Some Challenges for 2011

So, the new year and looking ahead and resolutions are upon me.  I find once again the lure of challenges too irresistable to resist.  Here are some challenges I am signing up for this year:

2011 Ireland Reading Challenge - hosted by Carrie at Books and Movies. Being the usual sucker hopeful optimist I am, I am aiming for Kiss The Blarney Stone (6 books).  I have no idea what they will be at this time.  How is that for faith??

British Books Challenge 2011 - hosted by The Bookette, this is an exciting challenge because so many of the books I read are British or about Britain. Seeing as I am incurable as well as hopeful, I'm joining the Royal Family Level - 12 books by British authors in 2011.  I might as well aim high, right?

Historical Fiction 2011 - so many of the books I read are historical, that this should  will be easy.  I hope.
I'm aiming high, Gentle Readers, since a Charles Dickens looms on my TRB pile, plus a host of mysteries from the past and..... so I'm signing on for Undoubtedly Obsessed, 15 books!  Undoubtedly a little bit crazy, more like. 

Carl's Sci-Fi Experience 2011 - this will be the third year I'm joining this reading experience.
I love this challenge because it gets me to read the sci-fi that I do buy the rest of the year and keep meaning to read.  I wish there were time to read all the books I want to.  In fact, I think I make this wish  every day.  Just tonight I was upstairs checking to see which Peter James mysteries I have (none on my TBR shelf apparently, but I do have two elsewhere in the house waiting to be read), and I realized that due to my slump in December, almost all the mysteries I expected to read are still waiting to be read. Sara Paretsky! Margaret Maron! Ruth Rendell! PD James! Jo Nesbo!  Ann Cleeves!  Peter Lovesey!  Brian Freeman!  It's like a who's who of mystery writing on my bookshelf waiting to be read, and all I need is a little a whole lot more time to read.  And really, Carl says this is just an experience.  A science fiction experience.  Plus, it has a cool photo. 

2011 100 + Reading Challenge - because I am going to get to 100 books.
Hosted by the indefatigable J-Kaye, who amazes me by hosting this and reading so much with three school-age children. This is my personal mountain to climb.  I have never gotten to 100 books read in a year, and I failed spectacularly again last year, reaching the very same total I did the year before: 78 books in total read.

2011 Support Your Local Library Challenge - also by J-Kaye.  I have 12 books out from the library currently, with another 14 waiting to be picked up by Friday. It is very dangerous a great way to find new books, reading all your blogs, and now our library has gone 21st century and it is so easy to request books! one click and presto!  Thus, the 26 books found in two weeks.
So I should be able to complete this challenge at the 25 books level.  I might up it to 50 if I go all gung-ho and actually read all these books I've taken out.

 

Challenges Ongoing:
Canadian Book Challenge 4, which I have read some already (see my sidebar for the link). I  read two more in December that I still have to review!  I succeeded in this one last year, so I'm planning to succeed again.  We do have some wonderful books in Canada, and I love this challenge for getting our books out there to be read, and also for making encouraging and reminding me to make the time for them.  Louise Penny, Vicki Delany, Tanya Huff, Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, LR Wright, we have some wonderful writers here in Canada.

Sunday Salon

Rhinoa at Rhinoa's Ramblings posted about an interesting challenge hosted by Librarything for next year: the 999 Challenge, here. The challenge link itself is here . I haven't decided if I am going to join. As I commented to Rhinoa on her post, I have learned many valuable lessons this year with the 888 Challenge, which I have so enjoyed! Principally - pick categories of books that I read plenty of naturally. For any of you out there looking for a challenge for next year's reading, I recommend it, as I can't think of one that has gotten me to read so much, this year, than the 888 challenge. You can see by my sidebar how I am doing with this challenge; 48 out 64 books done now. I am nothing like Rhinoa who has read 155 books already this year! I'm almost at 60 books read; which is my best total for several years now. Still not where I want it, but I am greatly encouraged that I can find time to read more. That's what challenges are all about, for me! Reading as many books as I can!

I've been sick since Friday with a very bad virus that is going through the city, so I'm only here briefly to say hi, then retreating back to the sofa to watch more tv (mostly movies with the kids) because that is all I can really do. I've been running a fever on and off since Friday, as well as a very bad sore throat, so even reading is challenging me this weekend! I did finish Fred Vargas's Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, which was a very different sort of mystery. A book review will follow, as well as for Tamsin, when I feel better, but I'm struggling just to write these few paragraphs right now! I've started The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, a book my mother loves and gave to me. I've enjoyed several other of her books, and indeed one year every one received Animal Dreams from me, I enjoyed it so much!

I hope you all enjoy some time with a good book today!

Confession is good for the soul.....

