Starting September 22, and ending on December 21, I'm holding my seasonal reading challenge for everybody interested in joining. The first one to complete a Level 2 challenge gets a smooch! (Unless, of course, it's me!) I listed the rules in my Spring and Summer Book Challenges, so if you are new to the game or your memory needs refreshing (it happens to all of us!), please take a look at my previous challenges. Thank you for joining us!
To sum the rules up quickly and briefly, a Level 1 challenge is four books, a Level 2 challenge is six books, they must fit into the categories provided, and the first to complete each level wins! Also, no books under 150 pages are allowed. When you finish the challenge, just post here to let everybody know, and please feel free to discuss with us your opinions of the books you read for this challenge throughout the season. And if you ever need any help choosing books or understanding the rules, or if you have any ideas you'd like to share for future categories, feel free to contact me.
Hope you have fun! Happy reading! :-D

The categories:
1. Read a book whose author has a Biblical name. (Aaron, Abraham, Adam, Alexander, Bartholomew, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, David, Deborah, Dinah, Ethan, Eve, Felix, Isaac, Jacob, James, Jeremiah, Jesse, Jethro, Joel, John, Jose, Joseph, Joshua, Julius, Leah, Luke, Marcus, Mark, Martha, Mary, Matthew, Michael, Moses, Nathan, Nicolas, Noah, Paul, Peter, Philip, Phinehas, Rachel, Reba, Rebekah, Reuben, Samuel, Sarah, Saul, Seth, etc.)
2. Read a book with the first letter of the title being "C".
3. Re-read a book you first read as a teen.
4. Read a book with a color in the title. (The leaves are changing colors now, so I thought this suggestion by Honibabi was quite fitting.)
5. Read a non-fiction book about a subject you know nothing or very little about.
6. Read a book recommended by a friend. (Or you can ask somebody on Bookmooch for a recommendation!)

My choices: (I'm doing Level 2)
1. All Things Wise and Wonderful, by James Herriot
2. Cyclops, by Clive Cussler
3. Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Unabridged edition... I read this when I was like 13 or 14.)
4. Silver Canyon, by Louis L'Amour
5. South, by Ernest Shackleton (I know very little about Antarctic exploration.)
6. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (My aunt recommended the book to me, so I figured I'd give it a try.)

Love the categories!

As to your choices, I read, "Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing and I really enjoyed it. It is such a great story. It really puts you in survival mode and is a testament to human survival. I have not read the account from Shackleton himself, but if the book is even close to the account I read, it should be a good one.

I am interested in your opinion of "Kite Runner". I have that one and haven't read it yet. I also have "Kidnapped". I loved, "Treasure Island", but haven't taken up Kidnapped yet. Looking forward to your grown up opinion. LOL.

1. Read a book whose author has a Biblical name: The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart
2. Read a book with the first letter of the title being "C": Cowboy and Wills by Monica Holloway
4. Read a book with a color in the title: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Doris (The book that inspired my suggestion)
5. Read a non-fiction book about a subject you know nothing or very little about: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos. While I do know something about math, I know nothing about applying it to daily news articles and I suck at statistics.

Happy reading!

Hi Honibabi! Happy to hear that you think you'll be done before the 22nd! And glad you like the categories. The books you chose look very interesting, especially the non-fiction book. Can you let me know how it is when you read it?

Actually, about Shackleton, I have another book about him, also, called "Shackleton's Way" by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell (it's even autographed by Morrell). That book actually talks a lot about the book "Endurance" that you mentioned! I hope to read that one after I finish the original book. "South" is really long, though... I may have actually pulled a "Poland" there, LOL. I'm a pretty fast reader, though, so I'll probably still get through it okay.

I'll be sure to let y'all know how "The Kite Runner" and "Kidnapped" are when I read them. From what I remember of "Kidnapped", it was very good, although I may have read the abridged version when I was young, I don't remember.

Let the games begin! :-D

I am starting off with Calm Before the Storm.

