Dirk Hayhurst; 2010; 340p.
142. 2010-04-28 90% of the Game is Half Mental, Emma Span; 2010; 166p.
143. 2010-04-28 Star Bright, Miranda Jarrett; 2000; 308p.
144. 2010-04-29 Spellwright, Blake Charlton; 2010; 350p.
145. 2010-05-01 Blood of Elves, Andrzej Sapkowski; 1994; 398p.
146. 2010-05-02 The Stationmaster, Jiro Asada; 2000; 237p.
147. 2010-05-03 The Dirty Pair Strike Again, Haruka Takachiho; 1985; 271p.
148. 2010-05-04 A Mighty Fortress, David Weber; 2010; 719p.
149. 2010-05-04 The Eastern Stars, Mark Kurlansky; 2010; 272p.
150. 2010-05-05 Hotel Iris, Yoko Ogawa; 1996; 164p.
151. 2010-05-08 Sold and Seduced, Michelle Styles; 2007; 279p.
152. 2010-05-09 Fifty-nine in '84, Edward Achorn; 2010; 366p.
153. 2010-05-09 In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, Jean Shepherd; 1966; 264p.
154. 2010-05-10 Shine; 2010; 453p.
155. 2010-05-13 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie; 1981; 533p.
156. 2010-05-13 From Worst to First, Bill Gutman, Dave Weiner and Tony Seidl; 1991; 147p.
157. 2010-05-13 Sugarless, James Magruder; 2009; 268p.
158. 2010-05-15 The War of the Dwarves, Markus Heitz; 2004; 747p.
159. 2010-05-15 The Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee; 2010; 341p.
160. 2010-05-15 Embers, Laura Bickle; 2010; 359p.
161. 2010-05-16 Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey; 2010; 342p.
162. 2010-05-16 Half World, Hiromi Goto; 2009; 225p.
162. 2010-05-17 The Hunted, Anna Leonard; 2010; 279p.
163. 2010-05-18 Wildwood, Roger Deakin; 2007; 391p.
164. 2010-05-18 Living Hell, Catherine Jinks; 2007; 256p.
165. 2010-05-19 Principles of Angels, Jaine Fenn; 2008; 310p.
166. 2010-05-19 Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Carl Wilson; 2007; 161p.
167. 2010-05-19 The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind, Fuyumi Ono; 1993; 319p.
168. 2010-05-21 The Summer of You, Kate Noble; 2010; 343p.
169. 2010-05-23 Warriors; 2010; 736p.
170. 2010-05-24 Everything and Nothing, Jorge Luis Borges; 1999; 129p.
171. 2010-05-24 The Beastly Bride; 2010; 500p.
172. 2010-05-24 Bewitched & Betrayed, Lisa Shearin; 2010; 366p.
173. 2010-05-25 The Steam Magnate, Dana Copithorne; 2006; 313p.
174. 2010-05-26 The Legions of Fire, David Drake; 2010; 367p.
175. 2010-05-27 Cardboard Gods, Josh Wilker; 2010; 243p.

176. 2010-05-27 Cardboard Gods, Josh Wilker; 2010; 243p.
177. 2010-05-27 Yukikaze, Chohei Kambayashi; 2002; 317p.
178. 2010-05-29 The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak; 2007; 357p.
179. 2010-05-30 Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, Alice Echols; 2010; 338p.
180. 2010-06-01 A People's History of the Hmong, Paul Hillmer; 2010; 327p.

