Book Challenges

I just started finding these book challenges on the web. I love challenges, but all the internet ones that you join have ended it seems. So, if anyone finds one that is still open please let me know because in case you didn't know-I love to read. Therefore, I am going to set a challenge for me. I will read 100 books this year. It seems kind of steep, but that is a little less than two books a week. During the summer, I will read way more than that in a week. I have a tendency to go to the library, check out ten books, sit down and read them compulsively, and then return them to get more-usually within the same week. On that note, I am going to try to figure out how to post a bar on the right side of my blog so I can keep track of what I have read.


I just finished 2012: The War for Souls by Whitley Strieber this past weekend from the local library. Brandon picked it up thinking I might like it, and it was an all right read. It is definitely science fiction about how the world might possibly end in 2012. For all of you who haven't heard that theory, the Mayan calendar apparently ends on Dec. 21st, 2012 which marks the end of this era. It is amazing that they were so advanced in their culture that their calendar is still accurate to this day-which is why a lot of people think the world will end on that day. I find it interesting, but I am not at all convinced. Anyway, 2012: The War for Souls deals with this issue through the use of three parallel worlds. We have this world that we love, another world that is very similar but different in certain ways (all of their cars are black, they have not had world wars, the main countries in power are different, etc.), and another alien world. The aliens are not really aliens as we tend to think of them-creatures from another planet that have an advanced culture and look like E.T. -instead they are previous demonic visitors to our planet. In the book they are seen as reptilian alien creatures.

The book is one I would not buy to keep in posterity on my bookshelf. It was good, but I am glad I did not shell out 25 bucks for the hardcover version. Some books I am happy to do this but not this one-I honestly wouldn't buy the paperback version to keep. The book was really dark at times-although how can a book about the possible end of the world be light-it deals with cannibalism, torture for pleasure, and the idea that your soul could be sucked out of you for demonic people's pleasure-really not my general cup of tea. Some of the the situations were fascinating-the idea that these old places around the world such as Easter Island and the great pyramids are hotspots of energy and that they were built a certain distance from the north pole for a reason many years ago.

I found out after I finished the book that he also wrote Communion which is a non-fiction novel about his experience being abducted by aliens. There are definite parallels (from what I remember about that book) and this one with certain characters being abducted by these creatures as well. I read that novel when I was in eighth grade (I think? That was 15 plus years ago.) I don't remember how that novel came into my hands but it freaked me out. I had nightmares as a result for years-so I refuse to read it again. One of the strange things I think remember is that aliens coming into your house at night would sound like cats walking across the floor. Our cat would come into my room at night, and I was always relieved when I saw her jump into the bed after hearing her. So, if you are interested in apocolyptic novels that are similar in vein to Dean Koontz or Stephen King you might enjoy this one. I found it more on the gruesome side of Dean Koontz-which sometimes go to far in descriptive horror for me. I enjoy Stephen King overall much more than this one.