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A Reader Is Me is a reading challenge community similar to 52 Books in 52 Weeks or the Cannonball Read, but with one major difference. In this challenge, you set your own goals.
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telesilla
Goal: 100 books read between September '08 -- September '09
Definition of "book": 200 pages or more, graphic novels do not count, re-reads are okay
Books read so far: 23
A little about my goal and my reading habits: I'm carrying this over from Pajiba's Cannonball Read. I faded after an impressive start because, while I love competition, this was too much for me and I felt pressured. I read pretty much anything that comes to hand, but I concentrate on historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy.
telesillaGoal: 100 books read between September '08 -- September '09
Definition of "book": 200 pages or more, graphic novels do not count, re-reads are okay
Books read so far: 23
A little about my goal and my reading habits: I'm carrying this over from Pajiba's Cannonball Read. I faded after an impressive start because, while I love competition, this was too much for me and I felt pressured. I read pretty much anything that comes to hand, but I concentrate on historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy.
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Name: torachan/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kyuuketsukirui
Goal: At least 75 books by the end of the year
Definition of "book": No fanfic and no manga (I read more than enough manga without setting a goal!), but I am including any non-manga graphic novels as that's not something I usually read. No minimum page count. I do count rereads in my total, though I am not really a rereader, so those are rare for me.
Books read so far: 22
A little about my goal and my reading habits: I used to do nothing but read, but these days I have less free time and more hobbies vying for that free time, so I've kind of fallen out of the habit of reading books. Last year I managed 20 (mostly in the last couple months before the year was up), but the year before I only read 11. D: So this year I wanted to really concentrate on books. I'm doing really well so far. My original goal was at least 50, but I've now upped it to at least 75, considering I'm at about a third of that and the year is not yet a third of the way over.
My preference is for literary fiction, though I have started reading more YA books thanks to seeing reviews for a lot of stuff that sounded good. I like sci-fi and fantasy in theory, but I have no patience for the genre with its thousand-page books and endless series. I much prefer shorter books that are stand-alones. I aim for at least half of my reading to be by authors of color, and I also seek out queer authors as well.
torachan/kyuuketsukiruiGoal: At least 75 books by the end of the year
Definition of "book": No fanfic and no manga (I read more than enough manga without setting a goal!), but I am including any non-manga graphic novels as that's not something I usually read. No minimum page count. I do count rereads in my total, though I am not really a rereader, so those are rare for me.
Books read so far: 22
A little about my goal and my reading habits: I used to do nothing but read, but these days I have less free time and more hobbies vying for that free time, so I've kind of fallen out of the habit of reading books. Last year I managed 20 (mostly in the last couple months before the year was up), but the year before I only read 11. D: So this year I wanted to really concentrate on books. I'm doing really well so far. My original goal was at least 50, but I've now upped it to at least 75, considering I'm at about a third of that and the year is not yet a third of the way over.
My preference is for literary fiction, though I have started reading more YA books thanks to seeing reviews for a lot of stuff that sounded good. I like sci-fi and fantasy in theory, but I have no patience for the genre with its thousand-page books and endless series. I much prefer shorter books that are stand-alones. I aim for at least half of my reading to be by authors of color, and I also seek out queer authors as well.
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Title: The Taqwacores
Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Number of Pages: 256 pages
Book Number/Goal: 19/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5
Review: Yusef's parents didn't want him living in the dorms, so he rooms in a house with a bunch of other Muslims. But what his parents don't know is that these Muslims include a burqa-wearing feminist, a drunk, and a pothead, and even the most "traditional" member of the group is a punk kid covered in tattoos.
This is basically the story of how Yusef's faith changes over the course of his time living there, and despite the fact that it's specifically about a Muslim guy, the story resonated with me coming from a Christian background as well.
The book assumes an audience of Muslims, so there are a lot of Arabic terms thrown around with no explanation, but I found it easy enough to follow despite that. (And I liked that you're just thrown into that and everything isn't explained.)
Although the author is white (he converted to Islam as a teenager), the characters are almost all people of color (there's one minor character who's white), mostly East and Southeast Asians. I really loved the characters, especially Rabeya and Jehangir.
It's also being made into a movie, which I'm really excited about.
Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Number of Pages: 256 pages
Book Number/Goal: 19/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5
Review: Yusef's parents didn't want him living in the dorms, so he rooms in a house with a bunch of other Muslims. But what his parents don't know is that these Muslims include a burqa-wearing feminist, a drunk, and a pothead, and even the most "traditional" member of the group is a punk kid covered in tattoos.
This is basically the story of how Yusef's faith changes over the course of his time living there, and despite the fact that it's specifically about a Muslim guy, the story resonated with me coming from a Christian background as well.
