Zozette's Challenge - reading my books

As I mentioned on my first thread my title of my 14 categories are Tasmanian placenames. I hope to post the reasons of the placenames, photos/pictures etc in posts thoughout this thread.

My categories are

1) Murdering Gully Road - murder mysteries
- Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil by Donald Thomas
- Still Life with Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preson and Lincoln Child
- Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
- Cemetary Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- The Titanic Murders by Max Allan Collins
- Hidden Moon by James Church
- Fever Dream by Douglad Preston and Lincoln Child
- Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye
- White Fire by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
2) Beginners Bay - first in a series
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson
- The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley
- The Potato Factory by Bryce Courtenay
3) Mother-in-law Leap - new genres for me (or genres I rarely read)
- Orphans by Lyle Kessler
- The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston
4) The Land of Little Sticks - Kindle singles or books less than 100 pages in length
- The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman
- Amarcord by Zoran Zivkovic
- The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
5) Valley of the Giants - books more than 600 pages in length
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- The Potato Factory by Bryce Courtenay
- Tommo and Hawk by Bryce Courtenay
6) Twelvetrees Range - books about geology or with a geologist as a main character
- The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- The Ghost Rock Cafe by Chinle Miller
- At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
-The Stones Cry Out by Hikaru Okuizumi
7) Forgotten Lake - books selected from Lost Classics
- The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
- Lost Horizon by James Hilton
8) Eggs and Bacon Bay - books about food
- The Untold History of the Potato by John Reader
- What Einstein Told His Cook by Robert L. Wolke
- Apple: A Global History by Erika Janik
- Pudding: A Global History by Jeri Quinzio
9) Noah’s Waterhole - books about animals
- Zoo Quest for Dragon by David Attenborough
- Bats Sing, Mice Giggle by Karen Shanor
- The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart
- A Feathered River Across the Sky by Joel Greenberg
10) Dismal Swamp - Horror Stories
- The Colony by F. G. Cottam
- Spiders by Richard Lewis
- Blight by Mark Sonders
- The Last Stair into Darkness by Cliff Barlow
11) Lost World Plateau - books with "Lost World' in their title
- The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Living Shore :Rediscovery Of a Lost World by Rowan Jacobsen
- Lost World: a Retelling by Brent Saltzman
12) Cat and Fiddle Arcade - books about cats or violins or nursery rhymes
- A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen
- Killer Tunes (A Bailey MacIntyre Celtic Fiddle Mystery) by Karen
Cunningham
- The World According to Bob by James Bowen
- The Cat, The Quilt and the Corpse by Leann Sweeney
13) Arthur's Circus - books about circuses
- The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough
- Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean N Jenson
- The Great Circus Train Wreck of 1918 by Richard M Lytle
14) Nowhere Else - books that don't belong in any of the above categories
- Thunderhead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Dance of Death by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado.
- Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Virus by Graham Watkins
- Steps Through the Mist by Zoran Zivkovic
- Cold Vengence by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Two Graves by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.
- We Have Always Live in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- Ned Kelly: A Short Life by Ian Jones.



I failed my 2013 Challenge so I am making this one easier for myself. I plan to read a minimum of 4 books in a category. If a book can be placed into two categories it will be in both.

The first book I have read this year belongs in my Mother-in-Laws Leap category (new genres). The picture is from More Ripper Tassie Place Names By Wayne Smith



The book concerned is Orphans by Lyle Kessler. It is a play.

I love the movie based on this play and I as glad to see that the movie (which starts Albert Finney, Matthew Modine and Kevin Anderson) was quite true to the play. The story is about two brothers, Treat and Philip, who were orphaned while still children. Treat, a petty thief, has raised Philip since their mother's death. He has convinced Philip that Philip is allergic to the outside world and Philip is too frightened to leave the house. Into their lives come Harold, a gangster on the run. Harold was raised in an orphanage and he takes a fatherly interest in the young men. 4.5/5.

I am looking forward to see how many books you find with "Lost World" in the title! The place names around me are most commonly deal with wine or have become associated with the wine industry. I love the quirky names!

Love your categories.

mamzel - I have found about 10 books that interest me which have 'Lost World' in their title. I guess I will have to include The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle in my challenge. I have bought one beautiful "Lost World" book that fits into the Travel genre. I will probably choose another "Lost World" book that is a biography and I have no idea yet how to narrow my list down to select the 4th book.

