DDRR Reading Challenge Starting Prompts

If you’re anything like me you already have a stack of books on your bedside table in a ‘To Read’ pile.  I’m sure that most of them will somehow fit into at least one of the 25 categories in the Dance Dance, Ramble Ramble Reading Challenge.
If you haven’t checked the reading challenge out already, click the link above and see what it’s about!

The great thing about the challenge is that many of the books you read will fit more than one category, making it a little easier (or harder, depending on how many books you read!) to find a category to fit your book.
So, you want to do the challenge but… there’s so many categories! Where do you start?Need some help deciding what to read this year? Look no further.

There’s quite a few categories that will ease you into the challenge.
There’s no better place to start than A book you just want to read! 
Any book falls under this category. Perhaps it’s a trusted favourite, or a book you’ve been meaning to re-read for a while. Or maybe you recieved a book as a Christmas gift.

Take a look on your own bookshelf; A book you own but haven’t yet read.
If you’re anything like me there’s more than one or two books on the shelf that are waiting to be picked up and devoured!

Or perhaps there’s a book from a series you like that you need to start, or catch up on.
The Seven Sisters series has been increasing in popularity recently. Or you may like to fall back on an old favourite; mine is The Rizzoli & Isles series. I’ll be reading a Rebus or Strike novel for this category myself. I find Detective fiction helps me break up the space and time between more emotionally intense texts I’ve read. Retreating to visit old friends amongst pages can be just as comforting as discovering new ones. 

Looking to discover something new? A debut novel is perfect!
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine has been one of the more talked about debuts recently, and fits many of the #DDRRreadingchallenge categories! It’ll certainly make you laugh out loud and Reese Witherspoon has bought the rights to the film. 
This list of 31 Debut Novels from Bustle from 2018 has a good range of novels on it, with something for almost everyone.

Another place to start is A book recommended by a friend. Reading is such a personal journey that when you recommend a book to someone, it’s almost as if you’re telling them a little about yourself; ‘this book was excellent and I think you’d like it too’. Either that, or the book wasn’t your cup of tea but you think it might be someone elses! Regardless, if someone has thought to recommend a book to you; there’s a reason for it. Trust in that, and you may just discover something you didn’t know you were looking for! At least 1/4 of the books I read each year are recommendations from others and of those, half of them are books I never would have picked for myself.

Or perhaps you’re wanting to stretch your horizons right from the outset.
There’s a few categories which are specific to your location;

A book which includes language indigenous to your land
UNESCO has designated 2019 the Year of Indigenous Languages, which makes this a perfect category for 2019.
Being based in New Zealand, I’ll be looking for a book which incorporates Te Reo Maori.
In Scotland? A book with Gaelic or Scots. Wales? Welsh.
Australia? A text which includes Aboriginal language. USA & Canada; First Nations.
Do a bit of research, maybe you’re about to discover something magical.
Ask some friends if they know of any good books that might fit this challenge.

A book set in the country you live  & A book by a local author 
Here you’re just going to have to do a bit of searching.
Finding texts set in your country will be relatively easy. A local Author however, may be a slightly tricky if you live a little more remotely.
Visit or email your local library; they’re bound to know of local Authors, and they love giving recommendations.
Don’t forget… It doesn’t have to be modern fiction either!

We’ve covered eight of the 25 categories in the challenge.
Hopefully you’ve found a starting point for your #DDRRreadingchallenge for 2019.
If you have any recommendations for any of the categories don’t forget to use the #DDRRreadingchallenge hashtag on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, or you can email in on this website. I can’t wait to see what you’re all reading!

I’ll post more prompts for the remaining 17 categories as we progress throughout the beginning of the year.

But for now, wherever in the world you may be; snuggled up inside under a blanket, or on a beach in the sunshine… happy reading!

DDRR Reading Challenge 2019

With 2018 coming to a close it’s time we start thinking about goals for next year.
Last year I made myself a promise to read more books because I like reading and wasn’t doing it nearly enough. There really is nothing quite like getting yourself lost in a good book!
Part way through the year I learned my local library was doing a reading challenge for residents. I signed up, and as I’d already read a bunch of books by the time I joined, I wasn’t too far behind those who had started the challenge at the beginning of the year.
I was looking forward to participating in 2019, alas, they have decided not to run the challenge next year.

So… I came up with my own.
And you are more than welcome to join!
(Come and visit us in the Facebook Group!)