The book assumes an audience of Muslims, so there are a lot of Arabic terms thrown around with no explanation, but I found it easy enough to follow despite that. (And I liked that you're just thrown into that and everything isn't explained.)
Although the author is white (he converted to Islam as a teenager), the characters are almost all people of color (there's one minor character who's white), mostly East and Southeast Asians. I really loved the characters, especially Rabeya and Jehangir.
It's also being made into a movie, which I'm really excited about.
Title: The Story of a Marriage
Author: Andrew Sean Greer
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 20/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5
Review: It's the early '50s and Pearlie Cook is a young housewife and mother, married to her childhood sweetheart, but her illusion of happiness is shattered when a man claiming to be an old friend of her husband's shows up on her doorstep one day.
I loved this book SO MUCH. I don't even know what to say about it. All I can do is flail happily. Like The Taqwacores, this is a story about people of color (apparently some people thought this was a "twist" in the story, but idk, there are plenty of hints before he comes right out and says it) written by a white guy, and I think he did a good job. He also did an amazing job portraying the delicate relationships between Pearlie and Holland and Buzz. I love Pearlie and Buzz's sort-of friendship, and how Holland is a mystery to both of them. Everything felt completely believable to me. I saw a lot of "why the hell did Pearlie do what she did?" type reviews on Amazon, but I thought it was perfectly obvious and made sense. She didn't do it for the money. She did it because she loved Holland and thought that was the only way for him to be happy (and because she didn't feel she could cross a rich white man). I loved the way the secrets came out, so many layers in such a short book.
I already have another book of his on my shelf to read, and I'd really like to get my hands on his short stories, too. Definitely a new favorite author.
Author: Andrew Sean Greer
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 20/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5
Review: It's the early '50s and Pearlie Cook is a young housewife and mother, married to her childhood sweetheart, but her illusion of happiness is shattered when a man claiming to be an old friend of her husband's shows up on her doorstep one day.
I loved this book SO MUCH. I don't even know what to say about it. All I can do is flail happily. Like The Taqwacores, this is a story about people of color (apparently some people thought this was a "twist" in the story, but idk, there are plenty of hints before he comes right out and says it) written by a white guy, and I think he did a good job. He also did an amazing job portraying the delicate relationships between Pearlie and Holland and Buzz. I love Pearlie and Buzz's sort-of friendship, and how Holland is a mystery to both of them. Everything felt completely believable to me. I saw a lot of "why the hell did Pearlie do what she did?" type reviews on Amazon, but I thought it was perfectly obvious and made sense. She didn't do it for the money. She did it because she loved Holland and thought that was the only way for him to be happy (and because she didn't feel she could cross a rich white man). I loved the way the secrets came out, so many layers in such a short book.
I already have another book of his on my shelf to read, and I'd really like to get my hands on his short stories, too. Definitely a new favorite author.
Title: Blonde Roots
Author: Bernardine Evaristo
Number of Pages: 288 pages
Book Number/Goal: 21/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: Doris Scagglethorpe, the daughter of a cabbage farmer, was ten years old when she's captured by slavers. Now twenty years later, she's trying to escape.
This is an interesting premise. Blacks (or blaks, as they are inexplicably called in the book (more on that later)) are the dominant race and whites (whytes) are the ones enslaved. It's not an alternate history, nor is it a fantasy set in another world. I'm not really sure what it is, or what it wants to be, and that was the problem for me.
To start with, from the very first page it seems like the author has just gone through and done a search and replace, like the blaks celebrating Voodoomas as their main holiday, or whytes being derogatively referred to as wiggers. Neither of these make sense! Wigger can only exist as a word if nigger exists, which of course it doesn't in this universe. And why would their celebration be Christmas with "voodoo" pasted on? (The suffix mas comes from mass!) The book is full of stuff like this and it made my head hurt at least once every page or so.
The other eye-twitchy, headache inducing thing was the world. It's sort of kind of our world, except geography is randomly different (and I don't mean place names, but actual continents and stuff are not the same shape). Stuff is randomly spelled oddly, like whytes and blaks. It makes no sense at all. There's also the technology and...culture, I guess. Like, it's historical mixed with modern. They have carriages and ships, but there's also the Tube under London (Londolo). They have plantations and yet the kids shop at Hot Topic-esque boutiques. The fashions of the Europeans are from hundreds of years ago, yet Doris says that her physique, stick skinny so her bones show, is the height of beauty.
I just...don't like it! It's all done like a joke and so haphazard. It reads like the kind of fanfic that people label crack because they just want to toss in whatever they think is funny without a care for whether it makes sense to the story. I don't like that sort of fanfic, and I don't like it any better in this book. It just makes my brain go crazy and I can't enjoy the story because I'm getting irked by all the ridiculous inconsistencies every other page.