@ Honibabi, usually his books are action/adventure stories in which the hero, Dirk Pitt (in the Dirk Pitt series) or Kurt Austin (in the NUMA Files series) starts out hunting for a wrecked ship of either historical significance (think Titanic) or a lost treasure (think El Dorado), and inevitably ends up getting mixed up in a plot to do immense evil (think destroy the world), and he inevitably gets injured and almost killed, finds a pretty girl who is somehow mixed into the plot (think the badguy's daughter), finds and commandeers a classic automobile that ends up in his collection, and in the end he always gets the girl and saves the world. And Dirk/Kurt always ends up killing the badguy, often from an explosion. That describes probably most of his stories. But the individual plots can vary drasticly... for instance, he finds out in one book that Lincoln wasn't assassinated, he was actually kidnapped by the South and held hostage, and in another book he discovers the lost city of Atlantis.

Cussler is definitely my favorite author, at least my favorite author currently living. I've read his books for my challenges before... I typically read between one and four of his books a month. I think that if you like action/adventure novels, you'd really like Cussler. My only complaint about him would be that some of his books can be pretty crude, although fortunately not all of them. A couple good ones to start with would probably be The Navigator or The Storm. They're a couple of my favorites, and they are the first ones I read.

cocoGerman, that is hysterical. What did you think it was about before you read it? LMAO!

I finished Kidnapped, and I started on Silver Canyon. Kidnapped was TERRIFIC, although it was at times hard to read past the heavily accented Scottish slang, LOL. A little too much of a Scottish brogue for me. Can anybody here actually understand this: "he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back, he would get a dirk in his wame"? That's a quote to give you an idea about what the book was like. But looking past that, the story is wonderful, the characters colorful, and the book is rich in history.

Daisy, who doesn't know what a wame is? LOL. I am noting it however in my arsenal of vocabulary words to get an edge in my upwords app playing against my mother in law.

I am still working on, "The Prince and the Pilgrim". Really easy read, but been lazy in my reading and busy with out of towners visiting. I won't be much longer though.

Go Tribe!!

Usually when I buy books, I try to know exactly what I'm getting. I'll either buy an author I like, or a subject that interests me, or a book reccomended by somebody, or something like that. While you are seldom disappointed that way, you also miss out sometimes on books that you might have liked, so your way is better in this area. :-)
Yeah, I figured out one of the meanings of the word "wame" instantly, but it made no sense in the context, haha. I come to find out it means "belly" too. XD

Starting Cowboy and Wills.

Speaking of recommend, I'm still looking for recommendations for my next (and last) book. Any ideas? Thanks so much, guys. :-)

Daisy, I am disappointed to hear about Kite Runner. That will sit on my shelf for awhile, now. HA.
I am interested in reading All Things Great and Small by Herriot and with your review of All Things Wise and Wonderful, I will be putting that on my reading list too!

I looked at your mooch list and we seem to have cooking and herb books in common and some authors (but you already read the books I did). Other than that, I am not sure what to recommend. I will give you a few of my favorites in case you haven't read them and might be interested:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit
Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
My Husband asked me what I was doing and offered:
The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum
3 short stories by Richard Brautigan (my husband loves him): A Confederate General from Big Sir; Dreaming of Babylon; and The Hawkline Monster.

I am starting A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper next.

Hope to hear from you soon, cocoGerman. Good luck, Daisy.

And I have read Tuck Everlasting, too, and I thought that it was a cute story. It's cool we have several books in common! :-)

CocoGerman, how are you doing with your books? I'd love to hear your opinion of the one you're currently reading. :-D

Congratulations, Daisy!

I just flew home from a visit to family in Missouri and the guy next to me was reading a Clive Cussler. I asked him about it and told him how I recently heard about Cussler through this reading challenge. Just thought that was a nice connection thanks to your reading challenge. Thanks!

Thank you! :-D

No problem! Books are always my go-to ice breaker, too, if I'm looking for something to talk about. :-)

I think I will finish in time. I will just have to focus!

I wonder what happened to cocoGerman... Are you still with us, cocoGerman? How are you doing on your reading?

I also just wanted to put it out there that I'm posting a spare copy of Wuthering Heights on here, if anybody's interested, and I'm also posting one of my Cusslers that I have an extra of.

Oh well. I will still finish and probably start the next challenge late. You picked some pretty hard categories....LOL.

Oops, I didn't mean to pick super hard ones... which categories are you having trouble with? Maybe I can help you find a suitable book. :-)