I am not even finished the first one, but here it goes: Book Awards Challenge II. It will run from August 1, 2008 through June 1, 2009. 10 Books in 10 Months. Here is my really tentative list. 

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (ABBY) 
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (Orange Prize, PEN/Faulkner)
The God of Small Things by Arunhdahti Roy (Booker)
The Complete Poems and Plays by T. S. Eliot (Nobel)
Possession by A. S. Byatt (Booker)
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Booker)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (Pulitzer)
The Known World by Thomas P. Jones (Pulitizer)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Hugo)

And I will fill in with Newbery award winners and the like. Too difficult to predict these things.

Once again, I will be participating in Dewey’s Readathon this June 28-9th. I was active for 15/24 hours of it last October, but since it is summer, I will be aiming for much longer. Darcie began a meme, and I was tagged by Eva.

If I had 24 hours to read, be my goals would be… to read a lot. It’s quite simple for me because I only read two books and one play, but only completed books. I definitely need to finish more than one book this time and use time to put a dent in my various reading challenges.

This is what I am going to have to do to get 24 hours of reading…caffeine, I guess. I went easy on it last time, and I always have a ton of unread books. I’ve been spending most of my past Saturdays reading so it should not be too difficult.

If someone asked me for recommendations of “can’t put down” books for the read-a-thon, I would recommend: Depend on the read I guess. I rec based on people’s tastes. Personally, it depends on your kind of book.

For you, what was your favorite part of the October read-a-thon and why? I really liked the cheerleaders and other readers who came to my blog, and the sense of being part of something larger. I liked the mini challenges.

If you’ve participated before, do you have any advice for newbie readers? Updates should have information of things read, what you did other than read, books read, etc. Participate in the challenges, visit other readers, and take breaks whenever you need to whether to move around, eat or get some caffeine. Thank Dewey. Have fun. Simple and good stuff.

Generally, I don’t like to tag on memes, but I’m tagging my fellow readers Andi and Chris.

This update includes books read in April and May. The latter was a pretty good month for books. I read 11 and quite a few counted towards challenges. New challenges are in bold.

Current Challenges

• Book Awards (9 of 12) – None. I only have June left.
• William Shakespeare (3 of 4) – I read Othello and The Tempest. Nearly done.
• Non-Fiction Five Challenge (1 of 5) – Read Hungry Planet. May to Sept.
• Graphic Novels (8 of 6) – Read The Best American Comics 2006, Jimmy Corrigan
• Decades 08 (5 of 8 ) – Read Cranford, The Count of Monte Cristo
• In their shoes (3 of ?) – Read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
• Russian Reading (2 of 4) – Slow and steady does it.
• What’s in a Name? (4 of 6) – I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Hungry Planet, The Tempest
• TBR 2008 (1 of 12) – This is pathetic. I really need to work on this.
• Man Booker Challenge (1 of 6) – Same.
• Chunky Challenge (3 of 4) – Read The Count of Monte Cristo, Twilight, Outlander
• The Obscure Challenge ( of 1) – Read one obscure book before the end of the year.
• 342,745 Ways to Herd Cats or tl;dr (3 of 3) – Three books read from lists of favourites of other participants; read The Count of Monte Cristo, Twilight, and Outlander.
• 1% Well-Read Challenge (2 of 10) – Read 10 books from the 1001 List in 10 months. I read Cranford, The Count of Monte Cristo. See below for book count.
• Reading the Nobels (1 of 5)- Must work on this, but I do not have many Nobels at hand.
• Notable Books – None
• Pulitzer Project – None
• Booker Project – None

Personal Challenges

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die – The challenge will help this out: 84.
• TBR Pile – Books that I own and have not read. None in awhile.

Pending Challenges

• Classics Challenge ( of 6) – July to December 2008. Five classics and one bonus “modern” classic.

Completed Challenges

• Something About Me – There was no minimum; I read 4 books.
• Second Chances (3 of 3)
• Book to Movies (3 of 3)
• Summer Reading Challenge, Round 2

The challenge runs from July 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008. The challenge is to read five classics, and there is a bonus round of reading a modern classic suggested by other participants. For the sake of clarity, I am going to define classic as books before World War II with a bit of leeway for any book before 1970. Since I already read and own a lot of classics, this should not be too difficult. Here are possible selections I may read:

• Summer by Edith Wharton
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Death In Venice by Thomas Man
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Random Harvest by James Hilton
• Plays by Anton Chekhov
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• Bleakhouse by Charles Dickens
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Don Quixote by Cervantes

I am not going to read all of these, but I have found it impossible to determine when I will read which book.

As for my selection for modern books that will be classics. I think a few have already been mentioned by other participants, and many just seem obvious. Here are a few that I’ve thought of just now (which may be amended later):

• The Princess Bride by William Golding
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullaman
• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
• The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
• The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel

That is a lot of series, but those things tend to last well.

Read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. I think I will be able to finish this. The challenge began May 1 and runs through the end of February 2009. I am already keeping track of my books read for this list, and I just finished one today, Cranford, which I will count towards the challenge total, so nine more to go. As of right now, I have read 83 books which sets me at 8.29%. Here is a long list of possible reads. This list which will undoubtedly change as I cross post and read on a whim:

Continue reading →

From May to November 2008. Make a list of 10 books you love/like and then pick three to read from the lists of other participants. In making a recommended book list, I avoided books that others have not already suggested. I also tried to go for variety. These are just 10 books I really like, and by no means are definitive.

