Category: Blogosphere Events & Happenings

+A to Z Challenge 2014+ Theme Reveal for the April Blogging Challenge!

Posted Friday, 21 March, 2014 by jorielov 23 Comments

Parajunkee Designs

All around the blogosphere today {21st March, 2014}, there is a curious announcement floating onto blogs!

It’s the *official* day to *reveal!* our A TO Z CHALLENGE THEME!

{Jorie is #96!}

IF those of us signed up to reveal our theme ahead of the start date for the challenge &/or if we chose to have a ‘theme’ for the challenge itself; the reveal gives us a way to promote ourselves. The idea behind the challenge is one that I fancied myself because it’s a creative challenge to seek out *26!* topics which correlate with the ‘letter’ of the ‘day’ in which each letter from A to Z is spotlighted!

Converse & Follow A to Z Challengers:

#AtoZChallenge & #A2ZReveal {alt. #AtoZReveal}

IF you’d like to discover {new!} bloggers of whom are signed into the challenge, scope out the *1445+* participating!

The beauty of the A to Z is it’s not limited by your imagination nor of the dedication of your blog!

{Jorie is #558!}


***Announcing my theme

for A to Z Challenge 2014:***

Jorie Loves Inspirational Stories

: An Alphabet Essay in 26 parts :

I felt I had known *exactly!* what I was going to blog about during the A to Z Challenge when I first signed up to participate; however, it wasn’t until I had this lovely serendipitous conversation with fellow challenger Amrita {of , The Book Drifter & Drifting Traveller! @Amrita86} through Twitter, where I realised I had short-changed myself by half! I had a theme which was truly etching out the heart of who ‘Jorie’ is not merely of ‘Jorie Loves A Story’ but the ‘Jorie’ in the traditional sense ‘in real life’. Yet, I had mistakenly left out a very elementary and key ingredient from my theme and from my overall sketchings of what my A to Z Challenge topics would reflect! I am blessed and grateful to have crossed paths with Amrita not only as a lovely new bookish friend, but I am blessed to have signed into a blog challenge which is going to become a peppered essay reflecting to the world the insight behind why I blog!

I am hopeful those who are making the rounds for the ‘theme reveals’ will return back to Jorie Loves A Story starting on 1st April, 2014 to see what “A” reveals! And, prior to the beginning of the challenge, I invite you to duck over to my Story Vault and see if you want to wander around a bit ahead of time!

A to Z Challenge Calendar of Blog Posts
This lovely alphabet calendar was created by Jeremy of http://www.jmhdigital.com & http://www.beingretro.com.
Advance notice of each day you will find
NEW posts arriving on each A to Z Challenge Blogger’s blog!

IF you want to show your support for the A to Z Challenge,
go pick up the Supporter Badge for your own blog!
This marks my first post for:

A to Z Challenge

IF you are participating in the A to Z Challenge, I’d be keen to know a bit more about you, why you opted to participate, and what you blog about? What inspired you to seek out topics for 26 letters and to give your new readers & visitors interest to make your blog their next visit whilst hoppin’ around the blogosphere? What do you think is the greatest challenge of the A to Z? What is your greatest hope for an outcome once May arrives and the challenge is completed!? IF you’re a visitor following along with those of us who are participating, what attracted you to the challengers who are participating!? What are you enjoying the most in anticipation?


 

A to Z Challenge Archive of Posts:

  1. Letter A: Day 1  Anthologies
  2. Letter B: Day 2 Biographical Fiction
  3. Letter C: Day 3 Classical Fiction
  4. Letter D: Day 4 Dragon Fiction
  5. Letter E: Day 5 Equality in Literature
  6. Letter F: Day 6

 

 

 

{Sources: A to Z Participant 2014 participant badge & calendar grid of days provided by A to Z Challenge and used with permission.}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

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Posted Friday, 21 March, 2014 by jorielov in A to Z Challenge, Bloggers Connecting Bloggers, Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Comment Thread Conversations

+Top Ten Tuesday+ No.3 Top Ten Authors Yet to Read Others Already Love

Posted Wednesday, 5 March, 2014 by jorielov , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

"Top Ten Tuesday" hosted by The Broke & the Bookish

[Official Blurb] Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature / weekly meme created by The Broke & the Bookish. The meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke & the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your Top 10 Lists!

