The First 50 Book Challenge Report of the Year: #s1-5

Although my knitting mojo seems non-existent, I've at least accomplished some reading.

As 2009 wound down, I read So Many Books, So Little Time and The Tao of Pooh...then nothing appealed to me and I panicked so I read:

1. Lisa Bright and Dark and it was as dull as mud. Probably because I was just desperately looking for anything to read and my heart wasn't in it.

I moved on to

2. The Te of Piglet since I enjoyed the Pooh book so much. It was good and I gleaned a few useful tidbits from it, but the author seemed a little angrier in this book.

While still in a Zen mood I read

3. Nothing Left Over and liked it, but I felt like the author was not so much trying to help me as share how much she thought of herself and her ability to be simple and if only the rest of the world was as good at it as she. (Be sure to read Professor Goatby's review on amazon. He hit the nail on the head.)

After so much "deep" reading, a children's book was in order.

4. I, Juan de Pareja is the based on a true story about Diego Velazquez and his slave Juan. Actually, "based on a true story" is a bit of an overstatement. The author admits that little is known about the two and that she depended heavily on her imagination. The picture she paints of slavery is very, very rosy and I suspect this was done because the intended audience was so young.

Now in a Spanish history mood I moved on to

5. Castile for Isabella by Jean Plaidy and loved it. Nice escape reading. After a quick internet search I discovered that the author included a lot of historical fact in the novel....so I can kind of feel like it's intellectual reading. :-)

I'm currently working on book #6: Spain for the Sovereigns (book two in the Isabella and Ferdinand trilogy.)