Dymocks 52 Challenge Halftime Musings

Having just finished Book 19 of 38 for my #Dymocks52Challenge refined, I figured it was time to do another update.

To recap:

This year, Australian book retailer Dymocks challenged readers to read one book a week for the entire year, adding up to 52 books.

As a voracious reader, I was well ahead come April, so I decided to make the challenge a little harder for myself for the remaining 38 weeks of the year.

Since 2008 (as far as my research could indicate), Dymocks has produced a list of the Top 101 books, as voted by readers. Using lists from the past five years, as well as unread books on my shelf, I compiled a list of 38 books that I would attempt to read before the end of the year (one a week from time of commencement).

Some of these are books I've never been interested in reading, or books I've been putting off, or books I've intentionally avoided. Others are books I've been looking forward to, and some are books I hadn't actually heard of. It promised to be a diverse challenge.

Now, here at the halfway point, I can admit that this has already been an interesting, worthy ride.

I started with Nevernight by Jay Kristoff, and it was a great book to start with - 5 stars. My 19th, most recent read, was the worst - 1 star and my first DNF of the challenge. The offending book was Clementine Ford's Fight Like A Girl. This was a book I wanted to throw down in disgust after only a couple of chapters, but I'd given myself the rule of reading at least 50% before giving up on a book (DNF = Did Not Finish) so I struggled through 55% before I finally threw in the towel for good.

With other reads, the 50% rule served me well - The Light Between Oceans was a struggle for a while but I thoroughly enjoyed the final third of it, and Boy Swallows Universe had me worried but took off about 50 pages in and ended up being a fantastic read.

My favourite book so far has been The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, and that was a fun discovery because the size of this novel has had me putting it off for years. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed The Happiest Refugee by Aussie comedian Anh Do. 

There's been a couple of disappointments - aside from Fight Like a Girl, Circe left me rather more underwhelmed than I expected, as did Assassin's Apprentice. 

Moving forward, I'm most looking forward to reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and I'm most nervous about Shantaram, which is of course a 900+ page monster about horrible, horrible things.

The Book Thief, despite having remained in the Top 10 for the past 7 years, and taking out the top spot for three of those, is still neglected. I've been putting it off for years due to my general disappointment in most stories set in WWI and WWII so, true to that, I'm saving it til last.

It's been an interesting challenge to force myself to read assigned books when there's so many other great reads waiting on my shelf. I'm looking forward to continuing to challenge myself.

***

Stats so far:

Books read: 20

Pages read: 7771

Average rating: 3.2 stars

Most popular GR review: The Final Empire 

Least popular GR review: Fight Like a Girl

Oldest book read: Jane Eyre *

Newest book read: Becoming

*Note: I've recently finished Jane Eyre, which is book 20, however the write up is still to come. For statistics, I've included it.

***

AA = Australian Author
Titles not in bold are yet to be purchased

1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (AA)
2. The Happiest Refugee - Anh Do (AA) (12)  4*
3. Jasper Jones - Craig Silvey (AA) (5) 2*
4. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
5. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (20) 4*
6. The Light Between Oceans - M. L. Stedman (AA) (17) 3*
7. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (AA)
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (13) 2*
9. Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy) - Robin Hobb (14) 2*
10. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
11. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (AA)
12. The Martian - Andy Weir
13. My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Series) - Elena Ferrante (11) 2*
14. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (3) 4*
15. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (AA)
17. All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven
18. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty (AA) (10) 3*
19. Reckoning - Magda Szubanski (AA)
20. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
21. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
22. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
23. The Final Empire (The Mistborn Series) - Brandon Sanderson (6) 5*
24. Wool - Hugh Howey
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman (2) 4*
26. Boy Swallows Universe - Trent Dalton (AA) (16) 4*
27. Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicles) - Jay Kristoff (AA) (1) 5*
28. Simon VS the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli (4) 4*
29. Fight Like a Girl - Clementine Ford (AA) (19) 1*
30. Circe - Madeline Miller (7) 2*
31. Mythos - Stephen Fry
32. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Holly Ringland (AA)
33. Becoming - Michelle Obama (15) 4*
34. A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
35. Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan
36. Scrublands - Chris Hammer (AA) (9) 4*
37. Normal People - Sally Rooney (18) 3*
38. Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty (AA) (8) 2*