Taking A Winter's Respite of Reading

With the holiday weekend coming up, many of us will use that time to tackle a reading challenge or two and I intend to do so myself.

Beginning on January 18th, the Seasons of Reading midwinter readathon entitled A Winter's Respite will be underway, giving all of us who participate until the 24th to complete as much selected reading as possible.

Usually for these readathons, I stick to just one book but decided to challenge myself and take on three titles(it helps that one of them has a rather slender page count). If I complete at least one or two of them, that will be good enough for me but who knows, I might manage to finish them all. We shall see, I suppose, so here are my three AWR selections for your perusal:

THE NIGHT CIRCUS: I've heard great things about this debate fantasy novel by Erin Morgenstern and happened upon a Canadian paperback edition at a rummage sale last spring(which looks very similar to the US one) that has been sitting on one of my many TBR piles for awhile now.

Therefore, this readathon is the perfect opportunity to check out this fable of Celia and Marco,two star crossed lovers trained to battle each other with magic yet wind up falling under the spell of love. Add the circus environment that these two grow up in and this sounds like quite the enchanting literary treat:

THE SUN ALSO RISES: I did set one of my goals for the year to give Hemingway a chance and now that the book is here in my home, taking it up during a readathon seems the right time to give it a page turning whirl.

The story of Jake Barnes and his dissolute companions as they make their way through Europe is said to be a tragic love story as well as a look into the mind set of the Lost Generation, those disillusioned young people affected by the social changes brought about by WWI.

Either way, or perhaps both, the novel has held up for a good long while here and it's brisk pace should suit my literary needs this week. Maybe I'll even see the film version of it, if I can find it on Netflix, that is:

DARK PLACES: This book does have a film version that's in my Netflix queue but I want to read it first. This is an early novel of Gillian Flynn's(written just before Gone Girl) that has another offbeat leading lady at the helm.

Libba Day is known as the sole survivor of a family massacre, which her brother Ben was sent to prison for, due to her testimony. Twenty five years later, a group who call themselves The Kill Club contact Libba in order to get more information about the night in question.

They want to prove that Ben is innocent and she's willing to help them as long they pay her for her trouble. As Libba digs into that dark night of terror, she discovers things that she never knew before and finds an answer that may be more shocking than she or the Kill Club ever imagined. I am intrigued, to say the least:

That's my unlikely trio of AWR books,folks; wish me luck! I do think this will be a nice change of pace and a good way to settle into the post holiday season. My only small complaint is that we have no snow in my neck of the woods.

Mind you, I'm not asking for a blizzard or anything like that. Just a couple of solid inches that would allow for a snowball fight or a lovely sleigh ride(not that I have a sleigh, it's simply the idea of having that option available). Oh, well, perhaps my fellow AWR readers will enjoy some snowy goodness on their book journey this week and I can be happy for them as we all read together: