The Girdle of Melian

is for ze rest of ze list! For this year's A to Z Challenge I featured books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's post details all the categories that didn't fit under A to Y! A book with more than 500 pages: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas A classic romance: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell A book that became a movie: The Human Comedy by William Saroyan A book written by someone under 30: Liza of Lambeth by Somerset Maugham A funny book: Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico A book you started but never finished: Wicked by Gregory Maguire A nonfiction book: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield A popular author's first book: Something Wrong (horror stories) by Edith Nesbit (1893!) A Pulitzer Prize winning book: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson A book that scares you: 1984 by George Orwell A memoir: Moab Is My Washpot by Stephen Fry A play: Waiting for Godot by Samuel ...

is for fairY tales... For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book more than 100 years old. I have a few such books in our library, but most are in storage! I thought it might be fun to talk about fairy tales instead. Here are a few of my favourite authors: Hans Christian Andersen My favourite story : The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf Andrew Lang The coloured fairy books! (sorry, upside down again) I happily own all of them, but could only bring one with us, unfortunately. My favourite story : from the Nursery Rhyme book, Ken Ye the Rhyme to Porringer? (because of the Gaiman Tolkien connection !) The Brothers Grimm My favourite story : The Six Swans Charles Perrault My favourite story: Puss in Boots There're also Walter de la Mare , Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Lear, and many other authors. ROW80 in brief! : I have a couple of days off work coming up. An...

is for X-Files. For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book based on or turned into a TV show: The X-Files! I only ever read the first two X-Files novels, Goblins and Whirlwind . They were fun, but didn't compare to watching Mulder and Scully, of course. I wonder if the show would have the same effect if I watched it now? When it first aired, it was on so late that after we watched it, my sister and I would turn on the lights all the way up the stairs to bed, because we were scared to be in the dark. Just thinking about the Peacock family episode still frightens me no end. Someone's probably made this comparison before, but in a way the earliest X-Files episodes were like Doctor Who - there was a central core of disbelief, and once you'd willingly suspended into that, the fun and excitement and unassuming cheesiness was there for the taking. I was watching a lot of the old Doctor Wh...

is for Watership Down. For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book with nonhuman characters: Watership Down by Richard Adams. There's also a sequel, Tales from Watership Down . Both books are about the adventures of a group of rabbits, led by two brothers called Fiver and Hazel, who are forced to leave their warren and find a new home. "The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese)" (from Amazon ) There's a brilliant recent interview with Adams in the Teleg...

is for very many colours! For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book with a colour in the title. I've been reading a few Usborne touchy-feely books in the past year, which are full of colours: The colours, children! Mainly, though, I'm reposting part of a recent book review blogpost . But I'd like to insert a brief note here with regard to the 100th anniversary of ANZAC day, today. In 1934, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk delivered the following words to the first Australians, New Zealanders and British to visit the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey: "Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side Here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, Who sent their sons from far away countries Wipe awa...

is for Ulysses . For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book with a one-word title: Ulysses by James Joyce. I've blogged about Joyce twice before, including him in a list of intimidating books and noting that his works are now public domain (which seems scary!) and that the first book of his I read was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . I first read it in my early teens. I had a sweatshirt that featured Joyce and jokingly referred to Samuel Beckett going out in the middle of the night to get pizzas. I mentioned then that I've read Ulysses ! It took me a year - I read a chapter each Sunday (or so). After each chapter, I read the corresponding chapter in Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses : A Study . Is it really possible to read Ulysses without any help at all? I haven't tried Finnegan's Wake yet... A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is still my favourite ...

is for Tolkien! For this year's A to Z I'm featuring books I've read based on the Reading Challenge . Today's book is a book from an author you love that you haven't read yet. Hard to believe there's any Tolkien book I haven't read (never mind that I haven't yet had time to finish his translation of Beowulf released last year, especially because I'd like to compare it to the last translation I read, which was Seamus Heaney's), but there is one book: Songs for the Philologists Here is the Tolkien Library description: "In Leeds, J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon founded a "Viking Club" for undergraduates devoted mainly to reading Old Norse sagas and drinking beer. It was for this club that Tolkien and Gordon originally wrote their Songs for the Philologists , a set of duplicated typescripts, containing a mixture of traditional songs and original verses translated into Old English, Old Norse and Gothic to fit tradition...