As for the story itself...it offered nothing new except the idea of the white/black switch, which I didn't find to be done well. If you've read any accounts of slavery, you won't find anything new or different here. It was a real disappointment.
Author: Bernardine Evaristo
Number of Pages: 288 pages
Book Number/Goal: 21/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: Doris Scagglethorpe, the daughter of a cabbage farmer, was ten years old when she's captured by slavers. Now twenty years later, she's trying to escape.
This is an interesting premise. Blacks (or blaks, as they are inexplicably called in the book (more on that later)) are the dominant race and whites (whytes) are the ones enslaved. It's not an alternate history, nor is it a fantasy set in another world. I'm not really sure what it is, or what it wants to be, and that was the problem for me.
To start with, from the very first page it seems like the author has just gone through and done a search and replace, like the blaks celebrating Voodoomas as their main holiday, or whytes being derogatively referred to as wiggers. Neither of these make sense! Wigger can only exist as a word if nigger exists, which of course it doesn't in this universe. And why would their celebration be Christmas with "voodoo" pasted on? (The suffix mas comes from mass!) The book is full of stuff like this and it made my head hurt at least once every page or so.
The other eye-twitchy, headache inducing thing was the world. It's sort of kind of our world, except geography is randomly different (and I don't mean place names, but actual continents and stuff are not the same shape). Stuff is randomly spelled oddly, like whytes and blaks. It makes no sense at all. There's also the technology and...culture, I guess. Like, it's historical mixed with modern. They have carriages and ships, but there's also the Tube under London (Londolo). They have plantations and yet the kids shop at Hot Topic-esque boutiques. The fashions of the Europeans are from hundreds of years ago, yet Doris says that her physique, stick skinny so her bones show, is the height of beauty.
I just...don't like it! It's all done like a joke and so haphazard. It reads like the kind of fanfic that people label crack because they just want to toss in whatever they think is funny without a care for whether it makes sense to the story. I don't like that sort of fanfic, and I don't like it any better in this book. It just makes my brain go crazy and I can't enjoy the story because I'm getting irked by all the ridiculous inconsistencies every other page.
As for the story itself...it offered nothing new except the idea of the white/black switch, which I didn't find to be done well. If you've read any accounts of slavery, you won't find anything new or different here. It was a real disappointment.
Title: Beacon Hill Boys
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 22/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: It's 1972 and Dan Inagaki is a pretty average kid, decent grades, but a bit of a slacker. Compared to his older brother, Brad, though, who's perfect at everything, Dan is a total loser, especially in the eyes of his family. They also don't like the way he stands up for himself and for Asian Americans in general, demanding Asian American history be taught in school and books about Asian Americans be added to the library. Better to keep your head down and avoid pissing people off.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. Most books about Japanese Americans are about WWII and/or the aftermath of the camps, so it's nice to have a book that's about something else. However, the writing is just not very good. It's not horrible, but just bad in that solidly mediocre way. The dialogue is the worst, not natural at all. I gather the author mostly writes picture books, and I think he should probably stick to that.
The story itself was decent enough, though, and kept my interest pretty well (the book is short and doesn't have a lot of text per page, so I zoomed through it). I'm definitely glad it exists to provide some variety in terms of Japanese-American lit, but I just really wish it were better written.
I especially liked this section, where Dan asks his history teacher if they can learn about the internment camps (which his own parents refuse to tell him about):
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals and grunted, "I don't care about any Japanese history. We only teach American history around here."
But these camps happened in the US. And people in the camps were American citizens. Didn't that make it American history?
"Look, son, I have a few months to cover over two hundred years. I only cover what's important."
Ouch. The worst thing is knowing that while things have changed some, many people still do think like that. "Why should there be black history month?" ("Where is white history month!?") "Studying Native Americans/black Americans/Asian Americans/Mexican Americans/anyone other than whites is just political correctness gone wild!" There are still many people who think that if it didn't happen to white people (if it was something white people did to people of color), it's not important.
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Number of Pages: 208 pages
Book Number/Goal: 22/75 for 2009
My Rating: 2/5
Review: It's 1972 and Dan Inagaki is a pretty average kid, decent grades, but a bit of a slacker. Compared to his older brother, Brad, though, who's perfect at everything, Dan is a total loser, especially in the eyes of his family. They also don't like the way he stands up for himself and for Asian Americans in general, demanding Asian American history be taught in school and books about Asian Americans be added to the library. Better to keep your head down and avoid pissing people off.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. Most books about Japanese Americans are about WWII and/or the aftermath of the camps, so it's nice to have a book that's about something else. However, the writing is just not very good. It's not horrible, but just bad in that solidly mediocre way. The dialogue is the worst, not natural at all. I gather the author mostly writes picture books, and I think he should probably stick to that.
