11.May.2008 Sunday Salon Week #1: Draw Result
My first Sunday Salon entry! I think it’s a pretty good idea where people “hang out”, summarize their reading week, and probably lay out their reading plan for the week after.
About a few weeks ago, I had a draw where people could browse my TBR shelf and pick 2 titles (with priority). I would then pick winners who I’d send the books to after I read them. I had my own way to pick the winners and it’s not really random. What I’m interested in, was which books would people choose.
About 25 people entered, with 37 books got picked out of around 60-70 books. Almost everyone picked a different book. So the books that got picked the most, with 3 people picking the same ones, were:
Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama (surprisingly)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Books with 2 picks each were:
The Virgin Suicides, Morality for Beautiful Girls, Silk, A Pale View of Hills, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Poisonwood Bible, Mr. Muo’s Traveling Couch, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Bookseller of Kabul.
The rests got one pick each or no pick at all.
Winners were:
hippolein for Dreaming Water (just because I was so curious why it got picked among the giant titles, thought it was an underdog), turnpages for The Reader (because I got this book from someone else for a while and would like to read and pass it on), and 1lilbookworm for Ugly by Constance Briscoe (because I didn’t think anybody would choose that. A book about true story of troubled childhood is not exactly the most popular.)
Meanwhile I host this challenge to read a selected first 100 books out of the 1001 Book You Must Read Before You Die. Details here. And I think I’ve got enough responses to make me stick to it. I’ll try to read as many books that I want to read out of the first 100 in the next 6 months.
Today I read a lot of Never Let Me Go. Somewhat eerie, but interesting. The style of Ishiguro here is a bit different that I expected (had only read When We Were Orphans).
Just next to my pillow is temporarily abandoned Lord of the Flies, slowly in progress Kabul Beauty School, and the book I promise to people, next one in line, Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. The 4th Harry Potter is also ready. Busy busy week :)
