Better Than Dreams - Page 184 of 216 - Staying Up Too Late Reading

I used to set myself a challenge to read 50 books every year. This didn’t work very well. The first year I didn’t read enough. In 2009 I read over 90. Last year I sort of set myself the same challenge again, but having read over 90 in the previous year the pressure was off. I knew that as it was no longer my official ‘job’ to read and write books all day long (in 2009 I completed my MA), I had no chance of beating my previous total. I read 44 books in 2010. Well, if I counted all the picture books that I read whilst checking for scribbles and torn-out flaps (one of the perks of volunteering in a charity shop), I’d probably have read over 60. But I’m not counting picture books.

I’m not concerned by the drastic drop in numbers. I’m just bored with the 50-book thing. It’s vague, but at the same time, too restrictive. For one, I always end up trying to find really short novellas and poetry books and graphic novels to read in the last 6 days of December. This used to work, but last time I found that I didn’t have any left in my TBR, having used them all up in the previous years!

This year, I have decided to do several reading challenges instead, to make it all a bit more exciting. Not that reading books isn’t exciting on its own, kids! I signed up for one challenge last year, the POC Reading Challenge. And I failed. I only read two out of the four books that I planned to read. So it will not be surprising to see that I am signing up for it again. All the challenges except for the POC Challenge, the GLBT Challenge and the British Books Challenge, were found via A Novel Challenge (though I’m sure the others are on there anyway), so the blogs that host them are new to me as well. Lots of new reading for the new year, yay!1

I am signing up for Level 2 again, but am going to try to read the maximum six books.

1. Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
2. Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins
3. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

Entering in the Home Grown category – 12 novels, one a month ideally. This should be the easiest challenge ever because I have 27 to choose from already on my TBR, plus I find novels by British authors slightly easier to read than all other books. I will probably read more than 12 though, may even go for that 50 books Crown…what am I saying? No more 50 books goals! The books I currently plan to read are:

1. Festival, by David Belbin (it’s on top of a pile on the floor, calling to me)
2. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day
3. We Had It So Good, by Linda Grant
4. Five Miles from Outer Hope, by Nicola Barker (one for my ‘teenage protagonist in literary fiction’ tag)
5. The Butterfly Tattoo, by Philip Pullman
6. Candy, by Kevin Brooks
7. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

GLBT Challenge 2011

You can set your own goal for this challenge, so I am planning to finish Swordspoint and read the four books (I think? There may be more lurking subtly) I have on my TBR that qualify, which are:

1. Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner
2. Dramarama, by E. Lockhart
3. Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan
4. grl2grl, by Julie Anne Peters
5. Valencia, by Michelle Tea

A Year of Feminist Classics

Not strictly a challenge, described as a ‘project’ by the creators, this is a good excuse for me to read the feminist books that I have lurking on my shelves. I’ve already read A Room of One’s Own (it’s awesome, by the way, and really short), and I don’t think I’ll be able to read all of the others, but I own copies of three of them, and should be able to get another three from my local library.

I am going to aim for level 1 – Curious, and read three books. This should not be difficult as I have 27 fantasy novels on my TBR to choose from!

1. Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner
2. Tithe, by Holly Black
3. Valiant, by Holly Black

I am actually going to aim to complete the “Fun Size” YA Reading Challenge (20 books), because although I only have 15 YA books on my TBR, there is, of course, the library, and re-reads count for this challenge. There are a few YA books that I read in 2009 and haven’t gotten around to reviewing because, although I remember that I thought they were really good books, I can hardly remember anything else about them. These include Love and Other Four Letter Words, by Carolyn Mackler, and Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta. I remember thinking that Saving Francesca, in particular, was really amazing, but I can’t remember anything about it that I wasn’t reminded of by looking at the blurb or flicking through my copy!

1. Festival, by David Belbin
2. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day
3. If I Stay, by Gayle Forman
4. The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart (re-read)
5. The Butterfly Tattoo, by Philip Pullman
6. Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
7. Dramarama, by E. Lockhart
8. Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan
9. Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins
10. Tithe, by Holly Black (re-read)
11. Valiant, by Holly Black
12. grl2grl, by Julie Anne Peters
13. Ironside, by Holly Black
14. Candy, by Kevin Brooks
15. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray
16. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
17. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

New Author Challenge 2011

This should be another easy challenge, most of the books on my TBR are by authors I haven’t read before. Authors I have read before I tend to get more excited about, so they’re less likely to languish on my TBR piles. I am planning to read 15 new authors, but I will hopefully manage more than that!

1. Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner
2. Festival, by David Belbin
3. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day
4. We Had It So Good, by Linda Grant
5. If I Stay, by Gayle Forman
6. Five Miles from Outer Hope, by Nicola Barker
7. Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
8. Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan
9. Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins
10. grl2grl, by Julie Anne Peters
11. Candy, by Kevin Brooks
12. Valencia, by Michelle Tea
13. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray
14. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
15.The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
16. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

2011 Book Blogger Recommendation Challenge

My method for choosing challenges for this year involved going through the A Novel Challenge blog, opening the pages for challenges that sounded interesting in tabs, and then going onto Goodreads and working out whether I had enough books – or almost enough books – on my TBR to complete them. This one was actually one of the quickest to check, because all I had to do was read through the list of titles, no fiddling around with tags or shelves was involved. I am signing up for Level I – to read five books from the list. Although I only own 4 books that are on the list, I can get one of the others from the library. Plus, the books I have are:

1. (9 on the list) The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
2. (70) The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
3. (264) Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner
4. (344) A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray
5. (30) If I Stay, by Gayle Forman (purchased after I wrote this post)

and I read most of Swordspoint last year. I’ve actually finished the novel now, but I still have two short stories in the edition I have to read, and I don’t count a book as read until I’ve read everything except the blurb, and the copyright page. Sometimes I read those too, but usually not. If it’s a novel by a celebrity, I usually only read the copyright page. 😉

1 I’ve taken to reminding myself regularly of all the books I don’t want to read, so that I feel less overwhelmed. Legal thrillers. Amish romance. Mills and Boons. New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. Anything by Todd McCaffrey.

Photo by Linzi Clark

If I remember rightly, I got my copy of French Leave: Maxine Harrison Moves Out! in a sale at New Cross Library for about 5p. When it comes to library sales, I will pretty much buy anything teen/YA, fantasy, sci-fi, or combinations of the above. At the time I didn’t realise it was the second in a pair, so I had to track down French Letters: The Life and Loves of Miss Maxine Harrison before I could get on with the reading, but once I did I fell deeply in epicly entertaining love.

Both books take the form of letters written by Miss Maxine Harrison, mostly of Hornsey, London N8, to her best friend Jean Olgethorpe, who has gone to live Up North with her family.

In French Letters the plot revolves around Maxine’s lack of money and her attempts to impress her other penpal, also called Jean, but male and French. She tells him about her glamorous life as the daughter of the Head of London Transport, but then he decides he wants to visit, and she has to somehow cover up the fact that her Dad’s actually a bus conductor and that she sent him a photo of girl-Jean instead of herself. She also has to deal with fashion, snobby girls at school, and her parents’ political arguments.

By French Leave, things have taken a turn for the serious and Maxine has decided to leave her parents’ home because they can’t afford to let her carry on at school after her GCSEs. Her dad has lost his job and started reading The Sun, her boyfriend seems to be more interested in his motorbike than her, and her sister is getting married and excited over a potato masher. Meanwhile Jean starts going out with the ‘local Tory’ in a town ‘where even the police vote Labour’ and is surprisingly reluctant to commit to moving into Maxine’s bedsit.

If I give you any more detail I will spoil the plot and okay, only a tiny fraction of the jokes which are piled onto every page, but you’ll appreciate these books best if you just buy them and read them! I am normally someone who doesn’t even find books with seven quotes on the cover declaring them ‘laugh out loud funny’ amusing. But when reading these I just kept laughing, and laughing, and laughing. The most incredible thing about these books is that they are consistently funny from start to finish. I really enjoyed Diary of a Chav: Trainers V. Tiaras but I’ll admit that the first few chapters are the most humourous, and that the plot and the sympathy I felt for Shiraz is what kept me reading. The laugh-out-loud funniness just isn’t sustained throughout the book. In French Letters and French Leave, it is. These books are not just pure comedy, however, as they feature serious issues – finance, politics, sex, employment, exams, education, abuse – along with the laughs.

French Letters and French Leave are a little bit dated, teenagers today will probably find it slightly weird that the girls write to each other using snail mail and rarely phone, and that there aren’t any mentions of all the 21st Century mod cons. They’re not full of 1980s cultural references or mentions of old technology, but historical/political context is fairly important to the story, so older teens and adults will probably find them more accessible than younger teens. This also means that readers in other countries than the UK might want to check Wikipedia a few times whilst reading. You won’t struggle to follow the story by any means, but you might miss out on some of the humour and just not get some of the references unless you know or learn about the cultural context.

These books are published by the Women’s Press under the Livewire imprint, I’m not sure whether they are still in print. I really think they need reissuing with new covers in any case, the covers they have at the moment are definitely dated and will probably put some would-be readers off!

If you’re looking for truly hilarious fiction, you’ve found it. I also recommend these books to anyone who is studying or interested in ‘teen/YA through the ages’, as they are some of Livewire’s bestsellers.

Reading Challenges 2011

The Most Hilarious Books I Have Ever Read or Book Reviews: French Letters and French Leave, by Eileen Fairweather

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