Update for Classics Club 50 – Round TWO

When I committed to my first Classics Club 50 at the start of 2015, I made a list of fifty books that seemed interesting to me; either titles were ones I needed extra motivation to read, or I thought maybe I was missing out, and/or a few were just a whim or an idea that the author or the book was impressively classic and I wanted to find out why.

I gave myself permission to substitute books and thus, I finished that Five Year Challenge having read 50+ books that were over 25 years old.

However, there were 13 of that original list I missed.

Four years now into my second commitment to read another 50 Classics and wanting to give myself an update post for motivation and preparation for the next twelve months, I am curious how many “classics” I have read so far. ___________________________________________________________________________

Question 1: Did I read many of my next set of 50 listed on 1/1/2020? 
Question 2: Did I manage to tackle any of the non-read titles from my original 50?

   ANSWERs: 

Welp, I didn’t keep a record of any second set of 50 – in fact, I’m not sure I even made a definitive list and/or didn’t keep it static. I think I only made a goodreads tag listing 25-yo books and added to it as time went by.

Q: BUT CARE! Did you read any of those 13?!

A: YES! I read THREE: Cry the Beloved Country, The Three Muskateers, and They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple. (Which was by far my favorite of those.) WHICH leaves the following ten to be considered as options for my next 12 months.

But wait! How many classics did I read in the last 4 years? Perhaps I’ve completed the challenge and didn’t even realize it. YES again. I read 46!! I now only have to read 4 more books published 25 years ago or longer and I’ll have completed Round TWO of the Classics Club 50.

Considering that I’ve committed to two Irving books for various challenges: Cider House Rules to satisfy a book with a neurodiversity #ReadICT, and Hotel New Hampshire, also for #ReadICT, I’m not sure which two off the chart above I want to read… The shortest ones? The ones not written by a white man? The ones I own? (A Confederacy of Dunces or Jude the Obscure)

I’ll let you know in December.

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Hoosier Pie for January 1st

Happy New Year!

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2024 #ReadICT Challenge

My town’s library runs an annual challenge called “READ ICT”. My town is Wichita Kansas and ICT is our airport code. A post on our group’s Facebook page went viral and now we have LOTS of people who don’t live anywhere near Kansas joining in and I think it is wonderful. And fascinating! And a bit amusing. So many book lovers; the more the merrier!

If you really want to know more, visit the official library page with all the details here.

If you want to see what I will be reading to satisfy this challenge, read on:

• Category 1: a book with a map – River of the Gods by Candice Millard
• Category 2: a book you meant to read last year – Wellness by Nathan Hill
• Category 3: a book about something lost or found – Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
• Category 4: a collection of stories, poems, or essays… – Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
• Category 5: a book by or about someone neurodivergent – Cider House Rules by John Irving
• Category 6: a book set in space – <<<< taking recommendations >>>> but I’m thinking the latest Murderbot
• Category 7: a book someone told you not to read – Florida by Lauren Groff
• Category 8: a book with season in the title – Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
• Category 9: a book featuring an animal sidekick – <<<< taking recommendations >>>> (but will be looking for a children’s book)
• Category 10: a book with a recipe
• Category 11: a book published in the year you turned 16 – Hotel New Hampshire, another one by John Irving
• Category 12: a book by an indigenous author – Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

So if you know any good books that also include recipes, recommend – especially if a PIE recipe! I am not worried about this category, I can always read through a cookbook.

AND, if anyone wants to read anything WITH me for a buddy read or buddies-read, let me know.

Oh dear, I just realized that I didn’t even glance at the ToB books for this year to see if any qualify. Other than Wellness, I mean. Well, HUH. Maybe one of those has an animal sidekick?

One more share, I have already baked a pie this year: presenting Sugar Cream Pie aka Hoosier Pie

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2024 What’s in a Name Challenge

Here we go again! my favorite reading challenge, the one that is less pressure and most engaging to me for year round fun. It gets me to look carefully at the books on my shelves that need to be read.

The What’s in a Name Challenge Categories for 2024 are:

• Double letters – Wellness or The Bee Sting or Happiness Falls
• An NFL team – Florida by Lauren Groff (has a Panther on the cover, which is close to a Jaguar?! or links to Carolina?! LOL) or The Giant’s House by E McCracken
• A natural disaster – 
• A virtue  – Fierce Love or The Love Hypothesis or River of Gods (has Courage in the subtitle) or Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
• A shape – Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
• Footwear –  Chain-Gang All Stars

(The hyperlinks above will click over to the host pages for the categories.)

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2023 Challenge Status Updates

and what nots….

We be talkin’ ’bout CHALLENGES. And stuff.

I completed the What’s in a Name Challenge and also, my town’s library’s 12 Category Challenge #ReadICT. I have added a few classics to my 5-year block of 50 goal but I’ll save that for the Recap Post in a few weeks. (YIKES!! I have to the end of 2024 to get it all done. I better start paying better attention...)

