Reading Challenge 2017

One of my favourite book blogs is Anne Bogel's Modern Mrs. Darcy and last year, I excitedly printed off her reading challenges for 2017.  I wasn't sure whether I was going to do the "Reading for Fun" list or the "Reading for Growth" list but quickly,  I noticed that what I was reading fit much more snugly into the "Growth"
Here we are, on December 29th, and I believe that I have only one more thing to finish and there is a very good chance that I am going to succeed.  Here are the categories and what I have managed to read:

A Newberry Award winner or honor book- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (which I had been meaning to read for years, as she is one of my favourite authors of all time)

A book in translation - No Knives in the Kitchens of This City by Khalid Khalifa (which could have also fit in the category of a book addressing current events)

A book that is over 600 Pages - I'm not quite done yet but I plan to go to bed early tonight and cuddle up with The Likeness by Tana French, which is 680+ pages and I am 540 pages in so far.

A book of poetry, a play or an essay collection - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett.

A book of any genre that addresses current events - Welcoming the Stranger; Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate - Matthew Sorrens

An immigrant story - An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao

A book published before you were born - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Three books by the same author - A Vicarage Family, Tea by the Nursery Fire and A House in Cornwall by Noel Streatfeild

A book by an ownvoices or a diversebooks author - The Hate u Give by Angie Thomas

A book with an unreliable narrator or ambiguous ending - The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

A book nominated for an award - The  Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

A Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award winner - The Pope and Mussolini - The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David Kertzer

I also achieved my goal of 52 books for the year (I actually read more than that but I discovered that I was adding books to my Goodreads "read" list without adding the actual read date so it wasn't being added to my year total). 

I am having a hard time identifying which books were my very favourites but I will say that The Hate U Give, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Historian and all of the Harry Potter books I read with the children were all very good.  We also LOVED reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever several times and I hope that will now be an annual tradition.

I am being ambitious and setting my 2018 reading challenge for 60 books and I plan to do the Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenge again this year.  You can find the list here.