Such great place-names!

Added Bleak House to my Valley of the Giants category. My version of the book was 788 pages. Though I enjoyed it, I know I will never re-read it.



The Styx Valley, also known as the Valley of the Giants, is home to the tallest hardwood trees in the world, they are Swamp Gums (Eucalyptus regnans) , also known as Mountain Ash. The tallest known Swamp Gum is The Centurion which is 99.6 metres (326 feet) tall. The only species of taller tree are the Redwood and Douglas Fir which both are softwoods.

I feel the same way about BH - good but will probably never consider rereading it.

I live very near to the giant redwoods and have also seen the giant sequoias in the Sierras. We are lucky to still have them here in California (much to the dismay of the logging companies). They are impressive to the max! When my dad visited a while ago (he was raised in New Jersey) his one request was to see big trees. He got to some big ones!

added Thunderhead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Nowhere Else list. This is the fourth book by these authors I have read (or listen to) since I discovered them last month. 4/5



Nowhere Else is a small hamlet located in North Central Tasmania. Its main claim to fame is that this roadsign is the one most often stolen in Tasmania.

Added Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil by Donald Thomas to this category.

I found this collections of 5 stories dull and tedious. I only mildly enjoyed one of the stories (The King's Evil).

The first story was just a retelling of an Oscar Wilde short story (Arthur's Savile Crime) with Holmes and Watson added. The Wilde story was much better. Overall 2.5/5 for this book.

Murdering Gully Road is located at Table Cape, NW Tasmania. It got it name from the murder of Samuel Oakes in 1858. Oakes failed to return home one evening and the next morning his wife went looking for him. She found his hat on the road and neighbours started a search for him. His body was found later that day. He had been shot, beaten and an attempt was made to burn the body. A man by the name of Bannon was arrest, tried but acquitted so the murder remained unsolved.

A few years ago a group of people who lived along the road tried to get the name changed to "Gully Road" saying they found the name "Murdering Gully Road" embarrassing. However other householders announced that they loved the name and no change was made.

What! They didn't know the name of the road when they moved there? (:

They had to know but it if the newspaper reporter ever asked that question it wasn't mentioned in the article about their objections to the name. Myself, I think it would be amusing to live in a street with such an interesting name.

I also love that name and would enjoy living on a street with such an original name. My street is just a number and I hate that!

What an unusual road name!

I love that road name too :-) names which grow up from the area just add a bit of local connectivity instead of blandness.

"Murdering Gully Road" - what a great street name!

added The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston to my Mother-in-Laws Leap category (genres I rarely read - graphic novel).

I bought this book off a friend. She was disappointed in it and regretted wasting her money so I took it off her hands.

The author created a story around ephemera she had collected. The story is rather mundane but I found the pictures interesting.

Despite classifying this book as a graphic novel, I still plan to read the first Sandman lgraphic novel ater in the year.

added Still Life with Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Murdering Gully category.

Special Agent Pendergast investigate some very bizarre murders in a small Kansas town. 4/5.

->13 DeltaQueen50:
Me too. I live on 2nd Street - let's guess how many thousands of those there are in the US...

I live on 2nd Street too!

->19 VivienneR:
Great place, isn't it! :)

Yup! The neighbours are very friendly!

added Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood to my Beginners Bay category.

Beginners Bay is part of Penstock Lagoon. This laggon is located on the Central Plateau and it was constructed in 1916, as water storage and intake for the now decommissioned Waddamana power station. It is a popular fly-fishing spot.

added Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Murdering Gully Road category. A series of bizarre killings point to the Devil being the culprit or is the killer more earthly?

added Dance of Death by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This continues the story that began with Brimstone. Not a mystery as the murderer is revealed early in the story but how to prove it or catch the killer?

added A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen to my Cat and the Fiddle category. It is the true story of how a drug addict was able to overcome his addiction after an injured stray cat came into his life.



The Cat and Fiddle Arcade is Hobart's main shopping centre. It takes its name from the Cat and Fiddle Hotel that used to stand where the arcade it today. The clock dates from 1962 and you can see it in action at the follwing link

Cat and Fiddle Clock

added

Colony by F.G. Cottam
Spiders by Richard Lewis

to my Dismal Swamp (Horror) category

I didn't like Colony very much. It had too many main characters and the main research team didn't get to the island until about 2/3 through the book.

