A Reading Life (43) - Akhenaten, #BoutofBooks and more #ReadNobels

My thoughts on Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth by Naguib Mahfouz
This is the story of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten, related to a young man by each person who was close to, or who served, the pharaoh. I couldn't help but be reminded of the current state of American politics. Everyone tells a different story. Every single person had a differing opinion on Akhenaten. So, who do you believe? The one consistent thread among all was that he had a strange appearance and that his faith in the One God was unwavering.


I would really like to read other books by Mahfouz, as I'm thinking this probably isn't his best. I mean, it was interesting enough, but the many points of view relating the story made character development difficult...and I'm a big fan of character development. I'm not saying I disliked the book immensely, but I have read other historical novels about various ancient Egyptian royalty and found them much more interesting.

That being said, historical fiction always leaves me wishing I could travel back and find out the real story. A fly on the wall, so to speak. As Akhenaten's life is somewhat of a mystery compared to other pharaohs (due to his name, etc. being obliterated because he was judged a heretic), I especially wish I could learn the truth about him.

Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. An Egyptian writer, he published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. (Goodreads)

Other books by the author:
Children of the Alley

The Cairo Trilogy: 

Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street 

Midaq Alley

The Day the Leader was Killed

I read this selection by Nobel Prize winner Mahfouz for the Read the Nobels perpetual challenge, the 2016 Read the Nobels challenge and the Where in the world will your Nobel take you? April challenge, hosted by Aloi at Guiltless Reading.

What I'm reading this week:

• For TuesBookTalk, the required section for this week's reading of The Great Mortality by John Kelly
• Get caught up with the reading section for this week's Roots read-along check in on Friday (I'm WAY behind!)
• Blood Sacrifices by Brian Moreland
• I'm going to listen to some audio books about writing too: Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink by Gail Carson Levine and Put Your Heart On The Page: An Introduction to Writing by Anne Perry

I just announced this special event, the Sci-Fi Summer Read-a-Thon, last week! I'm so excited. I need to read more Sci-Fi. This will probably be a yearly event, in between my four regular read-a-thons, like the Christmas Spirit Read-a-Thon in November. I hope you will think about joining us. Sign up here!

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Recent book acquisitions...

Win from Bookreporter.com -

Design for Dying by Renee Patrick

From Book Depository -

The Poldark series 1-3 by Winston Graham:

Ross Poldark

Demelza

Jeremy Poldark

From Better World Books - 

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte

Signora Da Vinci by Robin Maxwell

Affinity by Sarah Waters

What's going on in your Reading Life?

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A Reading Life (41) - Read-a-Thons, #ReadNobels and more! #SpringHorrorRAT

It's a busy week! Lots of reading fun going on.

First off, my Spring into Horror Read-a-Thon is going on today through Sunday. You can sign up through Friday (click the title). Yes, horror is in the title, but I only require one horror (or whatever is scary to you...mysteries, thrillers, gothic tales) book to be read. The rest of your reading can be more horror, or any genre you like. On my end, I'll be predominantly focusing on horror. After I finish up this week's reading section tonight of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James (for TuesBookTalk), I'll be reading these beauties....

Goodreads

Goodreads

If I finish these, I'll be reading this book for Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon....

Goodreads

and starting this one, if I finish the above...

Goodreads

Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon is this Saturday!

Week 3 of Where in the World will your Nobel take you? This week's questions: 

• What other Nobel-prize winning authors / books have you discovered (or didn't realize were Nobel winners) and would you like to get in your TBR or read at a later date?
• What about the book/s, author/s or setting/s attract/s or intrigue/s you?

I had noticed that a couple of the other participants were reading/had read Snow by Orhan Pamuk. This one intrigued me (this line in the description in particular "the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism") and, as luck would have it, I came across a copy at the library sale yesterday. Yay!

Goodreads

These are authors that I have on my Read the Nobels challenge list. I own books by all of these Nobel Prize winning authors. So, books by these authors will be on my TBR in the future.

