#40: The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket: 1 star.
#41: The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket: 1 star.
#42: The End by Lemony Snicket: 1 star.
#43: Bachelor’s Anonymous by P.G. Wodehouse: 1 star.
#44: A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle: 1 star.
#45: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle: 2 stars.
#46: Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story by Charlie McDowell: 4 stars.
#47: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh: 5 stars.
#48-52: Irredeemable, Vol. 6-10 by Mark Waid: 1 star.*
*To all five volumes.
Congratulations! So what’s next, now that you’ve won? Have you picked up The Stand yet? I know you mentioned it as one of your intended reads.
The Stand and Swan Song both got lost in the shuffle earlier this month. I renewed them twice, meaning to get to them, but they kept getting pushed aside in favor of other, shorter books. Again, it’s a lack of commitment on my part. I think to myself: “Even if this other book ends up being trash, it’s better than if I spent 1,000+ pages on a book just to be let down.” I also worry about wasted time, since with a book of that length, you could read a couple books in the time it takes you to decide to give up on it. Not the soundest logic, since I fully expect to love both of the aforementioned books, The Stand in particular, but it’s the sort of line that kept going through my head.
Anyway, since I’ve accomplished all I’ve set out to with regards to CBR, I’m thinking that once I get caught up on my reviews and finish the backlog of books I have at the moment, I’ll try checking the two of them out again, probably by themselves so I don’t have any other potential distractions, and give them both the time they deserve.
I read Dear Girls Above Me last year around the same time as Attachments and enjoyed it. I felt like I had a theme going: novels about sweet guys doing questionable, somewhat immoral things.
If I were running a book club, I think I might have those be back-to-back selections. We could discuss where exactly the line is and why Lincoln could be said to not have crossed it, whereas that can definitely be said about Charlie.
I gotta say . . . the way you do CBR, it doesn’t look like fun. You rushed through 52 books, and you gave 1 or 2 stars to most of them.
So, um, congrats?
1.) There was no “rushing.” I read each book at my normal pace. I spent more of my free time reading is all.
2.) Excluding the books in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series, which I read to satisfy my undying need for completion, I truly expected, or at least hoped, to like every book I read. I cannot help that I had rather shit luck.
3.) I’ve had similar difficulties with my choice of movies for months. It may be tied partly to my mood; for months last year, I had what I self-diagnosed as depression, and though my mood has improved in the months since, I forget what it was like when I was last happy. At the moment, my baseline is general indifference. That’s what being a college graduate (Bachelor’s in English Fiction Writing) living at home with your parents, who you can barely be civil with, in a town you tried and failed to get out of, working at Walmart, barely being able to pay off your crippling student loan debt each, being perpetually tired due to an inability to get any restful sleep (and to afford the bill for the doctor’s appointment and sleep study you need), not having your license, and having a severely limited supply of friends and acquaintances and/or excuses to get out of the house does for you. Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on a woe-is-me tangent like that.
Anyway, my pursuit to read the most books last year, and to win the Cannonball Read this year, are the sorts of little things that give me some small amount of joy and sense of accomplishment these days, even if the reading itself might not always be as enjoyable as I’d like.
Congratulations Travis! That is an amazing amount of reading and reviewing in such a short time. I love Hyperbole and a Half too.
I hope that things look up for you soon.
Thank you so very, very much! 🙂
Congratulations Travis! That is the fastest Cannonball yet!!
I just reread the unabridged Stand, though the last time had to have been 20 years ago or so. I was prepared to be very blas
If the TV miniseries is any indication of what it’s like, with the assumption that the book’ll be streets ahead in comparison, I by all means should! And thank you!
Wow! That’s a lot of books in a very short space of time. You now hold the records for most books completed in the space of a year, and the fastest Cannonball completed. Sorry that you seemed to pick mostly books that you didn’t like at all. At least now you will have time to read whatever you want, and not have to desperately complete the books just so you can review them for CBR. Congratulations!
Based on my own experience last year, when trying to complete the double and the triple on a deadline, with having to consider the length and content of every book to make sure it wasn’t too long, or having to force myself through them just so I could review them – it turns reading into a chore. Don’t let reading become work, rather than pleasure. The main point of CBR, as far as I can tell, isn’t actually the competitive aspect of getting first to 52, but to get as many people as possible reading and excited about books. Don’t make your competitive streak ruin the joy of reading for you.
Thank you!
I can honestly say it hasn’t yet! If anything, it’s what I have to thank for reinvigorating my love of reading. When I saw other Cannonballers keeping pace with me earlier this year, I quickened my pace, just wanting to get enough of a cushion to make sure I won this time around, but once I started reading at that frenzied pace I couldn’t stop. The same goes for last year. Occasionally sacrifices had to be made, like still not having read The Stand or Swan Song (though I did give Under the Dome, another 1,000+ page behemoth, its final shot last year… and barely made a dent into it before deciding to give up on it once and for all), but I mainly go about my business as I always do, picking books I have an inkling I’ll enjoy or appreciate on some level, with the occasional book chosen primarily because I feel as if it’s one of those books I have to read to see what all the fuss is about (ex. The Hunger Games, Artemis Fowl, etc.) or because I feel I have to finish what I started.