[Topic of 4 March 2014: Top Ten Authors Yet to Read Others Already Love]

Diana Gabaldon {Outlander series} Although I have flirted with reading the Outlander series in the past, as I quite literally have the first of the series in both hardback and paperback editions, I have not yet had the pleasure of starting the series and seeing it through to completion! Hence the reason I have included it as a ‘new’ classic to read on my tCC List! In November 2008, my Mum gifted me “The Outlandish Companion” of which I started to read until I realised I was getting into the heart of the series itself so I segued back into the heart of who Ms. Gabaldon is as a writer. I devoured all of those sections as though I could not quench my thirst! I’ve been attracted to the series since before it held world-wide acclaim, as I found in her writing style a writer who felt akin to my own stylings. I loved learning about her process and how she took inspiration in thought and transformed it onto the page. It’s always quite exciting finding authors who pen stories in such a way that brings a happy mirth of joy to your own writer’s heart! I have resolved I am not going to do what I’ve done in the past which is to watch the motion picture adaptations ahead of reading the text! Given that I know all of “Outlander” the series will be on dvd, I can take my time and soak into this world! I simply adore ‘time slips’ and this is the ultimate foray into that genre which bends time, reality, and the conception of how we live our lives and the affects of our actions over the expanse of time itself!

J.K. Rowling {Harry Potter series} I am quite sure this will come to a shock to many but not as such to my close friends who know the reasons behind why I wasn’t able to read the books ahead of their motion picture debuts! I quite literally became quite attached to young Harry Potter long, long, LONG before the epic pop culture iconic attachment ever latched into the subconscience of the world! I was struck by the courage of such a young boy and by the breadth of the imagination it took on behalf of its writer to bring forward such a fully realised world. I always intended to read Harry ahead of any motion picture but as time would come to foretell, it was simply not in the cards! I still lament I shall sit with Harry and read his adventures during an epic blizzard in future days,…

Elizabeth Gaskell Gaskell is one of those authors I knew I would instinctively appreciate whilst reading about her methodology as a writer and as a woman who loved life most of all! She never sacrificed her writing for living, nor did she find any issue with leaving her writings in the middle of where they were if there was something important about to be lived in the moment! I loved her tenacity for breathing life into every inch and niche of her days! She tends to write long sweeping novels full of multi-generational sagas and of the realities of characters you can divest your heart into and emerge out the other end grateful to have known. I cannot wait to soak into her writings, etching out how she observed the world through her character’s murmurings and take a pause knowing she only had a limited number of hours to write before embarking on her next living adventure! I applaud her dexterity! 

Patrick O’ Brian {Master & Commander series}I am not sure I would have gone to see “Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World” if I had known it was the quintessential motion picture for a dearly beloved high seas epic serial in fiction! Then again, knowing of its origins prior to being in a darkened theater as the film was about to launch into my field of vision might not have swayed me to wait either! I fell in love with the teasers and the extended trailers thereafter, to where I was quite eager to see everything emerge into full scope and depth right before my eyes! This was a motion picture that you ‘survived’ not merely ‘watched’ because the action, the sequences of dialogue, and the full CinemaScope essence of its heart dared you to be emotionally connected to everything going on before your eyes! I was pulled and tugged into corridors I never felt I’d go for motion picture; but the breath-taking cinematography against the gentle arc of narrative and story set against a backdrop of lead protagonists your never quite sure you love, hate, or endear to tolerate is part of its brilliance. The visual images that sometimes leave you shuddering and without nerves in reserve gave me a hearty adventure I was only half ready to take! Imagine then!? When the hours align and I can re-enter this world, to where I might actually decide am I an Aubry or Maurin girl? My heart is thus torn!

