Looking back on September (Sunday Salon October 4th 2009)

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, where they blog about bookish things of the past week, visit each others weblogs, oh — and read ;)

Let’s start this Salon post with a confession: I have been a bad grrl and bought 3 more books for myself!

• I Am a Cat (Natsume Soseki)
• The Old Capital (Yasunari Kawabata)
• The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa)

I’ve got a great excuse though: I joined the new online Japanese Literature Book Group and Read-along at In Spring It Is The Dawn — and these are the first books on the agenda. I am really looking forward to it!

Another fun thing to do over there is this months Hello Japan! mini mission:

Read or watch something scary, spooky, or suspenseful, and Japanese of course!

Since I have enough to read already I decided to rent a movie that has been on my wishlist for a long time now: Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soko kara), by Hideo Nakata. You might have heard of the American remake with Jodie Foster, but I prefered to see the original. I’ll tell you why in my upcoming review post! It was a nice Friday night activity to surprise Mr Gnoe with, especially with the stormy autumn weather that has set in :)

But back to bookish things. For the last three months of 2009 I am also participating in the Set It Yourself Challenge (SIY) #10. Just to keep the pressure on my challenges: I have listed all 5 books I need to read before the end of this year:

• The Chosen (Chaim Potok)
• The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
• The Pillowbook (Sei Shonagon)
• The Sea, the Sea (Iris Murdoch)
• The Old Capital (Yasunari Kawabata)

I have joined this Bookcrossing challenge before in 2008 and 2009; succeeding twice, failing once…

Speaking of Bookcrossing: I made a first attempt at the Bookcrossing monthly readathon. But instead of 24 I read for 15 hours and 8 in the last week of September. So technically I failed but I am actually quite proud of the result because it was an awfully busy week. You can read about my thoughts concerning the readathon in Friday’s post. Now I am really looking forward to the autumnal 24 hour read-a-thon of October 24th! I am already making a list of books and snacks to lock myself in with :)

Partly thanks to the readathon I finished more books in September than I usually read in a month:

• Vlinder in de wind (Butterfly in the Wind) by Rei Kimura (reviewed)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (review pending), #4 on the list of Banned and Challenged Classics
• Het pauperparadijs (Pauper Paradise) by Suzanna Jansen (no review planned)
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (review pending)

Current book: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Wednesday’s update post will tell you why I picked this book. I am ‘buddy reading’ with two Boekgrrls: MaaikeB and Manon, so one of these days I should mail them my thoughts so far!

Another exciting thing going on this week is BAFAB! Buy A Friend A Book. One of my favourite reads of the past years is on its way to a long time friend that is on a busy schedule at the moment. I’ll give the book a chance to arrive for a few days longer, so I can’t say more! ;)
Do you BAFAB?

Challenges / Bookgroups etc.

Progress update on my challenges that I have not yet mentioned above:

• Japanese Challenge (Aug 2009-Mar 2010): read and reviewed 1/1
  (✔ finished, but intent on reading more)
• Classics Challenge (2009, entree level): read 3/6, reviewed 0/6
• What’s In A Name Challenge (2009): read 6/6, reviewed 3/6
• Personal 2008-2009 Challenge: read 8/12
• SIY Challenge #10 (Oct-Dec 2009): read 0/5

Current Bookgroup reads:

• Boekgrrls September book: Away, by Amy Bloom (read and reviewed in Dutch on the mailing list)
• Boekgrrls October book: Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates (read, to be reviewed)
• Japanese Literature Book Group for November 30th: The Old Capital, by Yasunari Kawabata (TBR)
• Japanese Literature Read-along for November 15th: I Am A Cat (part I), by Natsume Soseki (TBR)

That’s it for now. I need to get up my review of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird a.s.a.p. so that I can send this Bookcrossing book along to the next reader. Better get on with it!