1. The Leopard by Giuseppe de Lampedussa
2. The Complete Maus by Art Spielgman
3. Howards End by E. M. Forster
4. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
6. The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson
7. Blindness by Jose Saramago
8. The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy: Griffin & Sabine/ Sabine’s Notebook/ The Golden Mean by Nick Bantock
9. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
10. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Here are some of the books I may read (this list will change as participants come onto the challenge). I listed more than three because y’know how my reading habits are. A few of these have been cross posted from my other challenges too.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (kinda cheating as I’m reading this now)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Death In Venice by Thomas Mann
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Orange Girl by Jostein Gaarder
March by Geraldine Brooks
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Mort by Terry Pratchett

Been awhile since I updated the challenges list. There are too many and I just joined another one! In any case, I anticipate I’ll be reading more avidly again in two weeks. In other news, I updated WordPress to version 2.5; it usually takes me months until after a release to upgrade. For further procrastination and fun, I changed the layout

Current Challenges

• Book Awards (9 of 12) – A couple of the books I’ve read since the last update were not on my original list but are award winners. I still intend to finish my original list before July 1 and come out with more than a dozen books read.
• William Shakespeare (1 of 4) – Currently reading Othello, finished a Shakespeare bio.
• Graphic Novels (6 of 6) – Will continue reading graphic novels.
• Decades 08 (3 of 8 ) – Still want to do 16 decades.
• In their shoes (2 of ?) – I picked roughly 6-7 bios/memoirs to be read in the calendar year.
• Russian Reading (2 of 4) – Four Russian related books in one year.
• What’s in a Name? (1 of 6) – I cross posted one of the other books into this even if wasn’t in the original list.
• TBR 2008 (1 of 12) – So slow going. Must pick up speed.
• Man Booker Challenge (1 of 6) – Six Booker prize winners in one year. Also slow going.
• Chunky Challenge (o of 4) – Books of more than 450pages. I am reading one of these now!
• Reading the Nobels – I’ve read 2 so far, and there’s a challenge to read 5 this year.
• Notable Books – Read 1.
• Pulitzer Project – None.
• Booker Project – Read 1.

Anticipating Challenges

• Non-Fiction Five Challenge (0 of 5) – May to September

Personal Challenges

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die – One of the ultimate challenges; no intention of finishing it but do want to read many of the books. I’ll write in updates how many of the books I’ve read. I’ve read a couple since the beginning of the year. I’m at the miniscule 82 right now.
• TBR Pile – Books that I own and have not read. None in awhile.

Completed Challenges

• Something About Me – There was no minimum; I read 4 books.
• Second Chances (3 of 3)
• Book to Movies (3 of 3)
• Summer Reading Challenge, Round 2

Even though I told myself I would not join another shorter than six months book challenge, and yet here I am! The Non-Fiction Five Challenge runs from May to September 2008. It’s five books, and at least one of them should be a different genre of non fiction (memoir, history, etc). Am I going to complete this? Who knows. Here is my tenative list which is subject to change at any time of course. I have no intention of reading all of these books, but they are just a few books that I have been inclined to. 

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832 by Stella Tillyard
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
How to read a book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Faith D’Alusio
Happier by Tal Ben Shahara
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Watching the English by Kate Fox
The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer Dixon
The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer Dixon
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease by Sharon Moalem
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
…and probably a few other books.

Challenge runs between today January 7th to December 20th to read four big books of approximately 450 pages regular type (or 750 large print). Cross posting books from my other challenges as usual. I do not have page counts of all these books, but on my honour or guestimation, they be chunky:

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky – 656p
• Little, Big by John Crowley – 538p
• Complete Poems and Plays by T. S. Eliot – 608p
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy – 472p

Alternates/Bonus:
Lord of the Rings Book II and III
Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832 by Stella Tillyard – 462p
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks – 483p
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco -502p
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
…and probably a lot more.

All the books I read over 450 will be countd towards this challenge.

My books and movies lists for 2007 are up on the blog that I keep for the purpose of holding my annuals lists:  52  books (with audiobooks; 45 actually read) and watched 71 movies. I am averaging ten less than last year. Sigh. Maybe the reading challenges can up my book intake, or maybe they’ll make me go literary mad. What have I gotten myself into?

Current Challenges

• Book Awards (6 of 12) – Progress is going well, and there is lots of time for me to complete this before July 1
• Seafaring Reading (0 of 2) – I have the second book in the series, not the first yet. May be cutting close.
• William Shakespeare (0 of 4) – Two plays, the complete sonnets, and a biography.
• Graphic Novels (0 of 6) – Six graphic novels in 2008.
• Decades 08 (0 of 8) – Want to do 16 decades.
• In their shoes (0 of ?) – I picked rougtly 6-7 bios/memoirs to be read in the calendar year.
• Russian Reading (0 of 4) – Four Russian related books in one year.
• What’s in a Name? (0 of 6) – Six books in one year.
• TBR 2008 (0 of 12) – Twelve books in twelve months.
• Man Booker Challenge (0 of 6) – Six Booker prize winners in one year.
• Notable Books – No book limit, and each update will say if I’ve read one.
• Pulitzer Project – No time limit.
• Booker Project – No time limit.

Completed Challenges

• Something About Me – There was no minimum; I read 4 books.
• Second Chances (3 of 3)
• Book to Movies (3 of 3)
• Summer Reading Challenge, Round 2

I am a part of the Notable Books Challenge. There is no book limit, and this post serves more as a reference for myself of books to check out if I am out of and in pursuit of more reading material (unlikely but still possible) in 2008. It includes books from the New York Times Most Noteable Books 2007 and the Publisher’s Weekly Best Books 2007.

The Gathering and Shortcomings are definitely going to be read because they are for my other challenges.
Continue reading →