I liked the variety the categories in the challenge afforded me; new books, old books, books from here, books from there, fiction, non-fiction (something I usually never read!). I liked that it pushed me towards genres and texts outside of my comfort zone, texts I previously wouldn’t have considered or picked up. And not surprisingly, I enjoyed (most of) them.
But it’s also important to read for enjoyment. Read for fun. Read something you’re interested in or something you just want to read! I’ve kept some of these broader categories in the 2019 challenge, as they allow for a bit of ‘easy reading’, reading for fun.

2019 is going to be a time when it is increasingly important to be aware of inequality in the world, the struggles people from all walks of life face. A time to learn about people and stories which are vastly different to your own experience. This is why there are several ‘feminist’ categories in the challenge. Categories specific to Women of Colour, culture, indigenous language, disability. Things we need to bring to the front, put a spotlight on.
I wish to broaden my knowledge outside of my own lived experience. I hope you do too.

So, how does it work?
The challenge has 25 different categories.
The challenge grid itself, and a recording sheet.
Feel free to print both off so you can keep track of your challenge.
Choose how you want to go about completing the challenge for yourself – This is your challenge!
Set yourself a goal; Read them all. Read only a few. The choice is yours.
I am aiming to read 18/25 books from the challenge. If I read more, great.
If I read less, oh well.
When you finish a book, tick it off on the record sheet and write the title/author down.
Your book may cover a few categories, but you can only mark it off against one!
(This step is purely for you. It keeps the motivation going!)
Each time you finish a book post a picture of it to instagram, twitter or Facebook with the hashtag #DDRRreadingchallenge, the category it fits under, and tell us what you thought about it; this way we can share books with each other that we may not be aware of!

So without furthur ado, let me introduce to you the
Dance Dance, Ramble Ramble 2019 Reading Challenge.

So to that end, go forth and enjoy!
I can’t wait to see what you end up reading across 2019!

Book Review: Astray by Emma Donoghue

Category: A Collection of Short Stories

Astray is a collection of historical short stories, the characters, created from real life newspaper stories, diary entries and the like. In Astray, Donoghue has used fact to create fiction, a world of characters lost in transit, waiting for something that may never come.
Cleverly separated in to three parts; Departure, In Transit and Arrivals, Donoghue’s characters are all on a journey. Some are searching for a new life, some are trying to make do with the one they have. Luck has not been on their side, and for some of them, it never will be.

Astray features touching stories such as ‘Onward,’ inspired by letters written between author Charles Dickens and a brother, about a young lady he helped escape a life of poverty and prostitution or ‘Man and Boy,’ the heart-warming story of a Zookeeper and Jumbo, his Elephant, inspired by newspaper reports. ‘The Widow’s Cruse’ tells of a manipulative woman who so cunningly uses the men around her to her advantage, and ‘The Body Swap,’ a fictionalised version of the body snatchers who attempted to steal President Lincoln’s body.

Due to the nature of the book, Astray is a good holiday book for putting down and picking back up again when you need to. There’s a story or two for everyone, and whilst some of the stories may not engage everyone, there is a wide range of subject matter to keep most readers happy. This is the first book of short stories I’ve read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be picking up more short stories over the course of the next year!
Five/Five Stars

Book Review: The Colour by Rose Tremain

 

Category: A Book Set in the Country Where you Live

Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph’s mother Lilian, emigrate from England to New Zealand. Determined to make a name for himself outside of his late Father’s shadow, Joseph makes a string of poor choices that leave him and his family unprepared for the harsh realities of life in the wilderness of New Zealand.
His fortune, however, may be about to change after he finds gold dust in the creek bed on his land. Consumed by greed and his need to be successful, Joseph sets off towards Hokitika in search of The Colour.

I enjoy historical fiction, especially those set in the Victorian times. The Colour was recommended to me by a colleague who said it was beautifully written; which it is. New Zealand is described in vivid detail, the scenery, the bush, the mountains and oceans coming alive off the page. It was easy to imagine Tremain’s version of Aotearoa. However, this was where the brilliance ended for me. The storyline fell flat. I couldn’t relate to Joseph and Lilian’s motivations even though I could empathise with their situations and the poor decisions they made.

