Tea & Books Reading Challenge
Ah, heck ANOTHER challenge. Oh who cares! The Tea and Books challenge is hosted by Birgit at The Book Garden.
The challenge is to read bricks – those books of 700+ pages that you can wrap yourself up in with a cuppa tea. Now I love tea. I love collecting mugs.
I drink good old, normal tea – none of that fruity stuff which frankly doesn’t count as tea. Hey, I’m a Brit – when I say tea, I just mean tea. Strong, brown, lots of milk and 2 sugars please.
I have some bricks lined up for 2012 anyway so I figured hey, another challenge… so what?
Here are the categories:
2 Books – Chamomile Lover
4 Books – Berry Tea Devotee
6 Books – Earl Grey Aficionado
8 or more Books – Sencha Connoisseur
These books I know I’ll be reading in 2012 (The page numbers I’m judging mostly from goodreads) I will verify these later when I can lay my hands on the actual copies I own:
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Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens – about 800 pages.
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The Swarm by Frank Schätzing – about 800 pages
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1Q84 (US edition) by Haruki Murakami – 900 pages.
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Otherland #2 by Tad Williams – 700 pages
So that’s already four books I will be doing. (Hopefully, anyway). So I’m going to really challenge myself – I’m going to go for the Sencha Connisseur and read 8 big fat fatties.
I don’t know which ones will make up my other four yet – I’ll just leave that to the fates. I know I have quite a few clogging up my book case and I’ve been thinking of concentrating more on page numbers in the following year rather then number of books.
Ahh… I cannot wait to settle down with a nice cuppa tea with a good book. I just wish the weather could be colder right now to really enjoy the effects.
This sounds like an interesting challenge. I’ll be looking forward to seeing your reviews!
Thanks Jo… I can’t wait to get into some bricks again. I feel like I’ve avoided them this year.
Welcome to the Tea & Books Reading Challenge! And yay, you’re the first to go for the Sencha Connoisseur
! Even lil ol’ me settled “only” for Early Grey Aficionado, so I raise my glass … uhm, my tea cup, to you and those heavy tomes on your book shelves.
BTW I might just read “The Swarm” too. I have two books by Schätzing to be read (both in German Original) and with the challenge chances are they might make it on my list of bricks (love that word for fat books, ha) that I will tackle.
Oh, good to hear you might be reading The Swarm or any of Schätzing’s other books it will definitely be interesting to read your reviews as I haven’t really met anyone (online or off) who has read one of his books. I haven’t either, for that matter – but this book’s been gathering dust on my shelf for TOO long.
How long have I had a WordPress blog? About a year now and I’ve only just figured out that I can reply to people’s comments individually. Or remembered that I can anyway. Someone smack me…
This is the perfect winter challenge! Happy reading!
I’m trying to avoid signing up for too much next year, but this is tempting. There are so many big books – classics especially – that I keep pushing to one side that I need the push to pick up.
Though, despite being a Brit, I hate traditional teas and only drink the fruity stuff.
Well, someone always has to be different.
I’m sort of avoiding brick-ish classics for some reason, apart from Our Mutual Friend. War and Peace which I see on a couple of lists scares me.
I might choose a Dostoevsky perhaps, or a Dumas. I have The Last Cavelier which is just horribly long.
WOW – Fiona, that’s an amazing list! And you’re in for eight – I’ll be cheering for you!!
Thanks – I’ll be needing a lot of cheering and a heck of a lot of tea.
I love big fat books but I’m already at my limit for challenges! It’s tempting though…
I’ve avoided fat books for most of this year… which is a shame. I’ve read a couple of fatties but seem to have avoided them otherwise.
I have joined this challenge as well and Murakami’s book is on my list, too. The other one, since I can only go for “chamomile lover” is Pamuk’s The museum of Innocence. It’s going to be my first of Pamuk’s, I hope this Nobel Prize winner won’t disappoint me
He wrote Fight Club didn’t he? Maybe I’m thinking of the wrong author – I didn’t think the story of that was brilliant but I’d like to try another of his. I can’t rememebr the title of it now, but it isn’t a brickish book.
That is Palahniuk
When I heard about Pamuk, I confused them too 
Ooooh. Well then I better check him out then seeing as all this time I’ve been thinking they’re one and the same. Thanks for clearing up that mistake of mine.
Count me in! I’ll probably join at the 2-book level.