The mini-challenge schedule is:

Feb | March | April
May | June | July
Aug | Sept | Oct
Nov | Dec (free months*)

*November/December are free, non-mini-challenge months due to the holiday season.

For the first mini-challenge you must read books within certain themes. Choose three themes and read three books that fit each of the themes during the three month mini-challenge period. If you complete the three themed reads, you will be entered in the book giveaway. A bonus entry will be given to any person who reads a fourth book that fits within the fourth theme. And another bonus entry will be earned if you read a book of King’s short stories.

Examples of themes:

Fantasy/Post-Apocalyptic
i.e. The Stand, any book from the Gunslinger series, Under the Dome, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman (with Peter Straub), Black House (with Peter Straub), 11/22/63

Ghosts/Hauntings
i.e. The Shining, Bag of Bones, Duma Key, It, Insomnia

Creatures: supernatural (werewolves, vampires, demons/devils, zombies, etc.) or other
i.e. Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, Cycle of the Werewolf, The Eyes of the Dragon, Dreamcatcher, Pet Sematary, Cell, Cujo, It, The Tommyknockers

The Mind: psychic, psychological, possession, abuse, etc.
i.e. Misery, The Green Mile, Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder, Carrie, Gerald’s Game, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Desperation, The Regulators

Once you’ve read and reviewed a book for this mini-challenge add your entry on the Feb – Apr Mini-Challenge Review page.

My Reading List for Mini-Challenge #1

‘Salem’s Lot – February 2012 – Creatures
The Eyes of the Dragon – March 2012 – Fantasy
Carrie – April 2012 – The Mind
Bag of Bones – BONUS – Ghosts/Hauntings

Have you read any books by Stephen King? Ever wanted to?

What’s the goal of this challenge?

Read Stephen King’s published works, all of ‘em.

What’s different about this challenge?

It’s perpetual. That means it lasts as long as you take to read all of Stephen King’s books. BUT, there will be mini-challenges throughout the year :)

When does it start?

February 1, 2012

Click here to join the challenge.

For full details and a complete list of Stephen King’s works visit the official website.

NOTE: Re-reads are allowed.

When I signed up on January 23, 2012 I’d already read the following:

‘Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
Firestarter
Cujo
Christine
Pet Sematary
The Talisman
Thinner
It
The Eyes of the Dragon*
Misery
The Dark Half
Four Past Midnight (Collection)
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Nightmares and Dreamscapes (Collection)
Insomnia
On Writing (Memoir / Non-Fiction)
Everything’s Eventual (Collection)
The Green Mile (Read the original serial format, which I own)
Cell**

*My all-time favorite book by Stephen King.

**Notice the rather large gap between The Green Mile and Cell? Yep, from 1996 to 2011 I didn’t read anything new; I just re-read what I owned and loved.

Click here to join the challenge. (A big thanks to Michelle and Kate!)

The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011 was hosted by Michelle/The True Book Addict and ran from November 21st through January 6th.

Unfortunately, I’m still reading one of the books I picked up for this challenge; it’s proving a trickier read than I expected.

I did reach my goal for both the book and movie levels,  Mistletoe and also Fa La La La Films, respectively.

My Book List
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – Read but did not review. It’s seems odd to “review” a story that’s been around as long as this one.
A Vampire Christmas Carol by Sarah Gray – Still reading. [Edited 1/10/12: Read and reviewed.]
All Through the Night by Mary Higgins Clark – Read and reviewed.

My Movie List
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Frosty the Snowman (1969)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Elf (2003)

Thanks, Michelle, for such a fun challenge!

Synopsis

All of Alvirah’s deductive powers and Willy’s world-class common sense are called upon as the two stumble into a Christmas mystery. A woman abandons her newborn at a Manhattan church. Simultaneously, a thief is absconding with a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a star-shaped diamond. To elude police, he grabs the stroller and disappears. Seven years later, the mother returns to the scene and finds Alvirah and Willy helping neighborhood kids prepare for a Christmas pageant at an after-school shelter. Soon the savvy sleuths set out to solve the puzzle of the missing child and chalice — and to unmask scam artists threatening to shut down the shelter. (Source)

What I Liked Most

All Through the Night had a solid beginning and ending; there were questions for which I wanted answers. I’ll admit I even teared up a bit at the end. There was a positive vibe that warmed my heart which, as a Christmas story, it was probably meant to do.

