April Fool's Challenge - Day 8

*Dear Readers - I skipped day seven I was very busy yesterday and not feeling well. I apologize for that. It was a good challenge. I may just post it anyway. But for now:

Hopefully you have been following my blog for a while but at least for the past five days enough to know I am participating in a blog challenge. You can go back to each day's posts and find the "April Fool Challenge" post to see what I did the first four days.

If you are a blogger you can also participate by clicking here: http://www.parajunkee.com/

So I have had a task for each day the point being about what a fool for books I am.

Day 8 Challenge - Books you have read that have challenged you mentally.

Wow, this is a tough one. What is a challenge to one person may not be to another. Is it reading a really long book? Is it reading a book you normally would not read? It is reading a book with a complex plot? I think challenging would include all of these.

I have memory problems and illnesses that caused me to not be able to read books from 1999 to late summer of 2013. So I am going to use that as a frame of reference. The recent books.

The first book I can think of is The Wet And The Dry by Lawrence Osborne. It was about drinking and other cultures. Osborne has his own style and it is unlike anything I ever read. I devoured it but it was challenging. I do not pay attention to geography or history (that is my husband's job!) so the author spoke a lot about drinking in dry countries in the middle east and places like that. So I had to really concentrate and pay attention. It was worth it.

Another book I can think of is Peaceful Genocide by J.A. Reynolds. It was a mystery. So the challenge was in what the characters were trying to do and what the author intended for us to know and what the author intended for us to figure out. This is a top favorite book of mine. The plot was amazing. Lots of twists, turns, and surpirses. So for that reason, it was challenging.

A book that was challenging in a different way was Wakefield by Erin Callahan, Troy H. Gardner. This was challenging because it was a tour book and although no one was forcing me to read it, it had just enough to keep me reading, expecting it to pick up any minute. The concept was good. The execution was horrendous. I was 40 percent in before anything interesting happened and at the 93 percent mark is when everything was explained. Ummm..little late don't you think? This was torture to read so that makes it challenging. I do my best to finish all books. I read all genres so there is bound to be a bad apple sometimes. This book, like I said, had just enough to keep my interest and not write to the tour company and say "I give up!"

I have a lot of books laying around. Self help books, 800 page books, book about history, all books that I won in contests. I am assuming some of these may be challenging for me because of the nature of the book. For example, I won Presidential Picture Stories by Dennis Brack. I already told you I am not into history. Why did I enter? I firmly believe if you were meant to read a book, it will come to you. I know the concept is a little out there. But this book does look interesting. Is it at the top of my list? No. But it may be a challenge. I am curious.

So those are the books that came to mind. I cannot remember before that. Oh wait! It by Steven King I remember the age I read it (very young) and it was challenging because it was so long and there were so many subplots. I can't believe I remember that.

Come back tomorrow for the next Challeng 8!