2007 - Doris Lessing
2000 - Gao Xingjian
1998 - José Saramago
1995 - Seamus Heaney
1993 - Toni Morrison
1988 - Naguib Mahfouz
1983 - William Golding
1982 - Gabriel García Márquez
1962 - John Steinbeck
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1957 - Albert Camus
1954 - Ernest Hemingway
1949 - William Faulkner
1948 - T.S. Eliot
1938 - Pearl Buck
1930 - Sinclair Lewis
1929 - Thomas Mann
1928 - Sigrid Undset
1925 - George Bernard Shaw
1923 - William Butler Yeats
1907 - Rudyard Kipling

The following are books I'm considering to read this year for Read the Nobels 2016 (two from this list):

Albert Camus, The Plague

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks

Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

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Recent book acquisitions...

Library sale

Kill Your Darlings, Terence Blacker

The Silent Sister, Diane Chamberlain

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie

Mudwoman, Joyce Carol Oates

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

The Legend of Sheba, Tosca Lee

The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss

The Good Apprentice, Iris Murdoch

Snow, Orhan Pamuk

The Banks of Certain Rivers, Jon Harrison

The Agincourt Bride, Joanna Hickson

Agincourt, Bernard Cornwell

What's going on in your Reading Life?

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A Reading Life - Am I a Nobel Newbie? #ReadNobels (40)

This week's question for the Where in the world will your Nobel take you? challenge is...

WEEK 2 (APRIL 11-17): NOBEL NEWBIE OR GOT A FEW UNDER YOUR BELT?

Have you already read Nobel Prize-winning authors? Who? What books?

I've actually read several. Not an earth shattering number, but more than I realized. I read my first Albert Camus in college in my younger years and William Golding when I was a teen (not because it was required for school, but because my boyfriend recommended it...how cool is that? lol). Most of the others were read in my thirties and beyond. 

Here's the complete list (year author won Nobel Prize in parenthesis):

Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1983)

The Stranger, Albert Camus (1957)

Paradise, Toni Morrison (1993)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot (1948)

My favorite from the above list...The Stranger. Paradise was also very good.

And I'm currently reading Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth, Naguib Mahfouz (1988)

What I've been watching....

Outlander (Season 2) premiered this weekend. Started off with a bang and had me feeling really sorry for Claire.

I watch SO many shows so I'm not going to list them all here. Standouts for me this week were the season finale of Sleepy Hollow (another tearjerker). They better not cancel it. Also, Girls. I have not been happy since Adam started dating Jessa (can't stand her) and she's proving to Adam just how shallow she is. Two episodes left until the series finale. I wonder how it will end?

See what I mean about Jessa...

I went to see the film "Midnight Special" on Saturday. A very suspenseful and thought provoking movie. I have a couple of theories on what it all meant, but I may have to watch it again. It's pretty deep. Here's the trailer...

Recent book acquisitions...

From Better World Books:

Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot

Beautiful Lies, Clare Clark

The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta

After Rome, Morgan Llywelyn

The Uninvited, Liz Jensen

Little Star, John Ajvide Lindqvist

The Orphanmaster, Jean Zimmerman

Conquistadora, Esmeralda Santiago (from Dollar General for a buck!)

What's going on in your Reading Life?

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A Reading Life - Oh, the reading plans for April...and beyond! (39)

It has been ages since I've done a Reading Life post. I think it's about time to get back into it...and what better time than this month...April 2016, the month for all the reading!

So, this month I'm hosting Roots: The Read Along, as I'm sure many of you already know. It officially started on April 1st, but our first discussion isn't for two weeks so you can still join us. Get all the details here.

I recently decided to sign up for Read The Nobels, a perpetual challenge hosted by Guiltless Reading. There is also a 2016 challenge in conjunction with the perpetual challenge which I'm also signing up for. I will do a more detailed post about my sign up for the above at my reading challenge blog. In addition to the above, Guiltless Reading is also hosting a challenge this month to go along with Read The Nobels and Travel the World in Books challenges, Where in the World will your Nobel Take You?

