Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

And the Nobel in Literature goes to…

This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was announced today at 1:00pm CAT. The Swedish prize was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich. Alexievich is a Belarusian author and investigative journalist who has written many interview-based documentary books depicting life and war in the Soviet Union. Many in the top literary circles were predicting that she would win the award. Congratulations to Ms. Alexievich.

Nominations to the Nobel Prize in Literature are made by a “qualified persons only.” These qualified people include members of the Swedish Academy, Professors of literature and linguistics at universities and college, previous Nobel Laureates in literature, Presidents of literary societies. The process of selection takes a year starting with initial invitation letters to 600-700 individuals. A long list of 10-15 candidates (not revealed to the public) is selected in April then a final list of 5 nominees are selected in May. From June-August the committee members read the works of the final candidates. The names of the nominees are not revealed until 50 years after the prize year.

To check out more information about the prize you can go to their website.

The past 10 winners include:
Patrick Modiano (2014)
Alice Munro (2013)
Mo Yan (2012)
Tomas Tranströmer (2011)
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
Herta Müller (2009)
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008)
Doris Lessing (2007)
Orhan Pamuk (2006)
Harold Pinter (2005)

I have not read any of her books but I look forward to doing so. I was hoping for a Murakami win but realized that it was a long shot.

What do you think of this year’s winner? Have you read any of her books? Which were your favorites? Least favorites?

End of Summer Challenge

It’s official, our summer challenge ended yesterday! Judges will need some time to determine several of the winners. Think you should win? Plead your case and tell us why your choices merit either “most creative” or “most true to the spirit of the game.” Don’t be modest. Stay tuned for the announcement on September 27th. Combined you all read an astonishing 370 books, 123,266 pages, and traveled to all sorts of destinations all around the world (and in some cases outside this world).

In the final week, “Ursula” came out of nowhere and completed all her destinations – joining “Nanny Ogg” as the only two who completed everything. I purposely set the number of destinations at 30 with the assumption that no one would be able to read 30 books in the three months. I was wrong. Charisma also made a last minute push to enter the scoreboard at 5 points (although her son, “Maxibob” earned bragging rights in their home by crushing her). Special mention to “Chili” who read more pages than the leaders but with fewer books.

Congrats to everyone who participated! Now that the competition is over we want to hear from all of you. Did you like the competition? What was your favorite and least favorite read of the challenge? Which was your favorite and least favorite destinations? Did you read any books that you likely would not have read outside this competition?

Here was the final scoreboard:

Frequent Flyers (a.k.a the scoreboard):
Nanny Ogg -33 (pages read: 10,479): Completed 9/21
Ursula – 33 (pages read: 8,826). Completed 9/21
Glo-worm – 29 (pages read: 9,448)
Tracy S – 26 (pages read: 7,362)
Anne Shirley – 26 (pages read: 7,246)
Chili -24 (pages read: 10,508)
Maxibob-24 (pages read 6,346)
LibraryCin – 22 (pages read: 7,006)
Rachel Morgan – 22 (pages read: 6,767)
Jaenelle Angelline-16 (pages read: 5,056)
Sushicat – 15 (pages read: 4,668)
Aarti -15 (pages read: 3,760)
Nicole – 14 (pages read: 5,376)
Second Honeymoon – 13 (pages read: 3,821)
Luna – 13 (pages read: 3,141)
Morgen -10 (pages read: 4,108)
Nia -9 (pages read: 2,646)
Tanya -8 (pages read: 2,303)
Jean Paget – 8 (pages read: 1,638)
John -6 (pages read: 3,070)
Jo March -6 (pages read: 2,887)
Tiger Lily – 6 (pages read: 1,870)
Charisma – 5 (pages read: 1,439)
Emily -5 (pages read: 1,308)
Becky -3 (pages read: 1,150)
Yvonne – 2 (pages read: 541)
Kate T – 2 (pages read: 479)
Missy Bee – 1 (pages read: 336)

We wanted to post this photo that goo-worm sent us that highlights one goal of this competition – to get you to diversify and broaden your reading. She found this book that she had borrowed from her grandfather over a decade ago and finally found a reason to read it.

NOTE: We will be announcing a new Halloween competition at the beginning of October. This competition will last for 1 month and will involve a maximum of 4 books. It’s designed to be a more relaxed challenge and we hope you join us.

My Top Ten Most Read Authors

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new top ten list prompt and book bloggers respond with their lists. We don’t usually participate in these sorts of things, but this week was kind of a fun one and I was curious to see whether my most read authors corresponded to my favorite authors or if there were any surprises.

I decided to count books series as one book mainly because once a start a series, I feel compelled to finish it even if it is terrible. Here are my top 10 most read authors. Read more

Book Worm’s Life in Books: Short Stories

Just so you know right from the start, I am not a fan of short stories. In fact, if I was given the choice to read a 10 page short story or a 1000 page novel, I would choose the novel every time. And, if that novel was part of a series, well that’s even better!!

What I love about reading is escaping to another world, following characters as they grow and develop, and being immersed in every aspect of the fictional world. You can’t really find that in a short story.

