2016 Reading Challenge: Accomplishment Unlocked

I finished The Things They Carried a couple of days ago, and with that, I have finished my 2016 Reading Challenge. Hooray! I feel all accomplished now. Particularly about finishing War and Peace, although just in general, too.

For your edification, a list of the categories and the books I chose:

- a book published this year: When the Sea Turns to Silver
- a book you can finish in a day: Last Stop on Market Street
- a book you've been meaning to read: The Things They Carried
- a book you should have read in school: All Quiet on the Western Front
- a book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller: Welcome to Night Vale
- a book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF: Lud-in-the-Mist
- a book published before you were born: Winona's Pony Cart
- a book that was banned at some point: Lady Chatterley's Lover
- a book you previously abandoned: A Girl of the Limberlost
- a book you own but have never read: Madensky Square
- a book that intimidates you: War and Peace
- a book you've already read at least once: Caddie Woodlawn

I liked this challenge because it offers so much room for choice. Only one of the challenges is actually entitled "A book you've been meaning to read," but actually I ended up reading books that fit that description for half the categories: having the challenge gave me a reason to read books like A Girl of the Limberlost or All Quiet on the Western Front now, rather than just "well, maybe someday..."

In fact I liked this challenge so much that I went searching for a 2017 challenge, and found this Master List of 2017 Reading Challenges, although unfortunately none of them seem to offer the same mix of specificity and open-endedness that I got from last year's challenge. But perhaps the website where I got my 2016 challenge will post one for 2017 later in December.

I've also discovered that I really enjoy reading books with people, and also that it brings an extra and deeper aspect to the book to have someone to discuss it with - I think particularly with Lady Chatterley's Lover and Atonement, I got a lot more out of them because evelyn_b and I were reading & discussing them as we went along.

(And this has been a useful safety valve as I have read The Count of Monte Cristo. Sometimes I just have to yell "THAT PLOT DEVELOPMENT, DID YOU SEE IT?" Speaking of which - the latest developments with Caderrouse!!!)

In fact I'm thinking of suggesting a dual read to my mother, if I can just think of the perfect book for it. It looks like we can both get D. E. Stevenson's Listening Valley from our respective libraries, and I know she enjoyed Miss Buncle's Book, so perhaps that?

I have also decided that 2017 is going to be The Year of Reading the Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey Novels, provided of course I can track down a copy of Have His Carcase. I have the other three in the sequence! This is the only one that eludes me!