Brian Jacques {Redwall series} Although I have known about Jacques works for quite a long while, I have not yet broached inside his worlds. Considering that I have “Redwall” on my shelf, there is quite the obvious longing to read the story! I know I can continue forward reading the series through my local library, either by their own card catalogue OR through ILL’ing the books in sequence. There is something quite intriguing about reading a series where the animals are as real as the ones in Narnia, but I think the main reason I’ve been a bit on the fence about reading this series is because I didn’t become attached to Narnia in written form, no, I became attached to Narnia through the live-action motion pictures. And, so perhaps a part of me has hesitated ever curious if I will sink or swim with another series where animals are not quite as they seem?

Katherine Howe No one could be more disappointed in herself than I am, in regards to not having yet read “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane” which was purchased as a hardback the very year it was released! I have always meant to read the story within the covers, and I can even remember when I purchased the book, as it was one of the last purchases I had made of a new release I felt was worth taking the chance on! I had read quite a bit about upcoming releases that  particular year and the stand-out for me was this particular author and this particular book. She has since gone on to publish stories which still entice me and implore me to read! Yet. I want to start here. With this wicked novel that I have itched to read and have longing looked at ever since on my bookshelf! I am definitely going to include it on my Rewind Challenge list because it was one of the ‘new releases’ which has become swept back against the sands of time and grown further away from my heart and fingertips!

Christopher Paolini {Inheritance series} I still remember when “Eragon” first released and I was quite keenly excited about a ‘dragon series’, except to say where my heart jumped for certain joy my fingers never quite reached the brink to open the book! Laughs. Clearly this goes back to when I was trapped inside a reader’s rut and unable to move myself past the point of picking up a paperback copy! I thus succeeded in attending the midnight release party by proxy (here this refers to ‘quite accidentally!) of Brisingr which led to bringing home a first edition hardback, as how else to explain why you’re at your local Barnes & Noble at such a late hour!? Laughs. I had a heap of fun getting caught up in the excitement of it all, as previously I had only attended a midnight release for Harry Potter (yes, I might not have read the books but I was mad-crazy about making sure I had a complete set! including, five books imported from England directly!)! With the sequent film releases, my curiosity has both waned and re-lit the fever to read Paolini’s stories. I did include two of his books on my TBR Reading Challenge list.

Charles Dickens The curious thing for me is not remembering if I ever actually sat down and read “A Christmas Carol” as although I want to claim I have and may very well have claimed I did in the past, the honest truth is that I do not remember!? I know that its my most beloved Dicken’s classic as far as watching multiple adaptations in film as I can never see too much of Scrooge; except for the one adaptation simply entitled “Scrooge” of which I avoid like the plague! Dickens is such a complicated fellow. Not only as a writer who wanted to chronicle certain stories within a certain umbrella of character direction, but he was not the easiest nor the worst of the writers from his generation to leave behind a complicated legacy. I know bits and bobbles of his writing life, but evenso, its his stories that echo out a calling for me to read them. I have a mini-hardback edition of “Oliver Twist” which will be the first I consume once I am able to lay mind and heart on Dickens. I wonder which story of his others began their sojourn into his legacy?

Fannie Flagg I have known about this author for a long time, but it wasn’t until I picked up a copy of “Standing in the Rainbow” that I made it a purposeful intent to actually sit down and read her stories! I cannot even begin to imagine how many times I have picked up this novel only to set it back down again! To the brink that when I was composing my TBR Reading Challenge list I knew this had to be included! I am hoping this novel will inspire me to seek out more of her stories! She appears to be an author whose words never fail to inspire her to compose stories of strong characters albeit flawed who evoke our emotional keels!

