The Book Bump

As I plough through my Spring current reads, I can’t help but think ahead. I have just finished reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (review coming soon) so there is an space in my ‘currently reading’ pile.

To help me choose, I found a book challenge on TikTok, which would be fantastic. Although, with the number of different challenges, this could well leak into Autumn and Winter… We shall see.

But here’s the challenge and my picks.

A book you disliked as a teenager:

There aren’t many books I disliked as a teenager, except those, I was assigned at school.

I don’t know if it’s because I was forced to read them. The idea of having a deadline to read a book and then assignments and tests on the said book took away a lot of the pleasure of reading for me, especially when some of the projects felt like traps. I remember one test we had on a book, which had nothing to do with understanding the message the author wanted to convey. It was solely about the minute details of the story, which for the most part, had very little significance on the story or message of the author.

On the other hand, I may have been too young to appreciate the works at the age I was assigned them. I’ll admit a lot of my high-school books ended up on my ‘did not finish’ pile as I just couldn’t bring myself to pick them up over the books I chose to read.

Therefore, any book from my school years could fit into this category. I might tackle All’s Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

An author with a different experience than yours:

As a cisgender white woman, I am interested in reading more works from authors of colour and the LGBTQ+ community. I’ll admit my bookshelves are primarily stocked with male authors, and many novels lack diversity in their characters.

I want to read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2007.

A genre that you’re not accustomed to:

In my youth, I went through a huge romantic phase. I read a lot of mystery or thrillers these days. And I am partial to the odd epic fantasy or horror.

I have slowly been trying to branch out, but it’s too easy to fall back into old habits. When you look at my current reads, there’s one fantasy novel, a psychological thriller, and one horror.

If I didn’t want to leave my comfort zone too much, I could read a different type of fantasy, such as low fantasy, magical realism, or maybe even dark fantasy. But that might be considered cheating.

I might have picked historical fiction, but I’ve already chosen Half of a Yellow Sun, which is historical fiction, for another category.

Maybe I could read some Shakespeare? But that’s still a genre I’ve read before.

I’m toying with the idea of completely changing are trying some non-fiction. That’s something I very rarely read. I’m thinking of either reading Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton or maybe Becoming by Michele Obama.

I’ll keep you posted on this category.

A different medium:

I have very rarely read anything other than novels. I’ve never considered reading comics, manga, or graphic novels. If children’s picture books count, I’ve read plenty of those recently.

So, this is an interesting challenge for me, and I might even have to venture out to the bookstore to find something as I won’t be able to raid my unread books that have been gathering dust for quite some time now.

I might have to ‘phone a friend’ as I don’t know where to start. I am open to recommendations if you have any!

An old favourite:

This will be hard to pick just one from a long list of old favourites. How far do I go back? To my first chapter novels and lose myself in the pages of Michael Morpurgo? My teenage years and pick up an old Cornelia Funke novel? Or my young adult life and reread Tolkien or Larsson, perhaps even Herbert?

The possibilities are endless. But I’ll admit it’s not always easy finding a book to re-read. There are very few I find that capture the mind enough to be able to lose yourself in its pages time and again.

I’ll keep you updated on this category.

A book that’s been on your ‘want-to read’ list for more than a year:

This will not be an easy category. My ‘want-to read’ list grows constantly, and I never seem to cross anything off it. There are so many books on it that I’ve been meaning to read. I’m not going to lie; most of the books in this challenge are on my ‘want-to read’ list.

I’ve been trying, somewhat successfully, to try and read the books I have before buying new ones. That includes the Goliath virtual pile I have on my Kindle. That’s why, I might pick a book that’s been gathering virtual dust. Here are a few I am hesitating between:

The Unburied Dead by Douglas Lindsay

Dying Eyes by Ryan Casey

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonatan Swift

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Any suggestions or recommendations on these five novels would be greatly appreciated.

A friend’s favourite:

Ok, so I didn’t exactly ask a friend… I asked my sister. She chose Circe by Madeline Miller.

I haven’t looked it up yet, and I don’t know if I will, as I don’t want to be too influenced by the blurb or the comments.

So what would you guys read?