So having spent most my life avoiding short stories, I am now finding them thrust upon me in the form of the 1001 Books to Read Before you Die. While there have been some gems amongst these the majority have not managed to change my original opinion.

The Good

The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Gilmore Perkings ★★★★★ – Essentially there is one character and only one location in this entire short story. The story shows a woman whose mental state is declining, she spends all her time in a room with yellow wallpaper where she visuals outside forces that are working against her. Seriously everyone should read this story and if you don’t like it well at least its short

The Garden Party ★★★★ Katherine Mansfield – This is the story of how a teenage girl from a privileged background discovers there is more to life that hats and cake.

The Bad (or the at least the not so good)

The Beggar Maid Alice Munro ★★★ – this is a billed as a novel but is actually a collection of short stories about two women Rose and her stepmother Flo.

Pricksongs and Descants Robert Coover ★★ Supposedly these stories are new takes on fairy tales but I spent most the book thinking WHAT!!

The Ugly (or at least the bizarre)

Amateurs Donald Barthelme  ★★★ – This is a collection of short stories which covers the full range or bizzare, boring, funny and interesting. My favourites were; Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby,The Captured Woman,Porcupines at the University and The New Member.

So how do you feel about short stories?

Winner of Giveaway & a few updates!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Yesterday we posted a guest review for a Life in Secrets by Sarah Helm. Congrats to Nicole R for winning a kindle copy of the book! I believe I have your email Nicole so I will send that along this evening. For those of you who want to try the book for yourself, you can find it here: A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII

In other news, we now have various ways you can follow our blog and we hope you check them out. You can follow the blog in various ways:

1. Facebook. We have a Facebook page that you can find here: The Reader’s Room Facebook page . Of course you can also find the link at any time in our sidebar. The Facebook page is mostly just content reposted from the blog although we occasionally add other images and content.
2. Pinterest. A supplement to the blog. We just started this but we have posts from the blog in addition to other book-related boards. You can find it here: The Reader’s Room Pinterest.
3. Twitter. This is my (Jen’s) twitter account but it’s mostly book-related info. We do post the blog links but also other book related news. You can find my account here.
4. Bloglovin – you can follow us there by clicking the link at the top.

And finally, thank you to all our loyal followers! We really appreciate your support and feedback and we hope you have been enjoying the blog. If you have any feedback about types of posts you like most, least, etc we are happy to hear them. Also, if you end up reading a book that you picked up from one of our blog reviews, we hope you stop by when you’re done and let us know what you thought of the book.

As a thank you to all of you we will be starting to award small gift cards to a randomly selected blog follower every 3-4 months (depending on how well our Amazon associates account does).

Happy Father’s Day

My husband and daughter several years ago. Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all those wonderful dads out there! We hope your day is filled with joy, relaxation and good literature!

In honor of father’s day, we are listing our top literary fathers. Read more

Most underrated books?

This morning I read Buzzfeed’s list of “27 Seriously Underrated Books Every Book Lover Should read.” The list was linked to from Book Riot.

BuzzFeed is not a source I trust to guide my reading but nevertheless I found myself thinking about how readers define underrated.

You can find the whole list here. I’ve read quite a few of these books and I’m not sure that I would describe too many of them as underrated. Several were best sellers and a majority are rated highly on various platforms. Take for example, Night Circus. Pretty much everyone I know has read this book and the majority have rated it highly. It has an average rating of 4 stars on goodreads with over 320,000 ratings. Is this what qualifies as underrated by buzzfeed readers?

As many of you know, I’m also pretty picky (a.k.a snobby) when it comes to books and there are several on this list that would not make my list as books that “every book lover should read.” And not to be overly negative, I do think some on the list were strong but certainly not underrated.

Which books make my list? I’d probably need to dedicate some time to this question and may post my own list with Book Worm’s help in the near future. Off the top of my head, I can think of two books that make my list: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Ogawa and Animal’s people by Sinha. Animal’s people was a nominee for Man Booker Prize in 2007 but very few people seem to have read it. It has less than 2,500 ratings on goodreads (compared with over 320k of night circus) and an average rating of 3.81

I read quite a lot of books that lack popular appeal so I will work on coming up with my list to be posted in the next month.

What do you think of the list? Which books do you think should make the list?

Mother’s Day: Gifts for the Mom who loves to read

May 10th is Mother’s Day for those of us who live in the U.S. Need some inspiration for the mother in your life? Below we’ve compiled a list of recommended gifts with a range to cover all budgets.

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3 Books about Running for Marathon Monday

Boston Marathon 2014

I’m not a runner and never have been. I don’t think I have the discipline and while I enjoy cycling, swimming, sports, dancing and many other athletic activities, running makes me feel like I’m dying. But, I LOVE marathon monday. We live in the Massachusetts and every year we head to the sidelines to cheer on the runners. It’s a wonderful and festive event with people from all over the country cheering on the best runners from all over the world.  This year we’ll be cheering on several friends as well as lots of strangers!

In honor of one of my favorite holidays, I’ve posted a list of 3 books (below) for the runner (or want to be runner).

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