Cecelia Ahern I never truly kept an eye on this Irish writer, because I mistook her writings for being ‘chick lit’ rather than for being a bit more of depth than that genre might naturally allow possible. I always have a twitching in my nose when I stumble across a title of ‘chick lit’ because it’s not quite a natural draw for me to choose. Then, I started to discover her novels in motion picture adaptation format through my local library, and the rest as they say is history! I became drawn into her characters like a moth to a flame! I wanted more! I wanted to seek out her writings, soak into her character’s heads and hearts and start to see where she endeavoured to take us next! P.S. I Love You the film convinced me I needed to take a chance on Ahern, but its the novel “Where Rainbows End” which I picked up for free at my library which might become the first I shall be reading of hers!

Which of the authors I’ve listed dear hearts, whet your own palette of interest? Which intrigue you? Which did you try reading but found weren’t to your liking!? Do you ever hesitate to read a book &/or an author of a certain genre!? What book &/or author did you leave off your own list this week that you wished you had included!?

{SOURCE: Jorie Loves A Story badge created by Ravven with edits by Jorie in PicMonkey.}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

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Posted Wednesday, 5 March, 2014 by jorielov in Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Top Ten Tuesday

WWW Wednesday No.3: A girl with an affinity for the classics!

Posted Wednesday, 19 February, 2014 by jorielov , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

WWW Wednesday badge by Jorie in Canva

I loved the premise of this meme {WWW Wednesdays} due to the dexterity that it gives the reader! :) Clearly subject to change on a weekly rotation, which may or may not lead to your ‘next’ read which would provide a bit of a paradoxical mystery to your readers!! :) Love the concept! Therefore, this weekly meme is hosted by Should Be Reading. Each week you participate, your keen to answer the following questions:

  • What are you currently reading!?
  • What did you recently finish reading!?
  • What do you think you’ll read next!?

After which, your meant to click over to Should Be Reading to share your post’s link so that the rest of the bloggers who are participating can check out your lovely answers! :) Perhaps even, find other bloggers who dig the same books as you do! I thought it would serve as a great self-check to know where I am and the progress I am hoping to have over the next week!

What are you currently reading!? {a two-week retrospective!}

I am continuing to read Crown of Vengeance by Stephen Zimmer, as it will mark my last post tied to the Sci-Fi Experience! I had wanted to read a few more books towards this reading challenge, but I lost too many hours during January to accomplish this task. I, am, however, continuing to read the books I outlined on my participation page for the Experience! I selected a few books for the Wicked Valentine’s Readathon which are as follows:

Selection One: Back to the Classics: The Ladies Paradise by Emilie Zola

Selection Two: Magical Realism (tCC) & Time Travel (SFN & SciFI Bingo): The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Selection Three: Book Itching to Read: Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan*

Selection Four: Book for Review: A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

{*} As previously disclosed, this boomeranged back to the local library; am awaiting its return!

Alongside the books I pulled for Wicked Valentine, I am also in position to start reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (as part of the #LitChat War & Peace Book Club), & Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (as part of the @RiverheadBooks RAL). Once I start to dig into these select classics, I am on my way towards revealing how I have such a hearty affinity for reading classical literature! Over the years I have dreamt of which classics to read first and which to follow in their wake. 2014 marks the year I am finally able to set aside time to start to explore the classical literary world with a curious eye towards the unknown adventures which lie ahead!

What did you recently finish reading!?

I have only finished a handful of novels within the past fortnight or thereabouts, all of which I posted reviews on my blog: The Brotherhood of the Dwarves, Dangerous DecisionsSebastian’s Way, and the Writers Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy. The latter of course, was an anthology collection of essays and interviews compiled together to present an excellent primer on genre writing; even if your genre is outside the scope of the title! I found myself writing quite a heap about my recollections and the musings therein which were extracted from the readings!

