Horror, Mystery, Suspense: The R.I.P. Challenge

It may be hard to believe, but Fall is just around the corner! In two months it will be Halloween, time for trick or treating, dressing in costumes, bobbing for apples and all that fun stuff! One of the best ways to get in the mood and celebrate these upcoming months is by reading the kind of good books that send chills up our spines, cause the hairs on the back of our necks to stand up and make goose pimples form up and down our arms!

Mystery,
Suspense,
Thriller,
Dark fantasy,
Gothic,
Horror,
Supernatural

Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings is hosting the R.I.P. Challenge or Readers Imbibing Peril. This is Carl's 5th time hosting this challenge which gets rave reviews across the book blogging community. I'm excited to participate for the first time!

I signed up for several challenges that began in January but due to various family problems and health issues, I haven't made any headway with them and I don't expect I'll finish any of them this year. But I know I don't want to miss this challenge! I can definitely manage, at least, a book or two of the horror, suspense, mystery kind! Carl has made it easy to participate with a variety of different challenge levels whether you feel like reading several books or just a couple or, possibly, short stories or film are more your speed, it's all fine so long as you're Imbibing Peril!! There's room for everybody! And if you don't have a blog, it doesn't matter so check out the R.I.P. Challenge at Carl's blog and sign up!

I have several books I'd like to read but I think I'm going to play it safe and opt for Peril the Second and vow to read at least 2 books!
My list of books to choose from:




1. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
2. In the Woods by Tana French
3. The Likeness by Tana French
4. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
5. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
6. The Grey Woman and Other Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell
7. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
8. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
9. Die for You by Lisa Unger
10. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
11. Any of several of Laura Lippman's books

Awesome Author Challenge 2010

The Awesome Author Challenge is being hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books. "The idea behind this challenge is to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the "Awesome Author Challenge" title."

The challenge begins January 1, 2010 and ends December 31, 2010 so there's a lot of time to read your Awesome Authors!

The Rules for this challenge:

**Crossover from other challenges is allowed

**Choose the level at which you would like to participate, post about it and leave a link to your post in Mister Linky.

**Titles and authors do not have to be predetermined, and can change at any time.

**Books can come from any genre or reading level, the only requirement is that you have heard great things about the author, but haven't yet read any of their works

The Levels of the challenge:
*Easy: Choose three authors and read at least one title from each author
*Moderate: Choose six authors and read at least one title from each author
*Challenging: Choose ten authors and read at least one title from each author.
*Over-Achieving: Anything over ten authors

I have a long list of authors that have been recommended to me many times and I have yet to read so I am going to for the "Over-Achieving" Level and make a good dent in my list. Right now my list of authors:

Allegra Goodman
Nicola Upson
Armistead Maupin
Chang-Rae Lee
Sarah Dessen
Marilynne Robinson
JM Coetzee
Alice Munro
David Almond
Khaled Hosseini
Anita Brookner
A. Manette Mansay
Colm Tobin
Michelle Richmond

Readathon Mini-challenge: Honoring Dewey

Eva, A Striped Armchair is sponsoring this challenge in honor of the person who started the read-a-thons held twice a year. Her name was Dewey and she used to have a blog, Hidden Side of a Leaf.

Dewey is no longer with us and, unfortunately I didn't have the honor of interacting with her. But I have read about her through other bloggers because she was well-known and liked by so many bloggers. I have also read quite a bit about her in relation to the read-a-thon.

My impressions are that Dewey was a welcoming person to everyone, she enjoyed interacting with other bloggers and had a kind word for everyone, she encouraged other readers to enjoy books she liked and was a fun-loving, enjoyable woman to interact with. I read some of the post from the read-a-thon challenge last April regarding Dewey and on in particular really touched me.

Heather from Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World posted this:

"We were asked to either share a memory of Dewey (if we knew Dewey, which I didn't), or to check out her website and share something that we found that touched us somehow. "I found a post regarding Steinbeck's East of Eden, and in it Dewey writes: I really like the chapter that begins with a discussion of what Steinbeck calls monsters. He says that just as some people are born with physical deformities, so some people might be born with deformities of character, so that they may be missing a conscience or empathy or some other quality most of us consider essential. My personal opinion does match his."

This confirms what I already thought about Dewey was a wonderful, sweet, kind woman with a good heart. I have a very noticeable physical disability but I have never considered myself very different from other people, I just look a little different. There are some people who have deformities of character and they are missing characteristics I consider essential. I share Dewey's opinion and Heather's as well!

~Amy

Feed Me Challenge!

Nicole's Feed Me Challenge -

This is a passage from Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado (pg. 116 )

"Every summer since my mother died, the thought of smelling baking plums and watching the green-fleshed fruit start to bleed red into the buttery dough was depressing. We'd eaten zwetschgendatschi every summer we had together -- in Nurnberg, in our suburban house in Virginia, and at my aunt's home in Maryland. We bought it from local village bakeries in Bavaria or baked it ourselves".