I’m back to blogging, Baby! Woot.

What’s in a Name? √

Read a book from each of the following categories:   

• Punctuation – √ Honey, Baby, Mine
• 7 Deadly Sins – √ A Little Book of Sloth
• You or Me – √ 100 Things to Do in Wichita Before YOU Die
• Chess Piece – √ The Once and Future King (DNF), Bandit Queens
• Celebration – √ Anna Quindlen’s Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
• Q, X, Z – √ All Quiet on the Western Front

I have a *new* system that I go to the host site when I complete a book and LIKE the category post, then I write a review post and return to that post to add my comment with link to the review. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t written a review post for the Chess Piece category, so got that done. √ And now, I write this post.

I do want to say that for the last 2 years, I’ve been saying I’ll read a book on Listening that always seems to meet a challenge somewhere, and I still haven’t read it. Maybe 2024 is the year I was (am) supposed to read it.

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I made a lot of pie: Mulberry Hand Pies, Quince Pie, Rhode Island Coffee Milk Pie, a lot of Apple – which is weird for me because I usually don’t like making Apple Pie (#shrug), Peach, Lemon Meringue, and probably more I don’t recall. Oh Pecan! for Thanksgiving. I’ll make Pumpkin for Christmas. I am experimenting with a Cherry Cranberry Pie per my brother’s request, and want to try making Sunny Anderson’ s Grandma Williams’s Squash Pie which has some lemon hints. What pie will you be making for the Holidays?

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Wichita KS #ReadICT √

The #ReadICT Challenge has 12 Categories and I’ve read multiple books for almost all of them. I announced it all on Facebook, but here’s somewhat of a pictorial completionist shot:

Which brings me to the Tournament of Books. I am working through a few of the long list, but will get REALLY frenzied when the short list is announced. Sometime within the next 2 weeks.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Eat some pie.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

Thoughts by Anna Quindlen, Random House Trade 2012, 205 pages

Challenge: What’s in a Name: Celebration category

Genre/Theme: Essays, Family and Motherhood, Aging, Feminism

Type/Source: Tradeback / Second Hand Bookstore Purchase

What It’s About: Anna shares her thoughts on aging. She is so insightful and hopeful.

“At age 60 I find myself poised between the inevitable and the possible, the things I know and understand and the things I hope to learn and perhaps unravel. But it’s still a bit of a mystery, the yet to come, with that greatest of all mysteries, mortality, at its very end.”

Thoughts: She talks a lot about family and her place in the progression of time. Also her timing into the American workforce balanced with the progression of the women’s movement. And, considerate of being thankful that she lived past the age her mother died, and in the realization of how much her mother missed by dying young, and also the perspective of how her mother’s death impacted her appreciation of life ongoing. I was especially thankful and admiring of her essay on religion.

Rating: I don’t think I was cognizant of her use of the the title in the text, nor do I think she ever mentioned pie. Five slices of pie because I love her. And the cover makes me happy.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2023 Wichita Library #ReadICT Challenge

My town library has a yearly challenge of 12 months, 12 books, 12 categories. They don’t get hung up on the once a month thing…. Let’s go!

This year’s categories are:

• A book with a non-human narrator
• A book with a long title (7+ words)
• A book about friendship
• A guilty pleasure read
• A book told from a villain’s point of view
• A book about time
• A book with a color in the title
• A book featuring a LGBTQIA+ protagonist
• A book about death or grief
• A book set in the Great Plains
• A book about a secret or closed society
• A book by an author visiting Wichita (in-person or remote)

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2023 What’s in a Name Challenge

Here we go again! my favorite reading challenge, the one that is less pressure and most engaging to me for year round fun. It gets me to look carefully at the books on my shelves that need to be read.

The What’s in a Name Challenge Categories for 2023 are:

• Punctuation – easy
• 7 Deadly Sins – Damnation Spring?
• You or Me – so many options!! LOL
• Chess Piece – The Once and Future King? or The King Must Die by Mary Renault
• Celebration – Anna Quindlen’s Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
• Q, X, Z

(The hyperlinks above will click over to the host pages for the categories. SWEEET)

Options, from my shelves

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

Copyright © 2007-2024. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

2022 Challenge Status Updates

and what nots….

Btw, I deleted all my Twitter accounts. End of an era? I do miss it, but it was no longer the Twitter I knew and loved.

Let’s talk CHALLENGES. I’m looking at the few challenges I worked at in 2022 and picking books from what I read that satisfy as a last ditch effort – I was picky and in doubt about a few but at this stage in the game, WHO CARES!

The What’s in a Name Challenge is COMPLETE:

I’m not bothering to figure out if I posted to the host site (SORRY!) and just enjoying the accomplishment over here in my personal glory/reflection.