I am in the process of reading several novels at the moment for each of my different reading challenges as well as having finished my first blog tour book review stop for Penguin Group (USA). As I am reading multiple books concurrently, I will be revealing where I am by page count rather than by chapter or section next Wednesday! I am hoping to be at the end of Chapter X or XI of Wuthering Heights by the 21st (Friday) as well as complete my reading of Crown of Vengeance to round out my focus week for Seventh Star Press! At the close of February, I am equally as hopeful to have read approx. 200 pages of War and Peace whereas my goals for the 23rd of February are too complete Somerset & most of Roses! The Ladies Paradise is on my reading table as well, as I am attempting to read in tandem at the moment! I felt best to initiate a bit of a page count goal per book in order to best ignite a pattern of reading classics in-between modern literature I explore either outside of blog tours or within them! I always have such a fanciful heart to explore literature in all of its beauty, that I felt this might help me focus on books I truly want to finish reading within the time I am allotting! Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s journal of WWW to see how well I did!

A Fall of Marigoldstook me backwards into my memories for the shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 as evidenced and exhumed into a breath of life by Meredith Tax’s Rivington Street; whilst bringing forward haunting memories of observing the horrors of September 11th by telecast. I felt honoured to be asked to be a book review stop on her blog tour, and as you can read in my review, the novel itself touched me on a very deep level. It was a blessing to find closure and peace after two events in history profoundly affected me.

What do you think you’ll read next!?

I received word that my ILL holds are in queue to arrive within a few week’s time in which I cannot wait to see what is waiting for me inside Leviathan Wakes, Jaran, and The Divining!

And, then there was the whole realisation whilst I read this tweet which led to the successive replies:

Launched myself into a bit of mini-quest to find other “foodie fiction” titles that I could plausibly devour at some point in my reading future! Laughs within a smile! Oh, the wondrous thrill of the ‘discovery’!!

  • The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister (started; need to finish!)
  • The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister (sequel to above; goes w/o saying!)
  • Chocolat by Joanne Harris (birthday gift; need to read!)
  • The Colour of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe (borrowed; returned unread)
  • Julie & Julia by Julie Powell (opted for the motion picture!)
  • Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl (always saw the films!)
  • How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O’ Neal (loved!)
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (murmurs of curiosity!)
  • When in Doubt, Add Butter by Beth Harbison
  • The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy
  • The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe by Mary Simses (borrowed, need to finish!)
  • The Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller Santos
  • Eat. Pray. Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (opted for the motion picture!)
  • The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais
  • Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
  • The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
  • The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
  • Coffeehouse mysteries by Cleo Coyle (need to read all of them!)
  • White House Chef mystery series by Julie Hyzy (need to keep up to date!)
  • The China Bayles mysteries by Laura Childs (revolves around a teahouse!)
  • Courtesy of Ms. Lisa via TLC Book Tours the following were also suggested:
  • The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry
  • Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge
  • The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher
  • Maman’s Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan
  • Hungry by Darlene Barnes
  • & the forementioned The Colour of Tea & The Lost Art of Mixing

The next books I am drinking in will be books for review and I am quite excited for them to grace my mind’s eye! For I get the absolute pleasure of re-entering the world of the #LelandDragons, as I re-read Redheart by Jackie Gamber before continuing forward into Sela and the bookend third of the trilogy: Reclamation! The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte by Ruth Hull Chatlien is a hearty tome of an account of a side of the Bonaparte family I never had heard of beforehand! My pursuit of Bonaparte has re-strengthened since I read Becoming Josephine by Heather Webb! Whereas Citadel by Kate Mosse is an interest which was encouraged by my Mum when she gave me Labyrinth; in lieu of knowing where I put the book, I have borrowed the two previous books from my local library!

I had a bountiful bookish postal surprise day

in which I happily welcomed in the following books for review:

My Wish List banner

&

Violet Patterson Blog Tour via Tomorrow Comes Media

&

Inscription by H.H. Miller

via Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours

&

A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk by Scott E. Tarbet    

and Moments in Millenia (anthology) edited by Penny Freeman

via Xchyler Publishing

Whereas I previously announced receiving Citadel & The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte!