What I Liked Least

During my teens I read several of Higgins Clark’s novels that I borrowed from my mom’s bookshelf. Those Higgins Clark novels were suspenseful, often involving a murder mystery, and usually featured a strong female lead.

All Through the Night lacked suspense and a strong mystery. It was too sugary for my taste. The mystery wasn’t really a mystery. The coincidences seemed way too thin to believe. And the connections Alvirah made in the story would, in the real world, have to be the result of psychic abilities, or some serious obsessing. I had to consciously suspend disbelief whenever Alvirah “solved” something because it was all just so darn easy. Sure, there was mild conflict but I didn’t believe anyone was in real danger; the overall tone felt like everything would work out fine for everyone anyway.

Final Thoughts

All Through the Night is a good selection for anyone, any age, who wants a quick and easy read filled with Christmas spirit. Remember, don’t expect anything thought-provoking or suspenseful, just light reading that’ll leave you with a serious case of the warm ‘n fuzzies.

Visit Mary Higgins Clark’s website for more about her this and other books.

I picked this up to read for the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011.

This year’s to-read list included many classics by authors such as Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, and Oscar Wilde; plus, the “must-reads” for horror writers that I hadn’t read yet, such as Richard Matheson and M.R. James. I also wanted to delve deeper into the works of Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. However, there was modern fiction I’d been dying to read by authors such as John Ajvide Lindqvist and Stieg Larsson.

Well it took most of the year before I realized I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted. Instead I was wasting time – and I detest wasting my time – doing pretty much nothing. I used to read every day for hours in my teens. So, in the last quarter of 2011, I read like I have always wanted to: daily. I didn’t meet the 2010 or the 2011 challenges, during which I read 32 books and 60 books, respectively, but I believe I will read 75 books in 2012.

Fiction: 38 | Non-Fiction: 22 | Total: 60

January 2011

1. By Cunning & Craft by Peter Selgin [About]
2. On Writing Horror (Revised Edition) edited by Mort Castle [About]
3. The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft edited by S.T. Joshi [About]
4. Small World by Tabitha King [About]
5. In the Shadow of the Master edited by Michael Connelly [About]

February 2011

6. On Writing by Stephen King [About]
7. Poe’s Children – The New Horror: An Anthology edited by Peter Straub [About]
8. Fear by L. Ron Hubbard [About]
9. The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard [About]
10. Great Ghost Stories edited by John Grafton [About]
11. Classic Ghost Stories edited by John Grafton [About]

March 2011

12. Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond by Hans Holzer [About]
13. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James [About | Free eBook]
14. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan [About]
15. Let the Right One In (aka Let Me In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist [About] ←
16. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan [About]
17. The Ultimate Unauthorized Stephen King Trivia Challenge by Robert W. Bly [About]

April 2011

18. Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation… by Stephen Thrower [About]
19. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson, Ph.D. [About]
20. The 5 Things We Need to Be Happy by Patricia Lorenz [About]
21. The Everything Body Language Book by Shelly Hagen [About]
22. Let It All Bleed Out edited by Alfred Hitchcock [Front and Back Cover | Contents ]

May 2011

23. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey [About]
24. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan [About]
25. I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore [About]
26. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman [About | My "Review"] ←
27. Bones: A Forensic Detective’s Casebook by Ubelaker and Scammell [About]

June 2011

28. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan [About]
29. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris [About] (paperback)
30. Darkness Creeping by Neal Shusterman [About]
31. Now You See It by Richard Matheson [About] (hardcover)
32. Hunted Past Reason by Richard Matheson [About] (hardcover)

July 2011

33. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan [About]
34. Cracking Creativity by Michael Michalko [About]
35. Container Gardening Through the Year by Malcolm Hillier [About]
36. Container Gardening for Dummies by Bill Marken [About]
37. Window Gardens by Stephen Roberts and Jane Forster [About]
38. I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells [About | My "Review"]
39. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro [About] ←

August 2011

40. The Radleys by Matt Haig [About]
41. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [About | Free eBook]
42. The Unauthorized X-Files Challenge by James Hatfield [About]

September 2011

43. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [About]
44. Debt Free for Life by David Bach [About]
45. The Safety of Objects by A.M. Homes [About]
46. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke [About] (I stopped at page 82.)

