I've never had a blog before- I've always found that people with blogs are somewhat pretentious; people that think that the world needs to know and share their opinion. I'm full of opinions and I will share them if you ask, but I never felt the need to put them out onto the internet uninvited.
Reading challenges changes that. Committing to reading challenges is going to be part of my commitment to my New Year's Resolution (be happier with my life as it is) and is going to push me towards reading things that are good for my mind and soul rather than things that I find perusing the bargain bin at the bookstore.
The last two great books that I read reminded me why I loved to read so much ( “Room”, by Emma Donoghue, and “The Shadow of the Wind”, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon) and I am at a new stage in my life where reading can become a regular part of my schedule again. Hopefully, graduating from college will actually lead to me reading more than I did when I was assigned thousands of pages a week.
Anyway, I discovered reading challenges late so I missed the registration deadline for most of them. These are the few that I will attempt to do.
To Be Read Challenge (http://rbrchallenges.blogspot.com/)
Read 12 books that have been on your list for a year or more (with two alternatives)
1.100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
2.Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
3.Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson)
4.The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry)
5.The Little Stranger (Sarah Waters)
6.Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood)
7.On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
8.Dubliners (James Joyce)
9.Pale Fire (Vladmir Nabakov)
10.Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
11.The Famished Road (Ben Okri)
12.The Story of Lucy Gault (William Trevor)
Alternates
1.The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)
2.The Moviegoer (Walker Perry)
The Science Book Challenge (http://scienticity.net/wiki/Science_Book_Challenge_2011)
These are some of the books that I hope to get to
1.The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
2.Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Charles Seife)
3.The Collector of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen (Warwick Anderson)
4.Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Valvilov's Quest to End Famine (Gary Paul Nabhan)
5.Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fanstastical Mathmatical Logical Life (Robin Wilson)
The Eastern European Challenges
These are some of the books that I hope to get to
1.The Visible World (Mark Slouka)
2.The Progidal Daughter (Jeffrey Archer)
3.Pale Fire (Vladmir Nabakov)
4.Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
5.The White King: A Novel (Gyorgy Dragoman)
6.Wave of Terror (Theodore Ordrach)
Dystopia Challenges
Associal Level: Five Books
1.Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
2.Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins)
3.Farenheight 451 (Ray Bradbury)
4.Jennifer Government (Max Barry)
5.Anthem (Ayn Rand)
Chubby Chunkster
The Plump Primer Level
1.Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
2.Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
3.The Little Stranger (Sarah Waters)
4.Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood)
5.The Famished Road (Ben Okri)
6.Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
While I know this seems like a lot, I have my whole summer free to read (oh, the perks of being a teacher) and there is a lot of overlap. If I have time, I will try and get through the lists without overlap.
Wish me luck!
