Reading challenges


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I haven’t participated or set myself any reading challenges in several years, but when I read this post on A Little Reading and saw all the juicy challenges on offer, I thought it might be fun to participate in one or two.

Since most of them started in January and it is now August, I would have to choose something with a small or smallish number of books, so as to leave me a window for reading non-challenge books as well.

I was thinking maybe the What’s in a Name challenge and/or the Nonfiction challenge.

The 100+ books challenge is something I have already finished without needing to make a challenge of it - I routinely finish more than 150 books in a year, sometimes more than 200.

One of the TBR challenges (I counted 9 that are still going and one more that has run its course), however would be an incentive to get me reading my own books, since many of the books I have read this year have been ones I either borrowed or was lent. Funny how one can own 800+ books that are waiting to be read (not counting eBooks) and still be unable to find anything I want to read among them. The grass is greener and all that…

I also have a private challenge I’m mulling over, one that I might actually turn into a public one. I’ll post about it later if something comes of it.

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Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

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Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

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