Read-a-Thon mini challenges

Page 99 Mini Challenge hosted by Nova @ My Seryniti.

This challenge asks participants to pick a book they are planning on reading during the read-a-thon, read page 99, and then share whether or not you would continue reading the book based on that one page.  For this challenge I  chose: Wilderness by Lance Weller.  On p.99 it appears that a boy named Silas has somehow been injured and is being transported elsewhere by Edward, Charley, and Oyster Tom.

Synopsis: Thirty years after the Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. Wilderness is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It’s a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war. As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life—from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

I would say that yes, I would continue reading because now I am curious what happened to cause Silas' injuries and also because I'm digging the name Oyster Tom for a character.  I am already really looking forward to it because I've never read from this time period in this setting.

Photo Mini-Challenge hosted by Laura at Book Snob.

This challenge asks you to post a photo related to the book you are reading and briefly explain how the photo relates to the book.  I am currently reading Emily Hudson by Melissa Jones

Synopsis: Based on an episode in Henry James's life, the captivating story of a young heroine with ambitions and desires beyond her time. By the start of the Civil War, Emily Hudson has lost her entire family to consumption. Wholly dependent upon her puritanical uncle, Emily forms a close bond with her ailing cousin, William, an ambitious young writer. When a promising engagement is broken, William, obsessed by Emily's spirit and beauty, becomes her patron and takes her to England-only to manipulate and neglect her for the sake of his own creativity. There, Emily finally spurns her cousin's rules and sets out alone to pursue an artist's life in the eternal city of Rome.

I have two photos for this one: 

This is a photo of a lighthouse in Rhode Island.  In the beginning of the novel Emily is kicked out of school and sent to live with her Uncle and his family in their cottage in Newport, Rhode Island.  Emily does not fit in very well with her uncle's family and one of her favorite things to do to escape the boredom of the household is to walk along the sea shore.

Later in the novel, Emily accompanies her cousin William to London so she can escape the stifling existence she leads in her uncle's household and pursue her dreams of becoming an artist.  This is a picture of London in the 1860's which is when the novel takes place.





Awesome mini-challenges ladies!  Thanks for hosting!