But now, having accomplished everything I set out to, I can relax and read (and review) at a more leisurely pace. I just hope I don’t get as far behind on reviews as I was before I started writing all these up (52+). I’m still 10+ behind, but that’s about the average for me, going based off of last year.
P.S. No matter how rough a stretch I find myself on book-wise, I can always look forward to one sure thing in the way of Rainbow Rowell’s Landline. And hopefully Stephen King’s next book, Mr. Mercedes, makes up for last year’s Doctor Sleep. Oh, and William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back and The Jedi Doth Return are also due out this year! For the first year in a while, I have a lot to look forward to book-wise. 🙂
A few series that I enjoy have sequels coming out this year (I think the last book in The Passage trilogy may be scheduled for release, too) – were you into fairy tales as a kid? My mom’s German so I was introduced to Grimm’s Fairy Tales very early and have always enjoyed them. If so, you might be willing to give Cinder a shot, it’s about a cyborg Cinderella; the third of the series comes out in February. However, I’m not sure how much you’d like it since you didn’t like The Hunger Games and I really liked that one. I can’t remember if you read and reviewed these last year or not but I feel like you seem to have more luck with more personal comedy type stuff, so you could try Mindy Kahling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? or Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. You could check out her blog (she’s The Bloggess) to see how you feel about her writing. Like Allie Brosh she has a few pieces in that book where she slows down and reflects on depression though most of the book contains crazy taxidermy stories.
The Passage is another one on my to-read list that I’ve been putting off due to the length. I hope to get to it sooner rather than later as well. Thanks for reminding me.
I think my luck with “personal comedy type stuff” has a lot to do with it being easier to judge whether or not you’ll like it ahead of time. It’s as simple as reading an excerpt to see if you find it funny. Kaling’s book seems worth a shot, if only because she’s one of those comedians I want to like. It’s not often that a female comedian lands a job writing and starring in her own sitcom, especially when she’s neither skinny nor white. I loved her on The Office, yet found The Mindy Project just isn’t for me. What I read of the opening chapter of her book on Amazon, though, while a little short on laughs, made my respect for her as a person start to grow. Jenny Lawson, on the other hand, doesn’t succeed on either front for me. Similarly, I find the internet’s crush on Tina Fey equally baffling. My last girlfriend told me Bossypants was the funniest thing she’s ever read, but I couldn’t make it more than a chapter when I picked up a copy at Giant Eagle out of curiosity.
And it saddens me that I can’t get behind what are some of the biggest names as far as female comedians are concerned. Sometimes I worry it’s subconscious sexism on my part, though I don’t really believe that. I mean, I love Allie Brosh, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, and Aubrey Plaza, so it’s not like I’m down on all female comedians. And I’m not a fan of quite a few of their male counterparts (Louis CK, namely) either. But I just wish I were able to find more female comedians that I’m into.
Also, you’re right about Cinder. It sounds awesome in concept, but nothing about the opening chapter or its writing style capture my interest.
CANNONBALL!
I will hold on to the joy that, for the moment at least, I have posted more reviews than Malin has.
I have to write a coursework essay this weekend, but can assure you, Mrs. J, I will catch up with you soon. I’m nearly finished with book 11, so I’m not THAT far behind Jen K and Vangie. I also have a whole week off in February, which I plan to devote pretty much exclusively to reading.
I look forward to seeing who’s next after me. No offense to Malin and Jen_K, but I hope it’s someone new, since I’d say you two have pretty much ruled this roost for years.
No offense taken. I would frankly love it if Vangie managed to be the second to get to 52. As my work load in the coming months is quite big (I have two tenth grade classes to usher towards their secondary school final exams and graduation, as well as finishing off my part time college course in Norwegian), there will absolutely not be as much spare time for me to read in as there was last year. I’m not sure I’ll even be in the top three to finish CBR, but I’m totally fine with that. After several years, I’ve actually started enjoying actually reviewing the books I read, and I don’t want to go back to a time when it’s just a hassle. So I’d rather read fewer books, and finish more slowly, but make sure I’m still reading primarily for my own enjoyment.
I have a few larger books I want to work through this month/year so she’s got a good shot. I was kind of wondering if maybe I could be the first person to win back to back CBRs but now that Travis has prevented that I’m not too concerned where I end up ranking-wise.
Malin, I don’t know how you do it. To edge out Cannonballers such as yourself and Jen_K, I must devote the majority of my free time to reading and reviewing, yet with coursework and who knows what else, you still make time to challenge myself and others each year. You must have taken some speed-reading and/or -typing classes. Either that or the amount of reading you have to do as a teacher just forced your brain to get faster at it. On average, I only manage 100 pages an hour.
Jen_K, there you go giving me something new to shoot for next year.
How is this even possible?? YOU ARE AMAZING!!! Congratulations!! 😀
Thanks! 😀
It’s possible when you neglect to do anything BUT read during every minute of free time you have available. And when you wait until you’re 52+ reviews behind to stop and take care of that part of the equation, spending 2-3 of your days off doing little besides writing reviews. Heh.