Being English herself, Tremain attempted to add Te Reo Maori into the novel, but there wasn’t enough. It didn’t flow naturally throughout the story and there were passages where the writing would have been improved with the Te Ao Maori view, especially during the second half of the book when Maori secondary character, Pare, has her own story line. The book is saved by the tenacity, bravery and determination of Harriet, who against all odds manages to survive the harsh realities of Victorian New Zealand in the winter mostly on her own.

Three/Five Stars

Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

 

Category: A Book Originally Published Between 1900 – 1950

Individuality. Free thought.
Rebellion.
All banned by Big Brother and The Party in Oceania.
Winston Smith is living in a post-war dystopia where the ruling party need to control everything from how you speak to what you wear, and even what you think. Surveillance is paramount.
Increasingly unsettled by life in Oceania, Winston sets on a course of defiance in hope of finding the Brotherhood, the resistance. Along the way he discovers Julia and together they find delight in their silent rebellion.
But when you defy Big Brother… There may be no return.
Released in 1949, Orwell wrote of a dystopia where surveillance is paramount, control is essential and individuality is non-existent.
1984 is a work of fiction which may very well be more relevant now, than it ever has been. In the light of the recent Facebook surveillance scandal and what we now know about how our technology use is tracked, 1984 is a novel that rings more truth now about our daily lives and how we are monitored without being aware. It will make you consider your consumer habits and question if we really live un-influenced, free lives. 1984 is a classic novel, which everyone needs to read, and re-visit in order to remind ourselves of what may be lurking around the corner.
1984 will make you question freedom in this post modern world.

Four/Five stars

Book Review: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark; One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

Category: A Book First Published in 2018

A standard bedtime routine. Put on your pyjamas, brush your teeth and read a story to your daughter before bed. Your family goes to sleep.
Instead of joining them, in her daughter’s playroom surrounded by toys and dolls, author Michelle McNamara would boot up her laptop and search for a serial killer.
McNamara spent years searching for the man she dubbed the ‘Golden State Killer;’ a man who terrorised the state of California for a decade between the mid 1970’s to the mid 80’s, leaving 50 rape and 11 murder victims in his wake.
A search so obsessive, it cost her her life.
McNamara finished only two thirds of her book before she passed away in her sleep in 2015, leaving her husband, friend and research assistant to piece together and finish her book.

Like many people, my attention was drawn to McNamara’s book when, in April of this year, 2018, Californian Police annouced they had a DNA match and arrested the Golden State Killer… less than three months after the release of McNamara’s book.

McNamara paints a picture and brings sleepy mid 70’s suburban California to life, a direct contrast to the horrors she writes being committed behind closed doors.
McNamara writes of a killer so calculating he would watch his targets for months before attacking. He would break in to their homes, learn the layout, disarm firearms, move furniture for hasty getaways. He would phone them to learn their routine. Repeatedly breathe down the phone. Then he would attack.
McNamara pieces together over ten years of evidence in an attempt to gain clarity and uncover the identity of the man who terrorised neighbourhoods for over a decade.
Thirty-two years after his last murder and two months after the release of this book, they arrested the Golden State Killer and called him so; an ode to McNamara, surely.
A relevant, must-read True-Crime book.

Four and a half/Five stars

Book Review: My Sister’s Bones by Nuala Ellwood

Category: A Book with a Family Member in the Title

Caution: Trigger warning.
Kate, a war-zone reporter has returned to Herne Bay following her mother’s death. As she attempts to deal with the PTSD of her job & her alcoholic sister, Kate is haunted by the trauma of her most recent assignment in Aleppo. Not to mention that being home raises the grief of the loss of her little brother during infancy. Unable to mend her relationship with her alcoholic sister or find her missing niece, Kate is supported by her brother in law. Struggling to sleep, she begins to see and hear things during the night. There’s a wee boy next door, who looks just like her brother, only, it can’t be. He’s obviously neglected, but no one believes that he exists and her neighbour insists she doesn’t have a child. Is she going mad?

Determined to save the boy next door when she was unable to in Aleppo, Kate is driven to uncover the truth that will severely change the lives of her family forever.
My Sister’s Bones is a dark story that takes readers down the path of many types of manipulation and abuse and how it is calculated and hidden. Affairs, alcoholism, assault, miscarriage, sexual and emotional abuse, murder and imprisonment are explored in this dark and raw, emotional novel that will be sure to leaving you asking questions about the motivation of men and hardiness and resilience of women. Whilst upsetting, My Sister’s Bones is one of the more thrilling novels I’ve read in recent years.  