Spiders was a typical 'creature horror' novel from the late 1970s. Trashy but fun.



Despite its name the Dismal Swamp is quite a beautiful place. It is the only blackwood sinkhole in the world.

Here is a video of the method one uses to get down into Dismal Swamp.

added Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado to my Nowhere Else category. I listened to the abridged audio version some of which was narrated by Parrado.

added The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Nowhere Else category. Third and final book in the Diogenes trilogy (within the Pendergast series).

I so want to do the Dismal Swamp Ride!

That looks like a very fun way to get into Dismal Swamp!

Added American Gods to my Land of the Giants category. I really enjoyed this book, so far I have enjoyed every Neil Gaiman book I have read.

added Killer Tunes (A Bailey MacIntyre Celtic Fiddle Mystery) by Karen Cunningham to my Cat and Fiddle category. This book doesn't have a touchstone and is only available as a Kindle book.

A cozy mystery about a fiddle-playing busdriver who investigates a murder aided by a ghost. 3/5.

Added The Tiny Wife to my Land of Little Sticks category as this delightful, adult fairytale was only 88 pages. 4/5.

The Land of Little Sticks is an area of light alpine scrub on Ben Lomond. According to the entry for it in More Ripper Tassie Place Names "many mountain plateaux in Tasmania are littered with fantastically distorted bushes that have died through bushfire or drought and their ghostly white sticks remain. They are eagerly sought for flower arrangements."

Added Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdsdottir to my Murdering Gully Road category. A luxury yacht arrives in Iceland with no-one aboard. What has become of the seven people who were on the yacht when it set sail from Portugal? 4.5/5

Added The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to the same category. Is a serial killer at large on board a luxury liner which has more than 4000 passengers and crew aboard it. 4.5/5

Added 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson to my Beginners Bay category. The story remindered me of the Narnia stories (but with more worlds to visit).

The Silence of the Sea sounds really interesting! I have Yrsa's book Last Rituals already on the to-read list.

Added Blight by Mark Sonders to my horror category. Killer moths attack a town. Typical 1970s creature horror stories. Not as good as Spiders.

Added The world According to Bob by James Bowen. Further adventures of a recovering drug addict and his friendship with his cat.

# 33 - I think Silence of the Sea is my favourite book by Yrsa so far.

>34 Zozette: Yikes! Blight is one book I will not be reading. Those creatures are my worst nightmare. Spiders are ok.

Dismal Swamp looks beautiful.

>35 Zozette:
That is good to hear! I've made it as far as the first three books and am looking forward to continuing.

I'm just finding your challenge thread and absolutely love your category names! You've read some interesting books, too.

Glad to have you drop in, tymfos.

Added The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Twelvetrees Range category because the main character in the novel was a planetary geologist.



Twelvetrees Range was named after William Harper Twelvetrees , an eminent English-born pioneering Tasmanian geologist.

When I was cataloguing for a Tasmanian government geology library I catalogued about 40 to 50 of Twelvetree's field notebooks. Unfortunately most of his notebooks are next to worthless as he wrote in a strange code that no-one has been able to decipher.

On the bright side I also came across a diary by a field asistant who was employed by Twelvetrees. The diary was full of complaints about the geologists and was a rather amusing read and there were many interesting details of day to day life in a remote geology field-camp.

Added Cemetary Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child to my Murdering Gully category. I am becoming addicted to the Preston/Lincoln books. I have still have several more to read and as well as the books that they wrote separately.

Added The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley to my Beginner's Bay category. I got enjoyed this children's novel and will probably read the next in the series if I get time.

Added Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi to my Nowhere Else category. I plan to read more of Bacigalupi's books.

I think I've read all that Bacigalupi has published (and I love saying his name). The most recent was an audio version of the book he wrote for middle schoolers, Zombie Baseball Beatdown. He kept with his favorite theme of corporations messing with the food supply but made it fun for the younger group. The Windup Girl was the first book I read by him. I rarely reread books but did in this case to get the different factions straight.
Enjoy!

How unfortunate that Twelvetrees wrote in an indecipherable code! Those would be some interesting notebooks.

I have added 15 more books, mainly to my Murder Mystery and Nowhere Else categories. Because I am finding typing painful at the moment I will leave comments about these titles later.