October 2011

46. The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard [About]
47. The Power of Focus by Les Hewitt [About]
48. Getting Things Done by David Allen [About | My "Review"]
49. Silent Children by Ramsey Campbell [About]
50. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston [About]

November 2011

51. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris [About]
52. The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber [About]

December 2011

53. Tell No One by Harlan Coben [About]
54. The Road by Cormac McCarthy [About]
55. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens [About | Free eBook]
56. Digging into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Star [About | My "Review"]
57. The Long Dark Night by Joseph Hayes [Front and Back Cover | My "Review"]
58. All Through The Night by Mary Higgins Clark [About | My "Review" (Coming Soon)]
59. Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto [About]
60. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway [About]

Did you read as much as you wanted in 2011?

So I researched and compiled a list of print books. (Because you know how I feel about eBooks.) And, to be honest, at $75 USD Digging into WordPress wasn’t my first choice. But then some unexpected money arrived, yay!

Anywho, the book’s format is near perfect: spiral-bound, color-coded, and listed in a logical “quick reference” style. I did notice, from about chapter seven on, there were typos and missing words (oopsy!) Nitpicking aside, I’m quite pleased and foresee using this as a reference book for a long time.

Its impressive 420 pages are crammed full of descriptions, explanations, tips, tricks, demos, and code snippets. And when I say crammed, I mean it; some pages were even a little difficult to read because there was SO much on one page. Not complaining though. I’d rather have too much info than not enough :)

What I’ll use immediately (well not RIGHT this minute but in the coming months):

1. Custom taxonomies. Wow! I was totally oblivious to the power these give WP-powered sites. My geeky self was almost as excited about taxonomies as when I first learned about post formats.

2. Better organization. I haven’t ever been satisfied with my categories and tags: they’ve always seemed too much or too little. But thanks to my new found knowledge (see #1), I think my the layout will be just what I intended to do from the get-go.

3. Stronger permalinks. I already use pretty permalinks but the way I have them set up is way too nested (aka long). So I’m gonna change these up once my child theme is finished and my sites re-designed.

4. Security optimization. There are definitely a few doors that need closed.

5. Site optimization. Okay, so I did already start on this one – I deleted all deactivated plugins that I’d kept “just in case” – and I plan to make a few other tweaks as well.

Biggest suggestion:

It would be fantabulous if the authors would create and include an index with future versions. A way to quickly find the page with something that was referenced only in the sidebars, for instance.

Note: Digging into WordPress is geared more towards the intermediate user / developer. Newbies’ heads might pop off once they’re past the beginner info in the first few chapters. And advanced developers would find the repetition (and the sections of duplicate content) useless. But for those who are familiar with the basics of HTML, PHP and CSS, you’ll see the big picture enough to know what you can do, what you might want to do, and then how to go about doing it.

WEB RESOURCES:

Digging into WordPress (companion site)
CSS Tricks
Perishable Press

The details for this challenge are as follows:

• Challenge will run from Monday, November 21, 2011 through Friday, January 6, 2011.
• Cross over with other challenges is totally permitted AND encouraged!
• These must be Christmas novels, books about Christmas lore, a book of Christmas short stories or poems, books about Christmas crafts, and for the first time…a children’s Christmas books level!
• Visit THIS POST for a list of new Christmas books for 2011.
• The most important rule? HAVE FUN!

Click here to sign up for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011.

Levels:

• Candy Cane – Read 1 book
• Mistletoe – Read 2-4 books
• Christmas Tree – Read 5 or 6 books (This is the fanatic level…LOL!)

Additional levels:

• Fa La La La Films: Watch a bunch or a few Christmas movies…it’s up to you.
• Visions of Sugar Plums: Read books with your kids and share what you read.

*The additional levels are optional; you must still complete one of the main reading levels.

I’m shooting for Mistletoe and also Fa La La La Films.

My Book List
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Vampire Christmas Carol by Sarah Gray

My Movie List
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Frosty the Snowman (1969)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Elf (2003)

And probably all the other Christmas movies in my DVD library :D Every year we watch at least one a day starting on December 1st.

