It is the first day of summer and we are nearly six months down for 2010! How’s your reading going? Mine’s been busy busy busy!

At the start of the year I stared at my giant stacks, yes STACKS, of books and decided I needed to bust out a whole lot of reading. I read 100 books last year and lost ground to the book takeover. Ack.

Well, I’m definitely not on target to surpass last year’s reading, but I’ve been reading as much as I can! I have 257 books listed as "on my floor". Those are the books currently in my TBR. Ouch! So far this year? I’m at 32 read. I’ve a LONG ways to go!

To help myself read, I went looking for some challenges, hoping that if I found enough I could maybe zip through some books that way. Some I’ve already made great headway on!

One of the challenges I failed at was a brief one where I was supposed to read books with royal titles in the book title. I only read something like three books of the required ten. Well, I tried! I did enjoy some of the books, and several were authors I’d never heard of! Yay for trying out some new people!

I did decide to do the author A-Z this year. The Author’s first or last name must correspond with alphabet letters with the goal to make it through the entire alphabet. I’ve got 12 down for this one! Yay! Anyone got a Q? I won’t put up a list until I’m done, or the end of the year – whichever comes first.

I am trying the "Read the Season" challenge. Your title or author must start with the letters spelling out the season. You get bonus points if you read a book with the season in the title. Unfortunately for Spring, I’d read a book with "spring" in the title… in February! BOOOO! Luckily it’s part of a series so I plan to zip out and get Summer now that we’re past June 20! Here’s my list for:
S – Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs
P – Marked by P. C. Cast
R – Frostbite by Richelle Mead
I – Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder
N – Ninth Key by Meg Cabot
G – Soulless by Gail Carriger

I’ve been on a young adult kick because 1. I do enjoy well written ones and I’ve lucked onto a few pretty decent series lately. Since they were on my TBR I can whip those books out pretty quick… yippee! However… I have some big honking monster sized books on my stacks as well. You know, those that are not the typical 320 page book. Some of these books are closer to 500 pages or maybe more! I am not afraid of a big fat book, especially if it’s well written. One of my favourite books is the Once and Future King. (I read it for extra credit in high school. Yeah, I’m that crazy kid – hate on me all you want!) Of course, faced with over 250 books, you tend to push those bugcrushers down the list! I found a challenge to get through these books with different levels and I figured I’d go for it to motivate me to read a few of my chunk-o-words. I’ve reached the first tier already! So I’m now a Chubby Chunkster with three books!

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (509 pages)
Traveler by Jonathon Twelve Hawks (496 pages)
Blood Promise by Richelle Mead (512 pages)

Ok, so not to get too in depth but I did enjoy Dan Brown’s latest just because I am from the greater DC area so it was fun to have the book right here in my "home" but I also love a good conspiracy theory and well… I am in the heart of Mason-land sooo oh yeah! I think that the Jonathon Twelve Hawks was the best book though because it was truly fascinating. I don’t even know where to start. Search it up on Amazon. If it sounds interesting, well let me tell you it is even more so!

The next level is Do These Books Make my Butt Look Big? HEHE Awesome. I need to read two more chunksters. We’ll see what I do! These books have to have more than 450 pages to them (525 if it’s large print). Whew!

I actually found a speculative fiction one and well, needless to say I’m DONE. Piece of cake. Honestly I knew it would go fast and I’d probably read easily two to three times the required amount for the largest tier. This happens to be my fave genre. (For those of you not in the know… this is for all things speculative – IE: Scifi and fantasy and even closer to home scifi like say Lost Symbol.) I love anything with magic, vampires, robots, space travel, aliens, dragons, conspiracies, so on and so forth. I moved from Inquisitive (3 books) to Enthusiastic (6 books) in no time flat. From there it was another 6 books to Addicted. I just wrapped up the final 12 for a total of 24 books. Here’s my list:

Over My Dead Body by Michele Bardsley
The Demon King and I by Candace Havens
A Conn. Fashionista in King Arthur’s Court
Traveler by Jonathon Twelve Hawks
Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs
Frostbite by Richelle Mead
Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead
Blood Promise by Richelle Mead
Marked by P. C. Cast
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
Betrayed by P. C. Cast
Chosen by P. C. Cast
Untamed by P. C. Cast
Hunted by P. C. Cast
Soulless by Gail Carriger
Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder
Shards Book 2 by Peter Prellwitz
Shards Book 3 by Peter Prellwitz
Shards Book 4 by Peter Prellwitz
Promise Tide by Peter Prellwitz
Shadowland by Meg Cabot
Ninth Key by Meg Cabot
Reunion by Meg Cabot
Darkest Hour by Meg Cabot

As you can see I"ve been just clear cutting right through several of my series of books. I wish I had a challenge for that… I’ve zipped through all of Shards, all of Vampire Academy (though I think a new one just came out), and I’m nearly done with The Mediator and House of Night. Since I had all the books in these series, I decided to just hammer them out since I’ve been super busy. Super busy means I want a little lighter fare.

There’s two challenges I’ve been doing that I’m not faring well in. One is for reading Brit-lit. I love Brit-lit I just haven’t dug any out of my stacks yet. It’s a matter of time so here’s hoping I can get at least the first tier (2 books) by the end of the year. (Seriously, I know I’ve got some somewhere in the stacks!) There’s also this Name Challenge which is just having some bizarre topics in the title. I’ve got two of six. I guess I need to wrap up these two series and then take a good long look at my titles!

There’s one final challenge I’ve been trying for the year. It involves a total of 20 books for 2010. I’m doing quite well, but I will post the books when it’s done. I’m over halfway at this point. There’s ten categories and you have to read two books in each category. It’s how I got into these series, actually!

So there you go… I’m working on some challenges, I’m having lots of fun reading, and I’m hoping to clear some space on my bedroom floor! Wish me luck!

Oh, wish me luck in surviving as well… it’s Girls’ Camp this week and so I’m off to the wilds! Yikes! Me=city girl! It’s gonna be… an adventure! I’m excited and nervous all rolled into one! See you in a week!

–Lady O