My challenge is in a bit of a mess. I have been suffering from a frozen shoulder which has made even holding a book difficult. As a result I have been been mainly listening to audiobooks but that means far less books to choose from especially in some categories. Since I last posted in May I have fnished about 30 more books.

Because typing is still painful I will only list a handful of these books today

Added to my Lost World category

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, narrated by James Adams 3.5/5

Added to my Noah's Waterhole category

Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals’ Inner Lives by Karen Shanor and Jagmeet Janwal, narrated by Jeff Harvey. this was an interesting book but I think I would have preferred a printed version. 3.5/5

A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg. narrated by Andy Caploe. This was an excellent and very well research book and a learnt a lot about passenger pigeons, and American history, while reading it. I would have given it 5/5 except I think the graphic descriptions of the killing of the pigeons where far too many. I appreciate that we need to know about the cruelty but in this case the description went on and on and on. 4/5.

I will also list a couple more books I really enjoyed that fit into the Nowhere Else category

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, narrated by Bernadette Dunn. A really amazing story that is taken to an even higher level by fantastic narration. 5/5.

Ned Kelly: A Short Life by Ian Jones. Narrated by Paul English. Biography of the Australain bushranger (outlaw) who is probably the most famous Australian of all time. I have read several books, both fiction and non-fiction, about Kelly in the past and this the best researched one I have come across. It contained agreta deal of info on Ned and his family that I hadn't come across before especially details concerning his trial. I also think it is a reasonably even-handed account of Kelly's life. After listening to it I bought the paperback version. 5/5.

Sorry to hear about your shoulder! I hope it heals soon. That would be very frustrating to have it interfere with book holding.

Unfortunately a frozen shoulder usually lasts for many months. Mine started in around December and I probably will not fully recover until some time next year. I had the same condition in my left shoulder 8 years ago and that took around 18 months to heal. Typing/holding a book started to become difficult about three months ago when the pain started to radiate down my arm into my fingers. It is slightly easier to type on an ipad rather than a laptop.

i have actually come to really enjoy audiobooks and am getting through books faster than if I was reading them in print form. I am also getting far less headaches than I used to.

So sorry to read about your shoulder, it sounds painful and most inconvenient. I have a tendancy to get arthritic flareups in my left shoulder and I know how impossible it is to get anything done when that happens. Audio books can sometimes be an absolute lifesaver!

A frozen shoulder must make a lot of routine chores more difficult to manage so I sympathize with your plight while it mends!

That frozen shoulder sounds quite bothersome, both from a pain and convenience angle. I'm glad you have found audiobooks doable.

I just realised I have two books to add to my Land of Little Sticks category (books less than 100 pages).

Amarcord by Zoran Zivkovic. 10 short stories with "memory' as a theme. 4/5.

The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle which reunites the characters from The Lost World as they wait in Professor Challenger's house while a cloud of poison gas envelopes the world. 3/5.

Very sorry to hear about your shoulder.

Sorry to hear about the shoulder - I understand it's very painful and frustrating to deal with. :( Is reading on the iPad an option? My local library has lots of ebooks available now.

Added The Untold History of the Potato (alternative title - Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent) by John Reader to my Eggs and Bacon Bay (Food) category. Excellent book. 4.5/5.

Added The Epic of Gilgamesh to my Land of Little Sticks category. The audio version I listened to was adapted by Seabastian Lockwood and also narrated by him. The narration was awful but the story itself was good. 3/5 but with good narration would have been higher.

I would like to recommend What the Birds See (audio and Australian title - Of a Boy) by Sonya Hartnett. It is easy to read and it is a sad and haunting story which tells the story of a lonely and scared little boy whose mother can't care for him, whose father doesn't want him and who has been left with a grandmother who feels that she no longer has the energy to cope with a young child, even one who is as well behaved as he is. The audio book is wonderfulyl narrated by Humphrey Bower. 4.5/5.

There has been a bit of an improvement to my shoulder in the last few days. I hope this means I am moving from the very painful freezing stage to the less painful frozen stage. In a week or two I hope to be back to comfortably holding books.

Best wishes for your recovery!

Added The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough to my Arthur's Circus Category.

It is a fictional autobiography of Mabel Stark, who was a famous lion tamer in the Ringling Circus and who later worked with tigers at Jungle Land. The novel is funny, and sometimes sad, with quite an amount of swearing and sex. I listen to the audio version that was wonderfully narrated by Betty Bobbitt. 4/5.



