Hawkrider123's money saving 2008 book reading challenge

lilacgirlie

I am a girl and i am 12. I have a twin sister who loves reading but I've never been fussed about reading although i like writing. This year i started secondary school and had a chance to do guided reading which i do twice a week in form time. Before Christmas my mum found a set of humphrey books and she put them aside for me to read first to make sure i had a chance to read them. They are about a class hamster who helps everybody solve their problems and it learns to how to do adventurous stuff like flick an elastic band at a dog. I enjoyed those books so i asked my mum to preorder the next book in the series and i asked her to buy marley and me. That took me quite a few weeks to get through but it was worth it and now I have just started the new humphrey book.
My mum is kscour and she showed me this tonight and I think this is a really good idea. My mum says i can have £2 a book and the money can be spent on trips for me and my sister to make it fair on her because if she joined in my mum would be bankrupt! I get to pick where we go on the trips cos im doing all the work:D

I'm starting with my new Humphrey book tomorrow - "Trouble according to Humphrey" I'll post my review when I've finished.

Hope you don't mind me joining in

Savvy_Sue

lilacgirlie, we'd be delighted to have you! And let us know if you need any more suggestions for things you'd enjoy: I don't know the Humphrey books but they sound great.

Maybe I should have thought of this with my youngest, who's never been the greatest reader either. We didn't have TV for the older two, but we got it at just the wrong time for him! He'd learned to read, but not to enjoy reading if you see what I mean. But he's 16 now and wouldn't appreciate the challenge, plus he's got enough on his plate now he's supposed to be revising for his GCSEs without giving him any MORE distractions! :rotfl:

whitewing

Lilacgirlie, I've just picked up on this. Hawkrider is still doing the challenge (but has maths exams next month so has been concentrating more on them). He's reading 'The Indian in The Cupboard' at the moment. Will be reading Tom Sawyer next.

He actually reread The Boy in The Striped Pjyamas when he stayed with his auntie a couple of weeks ago, as he enjoyed it so much. (But he doesn't get paid again for that one!)

Welcome aboard!

LindaS

My mom did something similar for me at GSCE (well the Norwegian equivalent). She said for my final results I'd get £100 for every A*, £50 for every A, £25 for every B, a £25 fine for every C, a £50 fine for every D etc.

It worked wonders for my motivation but when I achieved 7 A*, 3 As and 1 B she refused to pay me!! I was very annoyed although I don't mind now as I did get very good grades and ended up going to a great uni. But for any parents thinking about setting up a reward scheme, don't offer more than you are prepared to give.

Also think about what happens after the scheme expires. I read in a psychology magazine that some teachers performed an experiment about getting pupils to play a maths game. In one class (class A), they offered prizes for playing the game (I think it was pizza), in the other class (class , no award was offered. Class A played the game often, class B less often. But once the reward was taken away, class A stopped playing the game entirely, whereas class B would continue to play it (on their own).

Hopefully people participating in the challenge will come to love reading from the merit of the books they read. And for this purpose I would like to reccomend some books -

Jack London - Call of the Wild - classic story that will provoke a great range of emotions

Richard Adams - Watership Down (yes, this is a really long book, probably the longest book written about rabbits, but it's absolutely delightful (and scary, action-filled, mysterious and all that), and it has loads of wonderful words and comes with a lapine dictionary (hawkrider likes his words right?).

Douglas Hofstadter - Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden String. This is my absolute most favorite book ever.From the amazon review:
Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (such as undecidability, recursion, and "strange loops") accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatise concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centring on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers.
Please note that I don't recommend this to anyone under 15 - unless they have an exceptional interest in Mathematics and Philosophy maybe. And although this might seem like a non-fiction book, the reason I love it is because of its magnificent and beautiful prose. Throw in word plays, mind games and allusions galore, which makes this the most entertaining book I've ever read. (And I have read a lot of books).

So if you're too young to read this particular book, I strongly recommend Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Savvy_Sue

LindaS wrote: »

Douglas Hofstadter - Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden String.

I know JUST the boy for this! But anyone else looking for it on Amazon might like to know it's Braid not String!

LindaS

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I know JUST the boy for this! But anyone else looking for it on Amazon might like to know it's Braid not String!

lol - yes it is Godel, Escher Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid. I don't know how I could write String, I now the "braid" is for Bach, oh well..

lilacgirlie

I thought it would be a bit of a shame if you did not know what the Humphrey books are as me and my mum love them so much
(I even caught her reading my Humphrey book on Thursday!)
so here is a link to the book I am reading at the moment, trouble according to Humphrey.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-According-Humphrey-Betty-Birney/dp/0571236146/ref=pd_sim_b_img_1

I am nearly half way through the book so I should finish it soon :j

hawkrider123

Hi Lilacgirl, welcome to the challenge im sure we'll have a great time reading books. I hope you can earn a bit of extra cash aswell as enjoying the new or even old books that you read during this challenge. How you getting on with your first book?

lilacgirlie

I am doing okay, I have read nearly more than half of Trouble According to Humphrey. I havelost the world book day one but it is probely some where i have not thought to look so I will have a good look for that so I was wondering have you got any suggestions for what I could read next? :rolleyes:

whitewing

Hey Lilacgirlie,

When I was your age, I used to love Judy Blume books. Also The Diary of Anne Frank would be another recommendation. I can read that a million times. Anne of Green Gables is great too.