The Book I chose for this challenge, which is also on my Travel the World in Books reading list, is Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth by Naguib Mahfouz.

Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
"who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind"

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author of the Cairo trilogy, comes Akhenaten, a fascinating work of fiction about the most infamous pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

In this beguiling new novel, originally published in 1985 and now appearing for the first time in the United States, Mahfouz tells with extraordinary insight the story of the "heretic pharaoh," or "sun king,"--and the first known monotheistic ruler--whose iconoclastic and controversial reign during the 18th Dynasty (1540-1307 B.C.) has uncanny resonance with modern sensibilities. Narrating the novel is a young man with a passion for the truth, who questions the pharaoh's contemporaries after his horrible death--including Akhenaten's closest friends, his most bitter enemies, and finally his enigmatic wife, Nefertiti--in an effort to discover what really happened in those strange, dark days at Akhenaten's court. As our narrator and each of the subjects he interviews contribute their version of Akhenaten, "the truth" becomes increasingly evanescent. Akhenaten encompasses all of the contradictions his subjects see in him: at once cruel and empathic, feminine and barbaric, mad and divinely inspired, his character, as Mahfouz imagines him, is eerily modern, and fascinatingly ethereal. An ambitious and exceptionally lucid and accessible book, Akhenaten is a work only Mahfouz could render so elegantly, so irresistibly. (from Goodreads)

Week One questions for the challenge:

When someone says "Nobel Prize winner for literature," what comes to mind? Is it a positive or negative reaction? Why do you think you have this reaction?

Definitely positive. I'm anticipating some really great, well-written books from these authors and winners of the Nobel Prize. I'm really very open minded about books. While some may think books by Nobel Prize winning authors might be stuffy (or pretentious), I prefer to keep an open mind.

What book did you choose? Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth

Who is the author / when did they win the Nobel Prize / nationality? 

Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic author) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.

Where does this story take place?

Ancient Egypt during the 18th Dynasty (1540-1307 B.C.) of Egyptian pharaohs, the reign of Akhenaten.

Why did you pick this particular book?

It has been on my TBR for some time, and it's on my Travel the World in Books list. Plus, I'm fascinated with ancient Egypt. Always have been.

What other authors / books did you also consider for this challenge? 

None really. I was seeking a short book since I have so much on my reading plate this month. This one fit the bill.
Also, this month....

My Spring into Horror Read-a-Thon over at Seasons of Reading, coming April 18 - 24. Sign up here. (Don't worry...you only have to read one scary book, and it doesn't have to be straight horror. Whatever is scary to you and within your comfort zone)

Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon, coming Saturday April 23. This is during my Spring Read-a-Thon. So, why not do both? Sign up here.

What else am I reading?

My TuesBookTalk read along group on Goodreads is reading The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James. Group details here.

My Classics Club Spin selection is The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

Our featured author for our August online reading retreat at Lit Collective at Goodreads is Jane Smiley. We're reading A Thousand Acres, The Greenlanders, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel. Join us here.

It's going to be interesting to see if I can get all this reading done. Whether I do or not, it's the trying that is always fun.

Recent book acquisitions...

The Troop, Nick Cutter (one of my selections for Spring into Horror)
The Deep, Nick Cutter
The Treatment, Mo Hayder
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne
Child 44, Tom Rob Smith
Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver
The Shards of Heaven, Michael Livingston (won from Fantasy Literature)
The Mistletoe Inn, Richard Paul Evans
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens
How to Write, Richard Rhodes
The Fast Diet, Michael Mosley
Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, Jennifer Chiaverini
The Book of Killowen, Erin Hart
Inferno, Dan Brown
The Devotion of Suspect X, Keigo Higashino
The Incas, Daniel J. Peters

What's going on in your Reading Life?

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