Arthur's Circus is a circular street, with quaint little cottages on the outer side of the road and a circular park in the middle. It is located in Battery Point (a historically important suburb of Hobart). The cottages were built in the 1800s to house the officers of the military garrison.

Also added "The Last Stair into Darkness" by cliff Barlow to my Dismal Swamp (Horror) category. Doesn't seem to be a touchstone. Rather ordinary collection of short horror stories. 2.5/5.

Also added The Ghost Rock Cafe by Chinle Miller to my Twelvetrees Range (geology) category. Though the main character is Sheriff BudShumway who is investigating a murder, a class of geology students and their professor play a promi nent part in the story. I enjoyed this novel and plan to read more in the series.

I am now 19 books short of completing this challenge i.e. reading at least 4 books in each category.

Sorry to see that the recovery has been slow but good news that you only have 19 books left to complete your challenge!

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark looks like a lot of fun - on the audio wishlist it goes! :)

Added The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart to my Noah's Ark category. I found earthworms to be as interesting as potatoes I gave this book the same rating as "The Untold History of the Potato" - 4.5/5. I didn't re;aise how much I didn't know about worms.

Added The Third Policeman to my Forgotten Lake (Lost Classics) list. It is a strange story written by Irish author Brian O'Nolan under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. The novel was written between 1939 and 1940 and when he couldn't find a publisher the author claimed to have lost the manuscript and as a result it wasn't published until after his death in 1966. 4/5.

Forgotten Lake is a small mountain lake located in Lake St Clair National Park. I do not know why it got its name. Nearby is Shadow Lake. I am not sure why they were given these names. We also have a Lake Nameless in Tasmania.

I love Flann O'Brien's writing and even wrote my thesis on The Third Policeman.

I don't think I will ever be able to see a bicycle again without thinking of "The Third Policeman".

The audiobook narrated by Jim Norton was superb. The voices of Mathers and the policemen were wonderful. I think I might buy the paperback version because I think the footnotes might be better to read in printed form.

Yes, De Selby's footnotes are worth a proper read!

added - The Living Shore :Rediscovery of a Lost World by Rowan Jacobsen to my Lost World category. This is about a marine scientist who finds a healthy population of Olympias oysters on an isolated beach on Vancouver Island. These oysters are in a considerable decline elsewhere so why are they doing do well at this place? I would have appreciate to learn a bit more about the actual creatures than one does in this book. 3/5.

added - At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft to my geology category. the main character is a geologist. This is the first work by Lovecraft I have read. I thought it was rather boring despite being only a novella but I might give Lovecraft short a go at some later date. 3/5.

added What Einstein Told His Cook by Robert L. Wolke to my Eggs and Bacon Bay (Food) category. I was surprised how much I learnt reading this book. However I found listening to it a bit tedious and I think I should have read the paperback version. 3/5.

added Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean N Jenson to my circus category. Biography of renowned circus performer Liillian Leitzel who was probably the most famous woman in the world in her day. Also covers the life her mother Nellie Pellikan, and of Lillians's third husband trapeze artist Alfredo Codona (she was the second of his three wives). Seems to be well researched. 4/5.

13 more books and my challenge will be complete.

All up I have read or listened to 90 books this year but not all of them are lsited in this thread.

and my paperback copy of The Third Policeman has arrived and is in my handbag for me to read while waiting for the bus or when I am in my doctor's waiting room.

added The Stones Cry Out by Hikaru Okuizumi to my Twelvetrees (geology) category. It is a short, beautiful and sad novel about a Japanese soldier who encounters a fellow soldier dying in a cave during World War 2. The dying soldier tells him about rocks and as a result the soldier becomes an avid amateur geologist after the war and the book tell about how his passion affect his family. 4/5.

added Apple: A Global History by Erika Janik to my Eggs and Bacon Bay (food) category. It is a short book that gives a basic coverage to the history, uses, folk-lore of the apple. I was pleased to see it mentioned my home state of Tasmania. Tamania used to be called "The Apple Isle". This was a Reaktion book (Edible series). The series contains quite a few different food/drinks/spices etc. 3.5/5

11 books to go.

>65 Zozette: The Stones Cry Out, I like book with amateur naturalist, add to that Japan and you have an hit :)