2019 Reading Challenges!!

For 2019 Bookworm and I are going to try to tackle a couple of reading challenges!!

We found that Ginger Mom and Company's A to Z Reading Challenge got us to really delve into our massive TBRs! This year we are going to be a little less strict for the difficult letters (such as Q, X and Z).  Since we want to stick to books we already own (all 1,300 of them!!) and not purchase or borrow any books to meet the challenge, we will allow for our challenge that the more difficult letters only have to be IN the title, not necessarily start with the letter.

Another Challenge that intrigued us is the Color Coded Reading Challenge hosted by My Reader's Block.  We figured we could do this in conjunction with the A to Z Challenge and it's only 9 books over the course of the year!

Finally, we are going to do our best to take on the 2019 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge by Girlxoxo.  This will have a different prompt for each of the 12 months.  These selections too may correspond to books in the other challenges, but as with the other 2 challenges we are only going to use books we currently have!

Wish us luck!!

  The Redbreast - Jo Nesbo
         3rd in the Series

 I am so conflicted!!!!!    I really like Harry Hole.  He is an error-prone , alcoholic , but likable,  Norwegian policeman..   I have enjoyed learning about him and watching his character develop in the 3 books I have read so far.    But,  I get so confused because of the writing style of this author.   He seems to jump around, but maybe that is because of the way Harry goes about solving cases?? 

 The cases are interesting and there are a lot of twists and turns, (maybe my reason for getting lost?) to keep me reading.

This case takes place is Oslo, Norway.  We learn some of Norway's history during WWII, which I did not know.  So there is some going back and forth between 1944-45 and 1999-2000.  Someone is killing the soldiers who were on the Eastern Front during the war,  but we don't know who or why.  That is when Harry come into the picture.
   He is moved up to Inspector because of a mistake he makes and the higher ups want to keep it quiet. ,, he also may find a love interest. 

I will take a break from Harry before I start the next in the series,  The Nemesis

Zorro by Isabel Allende

Historical Fiction

2018 A to Z Challenge - Z

Whew!  I did it!!!  I read a book starting with EVERY letter of the Alphabet!  And....for the most part they all came off my TBR shelves!  Zorro one was one of the few we had to purchase to meet the challenge.

I've read one other Isabel Allende novel (Portrait in Sepia) in 2017 for another reading challenge and much like that one, I enjoyed it but found my thoughts wandering at times throughout the book.  In Zorro, we delve into the character's fictional background and how he became the imaginary man that he is.  Some of the political background of Spain under Napoleonic rule and the New World settlement by Europeans got me a bit bogged down at times.  The novel spans 50 years and goes from California to Barcelona Spain and back again, so it's a lot to compress into an almost 400 page novel.

Of course, reading some of Zorro's escapades I recalled growing up with a reruns of the Disney's Zorro television show.  So I could easily picture these well-written scenes.  Allende incorporates humor and some intrigue by keeping the narrator of the book a mystery until the very end.

All in all it wasn't a bad read.  I would probably only recommend it to history buffs, Zorro fans, and the like as I don't think it would be captivating to all readers.

Quotes:  "...had become careless in matters of security, convinced that in the modern world there was no place for religious fanaticism.   They believed that the days of burning people at the stake were gone forever.  Now they were paying the consequences of their excessive optimism....where education, like everything else in the country was censored.  Many of his professors and companions had been arrest for expressing their opinions."

"He maintained that the powerful invented laws to preserve their privileges and to control the poor and discontented;...for example, taxes, which in the end the poor paid while the rich found ways to avoid it."

"...there is no such thing as absolute truth, that everything passes through the filter of the observer.  Memory is fragile and capricious; each of us remembers and forgets according to what is convenient.  The past is a notebook with many leaves on which we jot down our lives with ink that changes according to our state of mind."

#2018AtoZChallenge

    Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreeland
                     Guilty Pleasure

What an interesting concept!   To follow a (hypothetical) painting through it's travels from owner to owner.

We trace the painting back to World War II, Amsterdam, and even back to it's beginning and it's  inspiration, told in short stories.
It is interesting to see how the painting affects each individual and what they take from the painting.

It would be interesting to actually see a painting like this and what I would get out of looking at it.




                                 
                                                                     

                          Max  -  Sarah Cohen-Scali
                                 Historical Fiction

Just when I thought I had read about all of the atrocities done by the Nazis,  I read "Max"...This is about how the Nazis chose certain women to have the "perfect" German child and to raise that child as the perfect Nazi soldier.   So "Max" was born.

Max is telling his story from his time of conception , his time in children's homes, and his stark upbringing. 

I did not care for this book.  Not sure if it was because of the atrocity to children or the narrator being a propagandized child. I also felt that the child narrator was speaking and doing things too old for his age.  I don't know, maybe I was just really uncomfortable with the subject matter.  What was your opinion of this book??