The story itself was decent enough, though, and kept my interest pretty well (the book is short and doesn't have a lot of text per page, so I zoomed through it). I'm definitely glad it exists to provide some variety in terms of Japanese-American lit, but I just really wish it were better written.
I especially liked this section, where Dan asks his history teacher if they can learn about the internment camps (which his own parents refuse to tell him about):
He peered at me over the tops of his bifocals and grunted, "I don't care about any Japanese history. We only teach American history around here."
But these camps happened in the US. And people in the camps were American citizens. Didn't that make it American history?
"Look, son, I have a few months to cover over two hundred years. I only cover what's important."
Ouch. The worst thing is knowing that while things have changed some, many people still do think like that. "Why should there be black history month?" ("Where is white history month!?") "Studying Native Americans/black Americans/Asian Americans/Mexican Americans/anyone other than whites is just political correctness gone wild!" There are still many people who think that if it didn't happen to white people (if it was something white people did to people of color), it's not important.
Because two mods are better than one, we have a new community mod, yay! Please wlecome torachan, who will be co-modding the comm with me. \o/!!
I've set things up so that comm members can add tags. Most of the tags are self-explanatory--"book post", "intro", "reader: username" and so on. We're borrowing the system used at poc_books for the author tag--author: lastname firstname (example: a: evaristo bernardine)--so please tag your book posts with the author's name. As for the genre tag, well it's not always easy to figure the difference between literary fiction and just fiction, so we'll leave it up to you as to which tag you use.
Other than that, just use common sense and everything should be fine. :)
torachan, who will be co-modding the comm with me. \o/!!I've set things up so that comm members can add tags. Most of the tags are self-explanatory--"book post", "intro", "reader: username" and so on. We're borrowing the system used at poc_books for the author tag--author: lastname firstname (example: a: evaristo bernardine)--so please tag your book posts with the author's name. As for the genre tag, well it's not always easy to figure the difference between literary fiction and just fiction, so we'll leave it up to you as to which tag you use.
Other than that, just use common sense and everything should be fine. :)
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Name: darkrose
Goal: Complete 3 academic historical books by June 30, 2009
Definition of "book": 200 pages or more; if collection of essays, must read at least 3 in order to count.
Books read so far: 0
A little about my goal and my reading habits: For the past four and a half years, I've been using my library privileges at work to do research for various writing projects--most notably our historical vampire universe. More often than not, I return them unread on June 30, which is when everything comes due (staff account FTW!). I'm setting this goal so that I'll have incentive to actually read at least some of the books that I dragged halfway across campus.
darkroseGoal: Complete 3 academic historical books by June 30, 2009
Definition of "book": 200 pages or more; if collection of essays, must read at least 3 in order to count.
Books read so far: 0
A little about my goal and my reading habits: For the past four and a half years, I've been using my library privileges at work to do research for various writing projects--most notably our historical vampire universe. More often than not, I return them unread on June 30, which is when everything comes due (staff account FTW!). I'm setting this goal so that I'll have incentive to actually read at least some of the books that I dragged halfway across campus.
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Name: Helens (helens78)
Goal: 10 books a month from April 2009 through December 2009!
Definition of "book": No page minimum; I read children's books and count those, and they often clock in very low. Graphic novels count, but re-reads count for 0.5!
Books read so far:
Order of the Stick: Volume 0, "On The Origin of PCs", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Order of the Stick: Volume 1, "Dungeon Crawlin' Fools", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Order of the Stick: Volume 2, "No Cure for the Paladin Blues", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Expecting Teryk, Dawn Prince-Hughes: +1.0
Total: 2.5 so far for April! (Eep.)
A little about my goal and my reading habits: My annual goal has been 100 books a year with 50 or fewer re-reads for the last several years, and I usually hit it. This is very slightly more ambitious, but it spreads things out a little more -- it's an experiment, but if I like it I'll probably stick with it next year. :)
helens78)Goal: 10 books a month from April 2009 through December 2009!
Definition of "book": No page minimum; I read children's books and count those, and they often clock in very low. Graphic novels count, but re-reads count for 0.5!
Books read so far:
Order of the Stick: Volume 0, "On The Origin of PCs", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Order of the Stick: Volume 1, "Dungeon Crawlin' Fools", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Order of the Stick: Volume 2, "No Cure for the Paladin Blues", Rich Burlew: +0.5
Expecting Teryk, Dawn Prince-Hughes: +1.0
Total: 2.5 so far for April! (Eep.)
A little about my goal and my reading habits: My annual goal has been 100 books a year with 50 or fewer re-reads for the last several years, and I usually hit it. This is very slightly more ambitious, but it spreads things out a little more -- it's an experiment, but if I like it I'll probably stick with it next year. :)
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