Four/Five Stars

Book Review: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

 

Category: A Book Set in a Foreign Land

France, 1940. As sisters, Vianne and Isabelle couldn’t be more opposite. Vianne, older, married, with a child has waved her husband off to the front to help defend France from Hitler when her younger sister arrives. She disapproves of Isabella, younger, outspoken and kicked out of school after school due to her poor behaviour and inability to comply or follow instructions. She’s a liability. As the Germans invade France the war arrives not just in their town, but forces itself into their home in the form of SS Captain Beck. Vianne wants to toe the line in order to keep her home and her daughter safe. Isabelle, angry and rebellious wants to fight, and hard.
Each sister sets off on a journey of their own, fighting and surviving in the face of adversity.

This is a beautifully written story set in the most desolate of settings. Reminiscent of The Book Theif and All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale differs in the shaping of it’s older, determined female characters. Hannah so eloquently shapes these two very different women in to strong, resilient heroines, who will stop at nothing to keep their family and others safe. Isabelle and Vianne are well constructed, their struggles and motivations real. The way Hannah has conveyed the raw desperation of survival during occupied France is written in such a way as to make it real for the reader, but not in a way which overpowers the hope and optimism our heroines are fighting for. The brutality and horror of the Holocaust is communicated when required, the realities of war explored in a way that allows the spirit of our heroines shine. The first third of the text takes a slower pace to the rest of the book, but once there, you won’t want to put this novel down. The last six pages will be sure to conjure a tear or two and break your heart.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, much more than anything I have read in the past two years. I felt so connected to the characters and mourned their exit from my life once I had finished reading, the first book hangover I’ve had since reading The Bronze Horseman. 
Much like All the Light You Cannot See and The Book Thief, The Nightingale attempts to embody the spirit of determination, resilience and the overwhelming sense of what’s right and good in the world during the darkest of times. If you enjoyed these texts, you will enjoy The Nightingale.

Five/Five stars.

Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

Category: A Book Recommended by a Friend (via @160books)

Recently divorced Laura tends to elderly poet Anthony Peardew and his mansion. When he passes and leaves his estate in her name she discovers the secret he has kept for more than 40 years. Locked away in his study, the room she was forbidden to enter, are hundreds of lost treasures Anthony has collected since losing the two most important things to him; his wife, and the trinket she gave him the morning of her death. Pained by his loss Anthony begins collecting, classifying, and storing any and all lost objects he encounters in the hope that one day they will be reunited with their owners and his own mistake will be forgiven. In order to inherit his fortune, returning these items to their owners becomes Laura’s task.
Spanning multiple years and storylines, Lost Things is a tale of human resilience, love and hope. Inter-dispersed with poetic short stories giving life to the missing objects, this is a light, pick-me-up read, which appeals to the view that every object has a story. It tugs at your heartstrings with stories of the resilience of the human spirit and the need for reunions, healing and closure.
With the support of friends, Laura begins to find the owners of the Lost Things, and in the process rediscovers herself and her happiness. This book is recommended for those looking for an easy, uplifting read about resilience and kindness in this manic world.

Four/Five stars

Book Review: The Girl in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Reading Challenge Category: A Nordic Thriller

Rattled travel Journalist Lo Blacklock has survived a home invasion which puts her relationship on the rocks as she leaves for the biggest assignment of her career. Filling in for her sick boss, she is off on the maiden voyage of a luxury boutique cruise liner, travelling around Norway and the North Sea in search of the Northern Lights. On board, the glitz and glam of how the other half live leave Lo stunned. But not as stunned as when, in the middle of the night, a body is thrown overboard from the cabin next to hers…
Still reeling from having her home violated, Lo is determined to seek justice for the woman thrown overboard. The more she pushes the topic, the quicker she learns there is no one on the boat she can trust.
The Girl in cabin 10 is more plain sailing than thrilling boat ride. Much like her debut novel, Ruth Ware has constructed a simple story, with unconvincing characters. Their actions lack any convincing motivation and she fails to give the reader clues to build suspense, opting instead to spring advances in the story on the reader instead. She has even recycled a ‘missing cellphone’ angle from her first novel, which lacks originality. Even when our heroine finally sets foot in Norway the author just manages to articulate her struggle for survival and justice. The Girl in Cabin 10 shoots and misses when it comes to being thrilling, but may be enjoyable for those looking for an easy read.

Two/five stars.