Twenty-Ten Challenge Update

It's been much too long since I last posted my progress in Bart's Twenty-ten Challenge. Since May 8, I've read 50 books, but very few of them fall into the categories of the Twenty-ten Challenge. By my calculations, I've read 9 of the 20 books which make up this challenge. The first 7 were reported in May 8th's post. Additions to the challenge status are:

Hell Fire by Ann Aguirre, which I'm counting in the New in 2010 category. Published in April 2010, I placed my order for it at the same time that I ordered Mage in Black, the other book in this category and Amazon shipped it as soon as the publication date was reached. Hell Fire is the second book in the paranormal series starring Corrine Solomon. Returning to her home town in Georgia, Corrine is determined to find out exactly what happened the night her mother was murdered. Full of conspiracy and mystery, this was an excellent addition to the genre and I'm looking forward to Aguirre's next book in this series.

The other book which will help me meet this challenge is Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson, which I'm counting in the Who Are You Again? category. This is by an author that I had not heard of until I saw the book on Nicole's wishlist. This book offers a bit of a twist on the whole paranormal genre. Katie Chandler is immune to magic and enchantment, making her a valuable employee at MSI, a company which markets spells and magic. Stir in a little bit of mystery, a little bit of magic, a little bit of romance, and a large dollop of humor and you've got a pretty good beginning to a new series. Thank goodness there are at least three sequels available, because this is one series that I will want to continue reading.

The Categories

1. Young Adult
   1. What was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
   2. The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley
   Category completed. See May 8th's post for short reviews of these two books.
2. T.B.R.
   1. She's No Faerie Princess by Christine Warren
   2. Mystery Loves Company by Kate Morgan
   Category completed, and I posted a quick description of each of these books on May 8th.
3. Shiny & New
   1. Swimming Without a Net by MaryJanice Davidson
   2. Vampire Sunrise by Carole Nelson Douglas
   Another category completed and some information about the books posted in the May 8th post.
4. Bad Bloggers***
5. Charity
6. New in 2010
   1. The Mage in Black by Jaye Wells
   2. Hell Fire by Ann Aguirre
   This category is now completed. I reviewed The Mage in Black in May 8th's post and my review of Hell Fire is just above.
7. Older Than You
   So far, I've not read any books that were published before I was born, though I've read ten books that were set in a time period before my birth. I still need to decide which two books I will read to meet this category.
8. Win! Win!
   I still plan to read two books by Anthony Trollope for this category.
9. Who Are You Again?
   1. Enchanted, Inc. Shanna Swendson
   See my review earlier in this post.
10. Up to You!
    I will read two memoirs to satisfy this category

Countdown to Dewey's Read-a-Thon

October will be here very soon and with it the next semi-annual Dewey's Read-a-Thon. I plan to join hundreds of reading bloggers (or is it blogging readers?) on October 9 as we dedicate 24 hours to reading, blogging, blogging about books, reading blogs about books, and cheering each other on. I plan to participate as a reader as I did in April 2010 and October 2009.

I intend to stay awake for the full 24 hours. (In April I got too cozy under a blanket in an overstuffed chair and fell asleep for a little bit over an hour ... I plan to avoid that mistake this time!) And I hope to be reading for at least 45 minutes of each hour. The other 15 minutes will be spent in updating my blog and visiting the blogs of others who are participating in the Read-a-Thon.

I'm also planning on getting more organized before the event begins. I'm going to set up a posting template to make it easy to update my status here on the Reading in Texas blog. And, I'm going to pick out at least four high-interest books that should keep me engaged and motivated throughout the 24 hours of the Read-a-Thon. At least one of these books will be young-adult fiction which should make it a fast read as well as one that will keep my attention.

If you follow my blog, check in here each week to see how my Read-a-Thon plans are progressing. Sorry it's been so long since any updates have been made to this site—I sometimes find that everyday life sometimes distracts me from blogging.

Ministry is Murder by Emilie Richards

A couple of months ago I stumbled across a book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble which looked familiar. Picking it up, I saw that it was part of a series—Ministry is Murder by Emilie Richards. I knew that I had read the first book in the series several years ago, and looking back through my notes, I see that I read Blessed is the Busybody in 2006. I'm pretty sure that at the time I didn't know that it was the first in a series. So, standing there in the store I snatched up all the other books in the series and set them into my massive TBR stack.

In June, I needed to find a Cozy Mystery to use in a swap at BookObsessed, and I figured that if I offered 3 books and only won one, then I'd slowly be reducing the number of books in this house. Turns out that the 3-for was popular and I'll be mailing them to Shaunesay in a couple of weeks. Of course, once the swap was over, I needed to quickly read these books or resign myself to mailing them unread. It's rare that I'll part with a book that I haven't read, so I settled down to read books 2-4 in Richard's Ministry is Murder series. And, now that I've finished reading these three, I have three other books that I also owe her and I'll save on postage (and aggravation) by shipping them all at the same time.