181. 2010-06-02 Federations; 2009; 379p.
182. 2010-06-02 The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields; 1993; 361p.
183. 2010-06-03 Dark Voyage, Alan Furst; 2004; 256p.
184. 2010-06-04 Illyria, Elizabeth Hand; 2007; 135p.
185. 2010-06-04 Return to a Strange World, Hiroyuki Morioka; 1996; 203p.
186. 2010-06-04 Blockade Billy, Stephen King; 2010; 132p.
187. 2010-06-05 Fireman: The Evolution of the Closer in Baseball, Fran Zimniuch; 2010; 260p.
188. 2010-06-05 Amazon Queen, Lori Devoti; 2010; 375p.
189. 2010-06-06 The Game from Where I Stand, Doug Glanville; 2010; 276p.
190. 2010-06-06 Face of the Enemy, Sandra Barret; 2007; 197p.
191. 2010-06-07 The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Howard Bryant; 2010; 600p.
192. 2010-06-07 The Chains That You Refuse, Elizabeth Bear; 2006; 219p.
193. 2010-06-08 Future Sports; 2002; 257p.
194. 2010-06-08 Lord of the Changing Winds, Rachel Neumeier; 2010; 367p.
195. 2010-06-09 The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham; 1925; 246p.
196. 2010-06-10 The Heart's Desire, Anna Furtado; 2004; 198p.
197. 2010-06-11 The Winter Queen, Boris Akunin; 1998; 242p.
198. 2010-06-12 Seasons in Hell, Mike Shropshire; 1996; 241p.
199. 2010-06-12 Marrying the Royal Marine, Carla Kelly; 2010; 280p.
200. 2010-06-12 Spice and Wolf (volume 1), Isuna Hasekura; 2006; 234p.

201. The Dragon and the Stars
202. Mandarins, Ryunosuke Akutagawa
203. The Physics of Baseball, Robert K. Adair
204. Okimono Kimono, Mokona
205. Spice and Wolf (volume 2), Isuna Hasekura
206. My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
207. The Bone People, Keri Hulme
208. Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 1, Hideyuki Kikuchi
209. Branded Ann, Merry Shannon
210. False Colors, Alex Beecroft

211. The Wizard of Waxahachie, Warren Corbett
212. Powers of Detection
213. Boundary, Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor
214. Last Days of Summer, Steve Kluger
215. Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 2, Hideyuki Kikuchi
216. Smokey O, Celia Cohen
217. Receive the Gift, Louise Marley
218. Almost Like Being in Love, Steve Kluger
219. Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay
220. Now You're One of Us, Asa Nonami

221. The Lord of the Sands of Time, Issui Ogawa
222. A Blackbird in Silver, Freda Warrington
223. Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
224. Emily and the Scot, Kathryn Smith
225. Going the Other Way, Billy Bean with Chris Bull
226. Mission of Honor, David Weber
227. Big Hair and Plastic Grass, Dan Epstein
228. Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun, Kathleen Bacus
229. Screwball, David Ferrell
230. To Ride a Rathorn, P.C. Hodgell
231. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers, Xiaolu Guo
232. Threshold, Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor

You will probably reach 500, I just passed 100...

Penny Marshall
pmarshall

I don't expect to reach 500! and, yeah, I read this much because I have no life (and the Brewers are awful this year so I'm reading instead of watching them lose.) on vacation this week--I may clear 250, or I may not. Probably not.

233. The Lost Fleet: Courageous, Jack Campbell
234. Slum Online, Hiroshi Sakurazaka; 2010; 210p.
235. No One Will See Me Cry, Cristina Rivera-Garza
236. All You Need Is Kill, Hiroshi Sakurazaka
237. Grand Central Arena, Ryk E. Spoor
238. Wayfarer, R.J. Anderson
239. Silver Seasons and a New Frontier, Jim Mandelaro and Scott Pitoniak
240. The Lost Fleet: Valiant, Jack Campbell
241. Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds
242. The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories, Liz Williams

Yes, I did break 250. Will probably still be posting.

243. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
244. Medieval Seafarers of India, Lakshmi Subramanian
245. The Lost Fleet: Relentless, Jack Campbell
246. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
247. Demon of Undoing, Andrea I. Alton
248. The Vast Spread of the Seas, Fuyumi Ono
249. Making Book, Teresa Nielsen Hayden
250. Tongues of Serpents, Naomi Novik
251. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler
252. High Hearts, Rita Mae Brown
253. The Lost Fleet: Victorious, Jack Campbell
254. Sex with Kings, Eleanor Herman
255. Veniss Underground, Jeff VanderMeer

Wow! You did it, are you now aiming for 500? Congratulations!