Moving on to the question of will I continue in 2023! YES! Yes, of course, and I have a stack of books picked out that will satisfy the new categories but will list more in a dedicated post here in the next few days or weeks.

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Classics Club 50 Part 2 – I read a few classics from my lists and some I realized after that the publish date qualifies for this challenge so I will commit, once again, to a dedicated post in the future with what I’ve read so far and how many I have yet to read. Quick glance says I have to read between 20 – 25 by the end of year 2024. I’ll make it. Looking good.

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Buddy Reads! Who is in for 2023? The Stephen King Fairy Tales is sure showing up in the publicity marketing machine! Anyone want to commit a date for that in 2023?

or is TOB going to suck up all the reading time and force me to say, “How About April?!”

Which brings me to the Tournament of Books. I am almost half way through the 18 on the short list. I think I’ll make this one, too. HUZZAH!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Eat some pie.

WHAT?! How Had I Forgotten This?

Oh Friends.

First, I must tell you that July 12 is Pecan Pie Day. I told you about this a few times in our history together:

In 2018, I posted this celebratory post.

and one from 2012

and a “private” one which means I’m not sure exactly if anyone can see this? LET ME KNOW

OK, [the SECOND] the reason I wanted to post today is because I was triggered by something that happened this weekend. It set me on an exploratory path. Triggered? y..e..a..h… it really is interesting and annoying how many words involve gun-related language, would you agree? I’m stalling, I get it, I really want to make sure you are following along on this ride before I share what I really am giggly-goo to do.

I was checking Litsy over the weekend and someone posted on the book Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny.

click on book cover to go to 2018 review with video…

I read this. That was my thought. Do I recall what it is about? No. No, I didn’t have much if any recollection.

So what do you do if you are a book blogger? You go to your blog and search. (well, sometimes I do go to Goodreads first but that is usually when I want to know WHEN I read something and this was an IF question.)

Sure enough, I did read this. In 2018!

Four

Long

Years

Ago

(still here?)

Let’s get on with this, shall we?

If you were with me in 2018, I offered up some video reviews and recaps.

I – HAD – FORGOTTEN!!!

Huh, looked ’em up, checked my YouTube account, blah blah blah, why not try again? here ya go:

Me, trying to remember what it is I’m supposed to do! or learn what is changed, probably…

Enjoy! ( I amuse myself sometimes. LANDSCAPE VIEW!??!?! OMG – they *DID* change things… SIGH)

Because I am out of practice

Hello Dear Reader WhereEverYouMightBe!

I am out of practice.

And BECAUSE, I am out of practice. (see? My first self-doubt question is to wonder if I need that comma after my all-caps “BECAUSE”. I don’t, do I. Not a question, but now I have to leave it or you wouldn’t have much of a clue what I was talking about. )

Because I am out of practice, I need to just open a blank post and start free-associating.

So this is what I am doing!

First (since the above is epilogue) I will shout out a big WOO HOO to Amy for being a super dooper book friend by text.

We just texted and had a lovely conversation about books and doing-what-makes-you-happy and somehow after that, the convo devolved to Twitter and capitalism.

How do you spell SAY-Lah-VEE. ?

How old were you when you discovered that french words were very much not what they looked like spelled?!

I still recall the day when I found out what “hors d’oeuvres” were/was/WHAT?!

I knew then that I would NEVER learn French.

Ok, where were we? Trying to get the CARE back to putting words into the internet! I miss it! Yet everytime I sit to write a post, I just can’t. I can’t remember the steps, I can’t recall the process, I don’t desire the whateveritwas. The ooomph, motivation and the want to… THERE. but not the mechanics, and the overcoming of the hump of just-doing.

I really can’t quite figure it out.

I loved LOVED City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I have loved her authoringabilities since that book that everyone hated that I can’t at this exact moment recall. WHAT IS THAT?! Peace Love Pie? no…. Love Pray Eat? EAT PRAY LOVE! ok, whew

I thought that was total wonderfulness.

SO I especially, vocally veraciously loudly follow Elizabeth Gilbert because she is T.A.L.E.N.T-ed in the kinds of books I like to read. I don’t know how else to describe them but I’m gathering a list of authors that fit my MUST-READS: Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Rachel Joyce, Kate Atkinson, Liz Moore, Kate DiCamillo, … oh, I’m SURE there are MORE. (Tell me who I’m missing.)

April 28 is Blueberry Pie Day

Just heard that Elizabeth McCracken has a movie rights optioned on her book The Giant’s House which I have yet to read. Might have to put that on my May —- no! June list.

Here is my May list:

OK then myFriends, let’s encourage each other to contribute when we can and validate our thoughts and opinions of beauty and art cuz, GOLLY, it can be a struggle with the evil Putin being evil, and other mind-boggling disregard for humanity.

ok, then. I’m working on finishing 2 more books this month and then writing an April recap. Be kind!