Oh my! What a pleasure! I definitely like Aggie Sloan-Wilcox, Ed, her Unitarian-Universalist husband-pastor, her two daughters, Teddy and Deena, and her unconventional mother, Junie Bluebird. When a dead body is found on the porch of the parsonage in Blessed is the BusyBody, Aggie discovers that her tenacity in researching and searching out the truth means that she's also a good amateur detective. Although she tries to settle back into as much obscurity as a minister's wife can have in a small town, she keeps finding herself at the heart of every murder and its subsequent investigation.

I'm very pleased to discover that a fifth book is scheduled to be published in October. I'm definitely intending on purchasing it.

June Recap

Books read in May: 11
Pages read in May: 3549
Books read in June: 8
Pages read in June: 2034 When you look at the statistics for June, it appears that I didn't do as much reading during the month as in other months. And, in some respects that is true. I only record a book—and the page count—when I finish the book. So, since I finished fewer books in June, the page count is lower.

But consider that I finished reading Beware False Profits by Emilie Richards (Book 3 in her Ministry is Murder series) at lunchtime on 1 July, and I had read more than 250 pages in that book before I went to bed on 30 June. And, I'm about 1/2 way through Regenesis by C. J. Cherryh, having set it aside at page 304 so I could quickly read the three Ministry is Murder books and get them into the mail to Shaunesay. Two other books that I'm still reading and haven't completed: I'm 1/4 of the way into the 9th and final disk of The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith, which has to be equivalent to something more than 300 pages of the 368 in the paperback version; and I'm at location 1561 of 4390 in the Kindle edition of Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, and I figure that's roughly equivalent to page 95 of 272 in the paperback edition

So, if you add the pages from the unfinished books—949—to the 2034 pages from completed books, then it doesn't look like I was that much of a slacker in June.

Challenge Progress

For the 12x12 challenge, I had intended to read 10 novels in June, but I only completed 7. And, although I downloaded The Warden by Anthony Trollope and staged it on my Kindle and on the hubby's iPhone, I haven't started reading it. So, I haven't made any progress toward the Trollope mini-challenge in the first half of the year.

I am going to sign up for 10 novels for July's 12x12. Heck, all I have to do is finish a couple of these in-progress books and that will give me a kick-start toward the goal.

Books mentioned in this post:

In My Mailbox: 13 June 2010

It's been a month since I wrote an In My Mailbox post. In that time, I have certainly received a number of books through both swaps and purchases. And that doesn't count the electronic books I've downloaded onto my Kindle, Sony Reader, or BeBook.

This week has brought a bonanza of books into the household. I was away most of the week, so when I walked into the house about 11pm on Thursday night, there on my kitchen table were two big boxes and four envelopes full of books. I had a ball opening them on Friday morning and making journal entries at BookCrossing for each and every book. Of course the hubby starts muttering about the direction that books are flowing. He would like to see more going out and fewer coming in. (And, of course, he forgot about the big post office run we made a couple of weeks ago with 8-10 packages of books mailed to the guys at BookObsessed.

So here's what came in this week:

Book Blogger Hop #3

The weekend is almost over and I'm just now finding time to update this reading blog. The Book Blogger Hop is almost over, so although I'll visit several [new to me] blogs, I don't expect many return visits this week. Unfortunately, those who visited me in prior weeks may have discovered that there were no new posts this week and decide not to be a regular reader of this blog. And, that's OK by me. I created the blog for me as a way of keeping track of what I read and occasionally posting what I think about the books that I read. If anyone else finds it interesting or useful, that's just a bonus.

So, who did I visit last week?

• Life with Karma—Amy blogs about her life in Baltimore and books
• Emily's Reading Room—Emily is celebrating her first anniversary as a blogger and has some awesome gifts that she's giving away.
• Bookend Diaries—where Kelly posts reviews and recommendations for book clubs

In visiting the blogs of various readers this week, I discovered that I have missed out on Bloggiesta, a week-end to be spent spiffing up one's blog. Interestingly, I actually spent much of yesterday doing exactly that—copying my 2003 posts from the 50 Book Challenge community at LiveJournal, so that I'd have the book reviews readily available right here at Reading in Texas. Although I didn't officially join in Bloggiesta, I guess I anticipated it and participated in spirit.

If you're stopping by from the Hop, welcome! Leave a comment. I'll certainly visit your blog in return.

Book Blogger Hop Again

Participating in the Book Blog Hop last weekend seems to have brought a few more visitors to my blog. While I'm not not one of the bloggers who is "monetizing" the blog or approaching it as a business, it is nice to know that I'm not just talking to myself here.

The Hop is all about visiting other book bloggers, which I am enjoying doing. In the past week, I've read various posts by Jennifer at Crazy for Books, Mel at The Reading Life, and both Leah and D at Our Year in Books.

I'd like to call attention to Mel's post on 1 June where she says, “ I overcame a life time aversion to reading short stories.” I think that's just too interesting in light of yesterday's post where I clearly stated that I didn't like short stories. So I stayed around to read more about what Mel had to say. I'll admit that I have read some very good short stories, but it's going to take a lot to sway me away from my current passion for long novels or series toward short stories. In the past 10 years or so, I've only read the occasional short story, and those most often in a book of short stories about the same characters—serialized short stories that together tell a coherent story.

The Hop goes on through the week-end and I plan to visit several more readers to see what they have to say.