I have been weighing the 888 challenge in my mind for a while. Long ago, when I chose the books, I actually had a category for horror, then I couldn't find enough to read (this was back last November), and dropped it. Now it's August. And many new books have found their way into my home. I'm surprised at how many horror books I was able to pull so quickly from my shelves! So now I have more than enough for an 888 category section. And, I'm not too ashamed to put it as a category! (My Cool Literary Inner Bookworm hangs her head in shame. She is ashamed she tried to get me to not confess that I read horror, and ashamed that I do! Siberia is a good place to live, she thinks. Or an island in Micronesia anywhere but here where she is SLUMMING....'look', I say, 'I've added Jane Austen to the RIP 3 challenge! and Susan Hill could be a literary ghost story, so could Peter Ackroyd.' She sniffs and balls her tissue up. 'Look, I'm reading Midnight's Children now so you can have a Booker Prize read before I go all horror for the next 8 weeks!' She stares at me. 'Fine, I'll read Possession right after, so both you and Nymeth can know how I like it.' At last my Cool Literary Inner Bookworm relents and offers to get me some hot chocolate for the autumn nights ahead. Besides, she is happy reading Birthday Letters, purring contentedly and devouring the poems as if the book might disappear at any moment.) ......

I've read half the books in the 888 challenge. I am not, sadly, going to read many in the non-fiction category, which has to date only 1 read. I'm just not that into non-fiction to a great extent. What was I thinking, 8 non-fiction plus the non-fiction challenge? (It was the glare of the challenge, I swear. That, or I'm baby blogger still, and the bright lights and fame of completing lots of challenges glittered in front of me, drawing me forward to my doom.....) So, I have had a realistic evaluation of where I stand in the challenges. I really want to complete the 888 challenge this year. I probably won't get all 64 books read, but if I get 50 or more out of it done, then it will have been a most excellent challenge for me to have participated in. So (she draws a deep breath), I am dropping the non-fiction section, and adding a horror/dark fantasy section to the 888 challenge. There! and such a big smile crossed my face as I announced that, that I know I've made the right decision!!! I don't care about the rules, though I'm sure the moderator won't mind - but if they do, I'm not in the running for prizes, and I don't mind. This was always meant to challenge myself to increase the books I read, each year. This is always my own challenge to me. I love the different challenges because they make me look at the books I own, want to own, want to read, haven't heard about yet, and force me to choose - this year or next? now, or later? And I have read so many interesting, amazing, beautiful books so far this year. (Yes, I know I have 10 to review, basically all I've read this summer. The pile is teetering near the computer, a reminder that they want to be blogged about!) So even if I fail at completing a challenge, starting with From the Stacks last winter, then at least I tried it. i'll only get better at picking challenges for myself through learning what I complete and what I don't. And, as many bloggers have said over this year, there is always next year to try it again!

I am giving myself permission to add or delete books through the year because the one main thing I have learned is, the bigger the challenge or the longer it lasts, the more it is certain that some book or two is going to come along who wants to be read for that challenge long after it's started!!! I am going to keep joining challenges, and some I will complete (and I am very happy when I do!!) and some I won't. It's the participating that is fun, and reading other reader's blogs, and always, sharing books, that is the real joy of the challenges. So no, I am not going to read all (is it 18 now? 20?) books I have listed in Carl's RIP3 challenge; it's a list I am going to pull from. I am hoping to read 12, maybe as many as 16 if I really push myself. And now 8 of those will be for the 888 challenge!!!

So, here is the new horror/dark fantasy selections for the 888 challenge:

HORROR/DARK FANTASY

1. The Harrowing - Alexandra Sokoloff (Awards Challenge)
2.The Terror - Dan Simmons
3. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
4.Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz
5. The House of Dr. Dee - Peter Ackroyd (1% challenge)
6. The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan
7. Lonely Werewolf Girl - Martin Millar
8. Wolf Moon - Charles de Lint (Can Challenge 2)


I've also started keeping running totals of the books completed in each challenge, on the sidebar, mostly for myself so I can see how I'm doing. Not bad!

And on the subject of confession, I am in the midst of Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. I am mesmerized by the poems. They are breathtaking and passionate and powerful. I love them. He has brought the Sylvia Plath we all loved to life, by recreating his memories of their relationship, in his poems. i can only read a few at a time, because there is much emotional charge, so much naked raw energy and passion spilling out, that it feels like I am being swept up also. This is poetry, and it deserved the Whitbread award. It should have won the Nobel Prize too for literature. What courage and naked honesty it took to write them, and they must have finally come pouring out when he released all that he had held back over the years. She dazzled him, even as she pained him. and yet I don't feel anything like a voyeur, because he is inviting us in, his readers, to show us why - why he loved her, what drove her, what happened to them. Because in the world of art, it matters who we love, that we love. That is where life comes from, and art and poetry can only come where there is life. Even though I am nowhere near finishing it, I can already say this is a book that every poet, every writer, should read, to see how it's done.

April Reads

Now that I have finally read enough books to start keep track of how I am doing with all my challenges, I thought I would give my totals:

April books read: 5
Year to date: 18
Not too shabby (for me anyway), but not where I was hoping to be....I'm averaging close to 5 books a month, but if I am going to complete all my challenges, I am going to have to ask the Creator for more hours in the day!!! (anyone else with me on wanting more hours to read?? Are we sure they won't pay us to read???)

