There are several readathons that I plan to participate on. Here are the details and links in case anyone wants to join in them as well.
This is created by Kesha, Kristina, Katie, Alyssa. It can be found in Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/123987-ayearathon
and on Twitter https://twitter.com/AYearAThon
This year the challenge will be month long.
As you can see the read around the word idea is also included here so I can feel like I participate on it anyway.
Last year I started using StoryGraph and I just discovered that in it there is a section for challenges. Looking into them I have picked a few to participate.
This is hosted by erinbarton.
The challenge ends 12/31/2023
The picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.
This book will be a reread for me I hope this time around I enjoy the story a bit more.
One flew over the cuckoo's nest, Ken Kesey. Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.
Never heard of it, but still its a classic that touches mental health so it seems promising.
Crime and punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky. I just read this one a few months ago, so I'm going to replace it with a different Dostoevsky's work. So now I will read White nights. White Nights is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, it is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.
It looks promising and also the additional benefit is that is a short story.
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen. Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
This is also going to be a reread. This has promise of being a great experience as I did end up enjoying it previously.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.
Another reread. I hope to enjoy this better this time.
There are more Jane Austen's books but I already read them. I am unsure if reading them again or just replacing them with other books. I haven't made up my mind.
Persuasion, Jane Austen. The author's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August 1816. She died, aged 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December that year (but dated 1818). Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume and published together, but also because both stories are set partly in Bath, a fashionable city with which Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801 to 1805. Besides the theme of persuasion, the novel evokes other topics, such as the Royal Navy, in which two of Jane Austen's brothers ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. As in Northanger Abbey, the superficial social life of Bath-well known to Austen, who spent several relatively unhappy and unproductive years there-is portrayed extensively and serves as a setting for the second half of the book. In many respects Persuasion marks a break with Austen's previous works, both in the more biting, even irritable satire directed at some of the novel's characters and in the regretful, resigned outlook of its otherwise admirable heroine, Anne Elliot, in the first part of the story. Against this is set the energy and appeal of the Royal Navy, which symbolises for Anne and the reader the possibility of a more outgoing, engaged, and fulfilling life, and it is this worldview which triumphs for the most part at the end of the novel.
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen. Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county's showpiece. Rebecca made it so - even a year after her death, Rebecca's influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter's shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow?
A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely.
Another reread for me but I am looking towards this.
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.
The beautiful and the damned, Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and Damned is a bleaker version of the corrosive power of wealth and its privileges, one of Fitzgerald's abiding subjects. Anthony Patch, is heir to a huge fortune, whose marriage to the beautiful and indolent Gloria is increasingly shadowed by Anthony's fall into alcoholism. Though he wins a lawsuit to gain his inheritance of millions of dollars, it is a pyrrhic victory, for he is now a physically and morally broken man.
I might have a short story collection by Fitzgeral's so I will probably read more of his works.
Alice in wonderland, Lewis Carol. After a tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself far away from home in the absurd world of Wonderland. As mind-bending as it is delightful, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel is pure magic for young and old alike.
Another reread. I have mixed feelings for this work. After several rereads sometimes I liked it and yet some other times I find it very annoying. We'll see how this time around goes for me.
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole. Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.
He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life.
I had never heard of this book so it will be a surprise. It sound comic, I expect to enjoy this greatly.
There are 12 books included in this challenge so reading one per month should have you completing this within the time frame.
2023 Fantasy Challenge https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/cf2ed9c6-ae0b-4146-8afc-9339080325ab
Hosted by ashleyvrod
Starts 1/1/2023
Ends 12/31/2023
Reading prompts:
The first book in a fantasy series you've been putting off starting.
A YA fantasy book
A Neil Gaiman book
A Fantasy graphic novel
Non human protagonist
A historical fantasy
Bandon Sanderson
Asian-inspired
Book over 700 pages long
A Clive Barker
Dystopian fantasy book
A.V.E. Schwab
A fantasy book with all 3 of your top moods on Storygraph
Book by BIPOC author
Dark fantasy
Character's name in the title
A Ursula K. Le Guin
High fantasy book
Based on mythology
An LGBTQ+
Published before 1990
A low fantasy book
An Angela Carter
A fantasy romance book
The next book of a series you've been meaning to pick up back again
Manga
Grimdark fantasy
A middle grade fantasy book
A paranormal romance
A Terry Pratchett
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