I decided to join the 2014 Chunkster Challenge, as I had no idea how many novels I’d read over the score of the year which would qualify as being labeled ‘a tome of a book greater than 450 pages!’ Clearly, I have already begun to read stories in greater quantity of depth, but this is going to be a good record of seeing how many I gravitate towards over a regular year’s worth of reading!

Likewise, I have released posts in part of my participation of:

I will be stitching together my posts this next week for challenges hosted by Bookish Ardmour:

All of which I curate on my RALs & Challenges page, of which I update my progress as well as on my Part II of Reading Challenge Addict! I decided to pull back from several reading & bookish challenges this year, as although they appealed to me in the beginning when I was on the verge of signing into them, I decided in the long-term I would be better off honing in on the ones which were at this point in time the most keen of the lot to participate in! There will undoubtedly be more RALs, Thons, & Challenges forthcoming but these will be the main ones I am concentrating on except to say for the two Jane Austen novels I am reading to correlate with the Jane Austen Readings hosted by Reading is Fun Again!

Quite the exciting time for a bookish soul, eh!?
Have your literary wanderings been as expansive and lovely as mine!?
And, do you have a ‘foodie fiction’ recommendations for me!?

{SOURCE: The WWW Wednesday badge created by Jorie in Canva as a way to
promote the weekly meme for those who want to take part in it.}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

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Posted Wednesday, 19 February, 2014 by jorielov in 18th Century, 19th Century, Anthology Collection of Stories, Back to the Classics, Blog Tour Host, Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Bookish Discussions, Books for Review Arrived by Post, Chunkster Reading Challenge, Classical Literature, Fantasy Fiction, Foodie Fiction, France Book Tours, Get Steampunk'd, Go Indie, Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours, Indie Author, Indie Book Trade, Inspirational Fiction & Non-Fiction, Library Find, Love for Books Readathon, RALs | Thons via Blogs, Reading Challenge Addict, Reading Challenges, Rewind Challenge, Science Fiction, Seriously Series Reading Challenge, SFN Bingo, TBR Pile Challenge, tCC The Classics Club, The Dystopia Challenge, Tomorrow Comes Media, Wicked Valentine's Readathon, William Shakespeare Challenge, Wuthering Heights, WWW Wednesdays, Xchyler Publishing

+2014 Chunkster Reading Challenge+ Or, how Jorie <3s novels of hearty depth!

Posted Monday, 17 February, 2014 by jorielov , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

2014 Chunkster Challenge hosted by Vasilly

I, must admit, I am always quite curious about the books I gravitate towards reading time after time. Do I pick a specific genre to explore!? Is there a particular heart of depth to the stories I am selecting?! Is there any specifics that would stand out!? Setting?! Time preference!? Locale!? Or, could it be that I, Jorie of Jorie Loves A Story have a natural curiosity and eye bent towards falling in love with novels of hearty depth! What the rest of the world considers a ‘chunkser’ I consider “Now! That’s what I call a wicked sweet tome of a novel!”

Although I have seen posts attributed to this particular reading challenge over the past few years, I was always curious about the length requirements of the reader’s choices!? Apparently, any novel over the mark of 450 pages is considered a ‘chunkster’ by the broader readership! I consider anything under 750 pages to be a full-fledged novel of wickedly delightful sagas! Then, again, I happen to have a penchant for reading multi-generational sagas, of which cannot be fully contained in one singular volume! I oft find the sagas are separated into multiples; either in a running serial of the same family &/or spilt into trilogy installments. The odd quartet is thrown in for good measure as well!