Click here to sign up for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge 2011.

Here are a few excerpts on procrastination:

It’s really the smartest people who have the highest number of undecided things in their lives and on their lists. Why is that? Think of how our bodies respond to the images we hold in our minds. It appears that the nervous system can’t tell the different between a well-imagined thought and reality (page 240).

Because their sensitivity gives them the capability of producing in their minds lurid nightmare scenarios about what might be involved in doing the project, and all the negative consequences that might occur if it weren’t done perfectly! They just freak out in an instant and quit (page 241)!

There is another solution: intelligently dumbing down your brain by figuring out the next action. You’ll invariably feel a relieving of pressure about anything you have a commitment to change or do, when you decide on the very next physical action required to move it forward. Nothing, essentially, will change in the world. But shifting your focus to something that your mind perceives as a doable, completable task will create a real increase in positive energy, direction, and motivation (page 242).

Bingo! For the past month I made a special effort to listen in on my thoughts before starting a task, during that task and after the task was finished (or put off). It was AMAZING how many times I caught my mind spinning off into what-if and but I’d need to scenarios. The scariest part? 99% of those scenarios were pure fiction.

My brain was telling me things that simply were not true; yet, physically I believed them enough to put off tasks. Mind control is freaky enough without it being your own mind that’s doing the controlling. For example, I’d put off completing a tax enrollment form because my brain told me it would take way too long to finish and that it would be way too difficult. Reality? It took me 15 minutes to complete, sign and mail the form, and on a scale of one to ten, one being the easiest task in the world and ten being the hardest, the form was about a two!

The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn’t come from having too much to do; it’s the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself. (page 227)

The biggest breakthrough was definitely Allen’s “What’s the next action?” technique. So today, right after I schedule this post, I’m starting my mind-sweep. When my mind-sweep is finished, I will write down the next physical action required to move forward on each task or project. And then I will focus only on that action step until it’s completed.

For more information about Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity you can visit David Allen’s website.

What I Liked Most

The exploration of man’s duality: good and evil living within the same being and the choice whether man indulges the “wrong” urges or denies them for the “right” ones. Perhaps this inner struggle is why people are so smitten with characters like Dexter Morgan and Hannibal Lecter, who are, by most definitions, “bad” people. Yet we can’t get enough of them or their stories. Why? We always hope, against all odds, the bad person can change – that they can be redeemed – and the “good” person we know is in there, will prevail. Plus, thanks to their writers, they’re likeable.

And John Wayne Cleaver is likeable with his sharp humor, witty observations and devotion to making the “good” choice.

What I Liked Least

First know, I’ve read this book twice because the below threw me for such a loop last year that I had to give the story another chance. Now I’m going to do for you, those who haven’t already read the book, what the author should’ve done:

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

Yes, that’s right: The author spoiled his own surprise. And a really good one, I might add. For three chapters Wells builds mystery and suspense around the murders and the killer. But then, while John examines a victim’s body, Wells writes,

While we waited, I studied the slashes in the body’s abdomen. They were certainly animalistic, and one area on its left side had what looked like a claw mark — four ragged slits, about an inch apart, that extended nearly a foot toward the belly. This was the work of the demon, of course, though we still didn’t know that at the time. How could we? Back then, none of us even suspected that demons were real. I placed my own hand over the marks and guessed that whoever made them had a hand much bigger than mine. (Chapter 3, Page 52)

Uh, what?!

Not the best reveal ever and it seems to come from an omniscient source because in the next sentence John is guessing about the killer again. I was jolted out of the story by those three sentences; however, I kept reading. But Wells continued the story as if the above never happened. So, four chapters later on page 103, there was only mild surprise when, in what I assume was supposed to be the big TA-DA, the killer’s identity is revealed. It just wasn’t as exciting as it could’ve been had the above passage been cut.

Final Thoughts

Overall, as a debut novel in young adult literature, I Am Not a Serial Killer offers readers something different and entertaining. I have a soft spot when it comes to books for teens, especially in the horror genre, and I feel there’s potential with Dan Wells. He’s certainly not shy about splashes of gore here and there. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. But please, no more spoilers!

Learn more about Dan Wells and his books at http://www.fearfulsymmetry.net/