I am a reader who envelops her mind, her heart, and her soul around the characters she meets inside the stories her mind illuminates for her as she reads. The main characters as well as the supporting characters all have equal footing in her heart because each of the characters mentioned may hold a piece of the evolving story. Or at the very least, provide a backdrop flow of continuity for the time, setting, and place of the novel! I love seeing the smaller details, the finer points of everyday hours which elapse at different intervals whilst your engrossed into a hearty historical inasmuch as you might be jettisoning into a time slip or time travel narrative! I like seeing the finite details because they in of themselves give a winking nod towards our own histories. How life was for those who came before us in the not-so-far-off past can be ruminated in a historical story.

This wicked sweet challenge is hosted by Vasilly of Chunkster Challenge!

{Proposed Goal of Reading *25* Chunksters}

Given the rate of probability of increasing my page counts as the months progress forward, I have decided to aim even higher than I originally felt I could achieve over the next 10 months, as I am beginning to count this challenge in the second month rather than the first! And, at the latter half of February, I might add! I originally felt only five novels of considerable length might be possible! Who knew!? I suppose this would fall under the ‘hidden talent’ category for performance artists!?

{Reading List} | Combination of Blog Tour Reviews & Personal Selections

IF a book is in italics I have bumped it into 2015 rather than reading it in 2014.

  1. Crown of Vengeance {Book 1: Fires of Eden series} by Stephen Zimmer (612 pages)
  2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1,215 pages)
  3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (643 pages)
  4. Somerset by Leila Meacham {Prequel to Roses} (610 pages)
  5. Roses by Leila Meacham (609 pages)
  6. Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham (470 pages)
  7. The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte by Ruth Hill Chatlien (484 pages)
  8. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (528 pages)* officially on hold for another year
  9. Sepulchre by Kate Mosse (592 pages)* officially on hold for another year
  10. Citadel by Kate Mosse (680 pages)
  11. The Reincarnationist (Book 1: Reincarnationist series) by M.J. Rose* (464 pages)
  12. The Memorist (Book 2: Reincarnationist series) by M.J. Rose* (464 pages)
  13. A Beauty So Rare by Tamera Alexander* (480 pages)
  14. [7,851 pages thus far!]
  15. Intangible by C.A. Gray (482 pages)
  16. Awesome Jones by AshleyRose Sullivan (456 pages)

{In consideration} | A considerable number are on my tCC List!

[projected pages to read: 8,498!]

  1. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (582 pages)
  2. Jaran {Book 1: Sword of Heaven series} by Kate Elliott (494 pages)
  3. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (834 pages)
  4. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (552 pages)
  5. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah (479 pages)
  6. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (552 pages)
  7. The House at Riverton by Kate Morton (473 pages)
  8. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (562 pages)
  9. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (656 pages)
  10. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough (704 pages)
  11. The Crimson Petal & the White by Michael Faber (on TBR Challenge List) (833)
  12. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1,024 pages)
  13. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (753)

{Previously Read}

[Pages thus far consumed: 1,548 & counting!]

  1. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (486 pages)
  2. King’s Dragon {Book 1: Crown of Stars saga} by Kate Elliott (532)
  3. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (530)
  4. and continuing,.. as I sort out which books were of considerable length!

{*} reading in conjunction with scheduled book review of next in sequence

Already at the start of keeping track of the length of each novel I read, I am amazed at how the list begins with *13!* Curiously, I am fascinated to seeing which ‘length’ of book attracts me the most!? If spilt into 100 page increments, will it be the 400 mark? 500? I’ll have to continue this part of the discussion come New Year’s Eve, 2015!

*UPDATE (18FEB’14): As I read Christine’s note about how many actual pages I’d consume, I was curious, how many would that be!? I added the figures!

{SOURCE: Jorie Loves A Story Badge created by Ravven with edits by Jorie in PicMonkey.

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

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Posted Monday, 17 February, 2014 by jorielov in Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Bookish Discussions, Chunkster Reading Challenge, Classical Literature, Debut Novel, Fantasy Fiction, Gothic Literature, Historical Fiction, Inspirational Fiction & Non-Fiction, Library Find, Literary Fiction, Reading Challenges, Romance Fiction, Science Fiction