Ok, here goes:
Once Upon A Time 2: 1/7
Orbis Terrarum: 2/9
Back to History Challenge: 2/12
Banned Book Challenge: 2/5
888 Challenge: 18/64
1st in a series: 2/17 (I had problems whittling this list down!! It's supposed to be 12!!)...2/12
Canadian Book Challenge: 6/13
Shakespeare Challenge: 0/3
Mythopoeic Award Challenge: 2/7
Short Story Reading Challenge: 1/8
TBR Challenge: 3/12
Birthday Challenge: 3/12 (can't find Ulysses!)
Man Booker Prize: 1/6

So, not too bad. Not as bad as it could have been, but not where I would like to be, especially with the 888 and Canadian Book Challenge. I have 3 challenges coming up to finish by the end of June: Canadian Book Challenge, Out of Time 2, and Banned Books, so I will be concentrating on those books.

I am really enjoying the challenges. I picked,as this was my first time doing these, books I was planning to read or really wanted to read this year. So I am getting through major piles of TBR books that lay on my shelves for some time now. This is a great feeling - I am reading books I've bought! Not that i didn't before, but I love to pick up books that are interesting, and then get caught up in reading fantasy and mystery, and forget everything else. So these challenges are a way to see if I can get myself to read more variety, and so far, it is working. So I am delighted. And, as some of you have seen in earlier posts, I have been buying books quietly so that my Inner Bookworm doesn't panic at all the books being read, and is soothed by the growing piles of NEW books to read, in next year's challenges. I've decided that I am challenge-addicted, and I love it!!! Next up, Canadian Book Challenge 2 (John has already said he will being doing it again, so get your Canadian books ready for July 1! And this time I won't be joining 3 months late!!), RIP (#3? I think; -horror and ghost stories for autumn!!! I'm already getting a pile ready for this one), and.....

There is one more challenge I am going to join, see next post (so I can link to it when I need to).....it really is irresistible, and so easy. So, this is to my sister who hasn't joined any yet - come on! I want to see you on this one! I'll even read one of your books on your list!!

And, if you check my sidebar, I've added the logo for the new Canadian Book Challenge. John has just posted it on his blog. It's under today's date. Come on, and enjoy our literature! There's some Margaret Atwood poems I want to read, more Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, LR Wright, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Tanya Huff, plus new authors Joan Clark, Karen Irving.....we are not just Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler!!

I may not get to 100 books this year, but I am giving it a good try! And finding great books on the way.

Happy May 1st, everyone!

things I have learned......

Things I have learned this week, this month, and this past 6 months of blogging:

- I went to Carl's site tonight and found not one, but two posts on faerie: Neil Gaiman (and the first photo made my heart stop, it is so breathtaking of Neil), and Brian Froud, and the links between them. I just watched Labyrinth (Brian Froud was the designer)last summer, for the first time in 20 years, and I enjoyed it, surprisingly so. and the poster that Carl was giving away, "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Brian Froud, is one i am too late to put my name in the draw for (since the draw was yesterday!), but I want that too - the poem is instructions for entering the dark wood of fairytales, and it is beautiful and wondrous and magical, and found in "Fragile Things", Neil's latest short story collection that I am in the process of reading. I had read the poem recently and fell in love with it, and now I know it's a poster....my birthday list is growing! Please check out Carl's two posts, they each are incredible. What I learned - other than the same synchronicity Carl was talking about, at work in my life! - was that there is a whole group of us who love fairy tales and fantasy books, which are my main love. I am not alone!! I know people read fantasy in Ottawa (we've held conventions over the years, and had two specialty bookstores for science fiction, both gone now), but not so many people talk about it, and that is what I have been missing.

- I have discovered that we love books, and talking about them, sharing our thoughts, reactions, joys and disappointments. In amongst the books, we talk about our lives, too, and it's like a glimpse of one another through starlight - here's a star in Minneapolis, there's another in Germany, another in South Korea, several in Canada, oh another in England and still another in Ireland - oh look, France has joined....Australia....many many more the world over - so many in the US- I know this is what the Internet is, but this is wondrous, that we all can connect over our love of books. It's like how long-distance letter writing used to be (and I remember those days!), only this is more immediate, and this has its good sides (we get immediate comments on our ideas and thoughts, and cheered up and find amazing books!) and its bad side (those of us who write books end up blogging more instead of creatively writing!! and spouses come wandering over to see where we disappeared to...). I'm still in my baby steps, and i have to admit that it is a thrill to check my blog every night when I come home from work and see who has dropped by.

- BAFAB week - all the giveaways and contests. I don't care if I won or not. This is my first year blogging, and my very first witnessing to the incredible sharing of books in the book blogging world. What a wonderful idea, and it's amazing and fun to see how generous we are with our books. It's like saying "here, read this!" over and over! I had no idea when I started my blog that this book blogging community even existed, and I am thrilled to be part of it. Next BAFAB, I will be ready!

- that we have lots of thoughts about what we read. I know there has been a growing backlash from 'critics' about book bloggers and our lack of credentials, but I've decided that the book critics are jealous. We write about books because we love them, and we have an instinctual - and good reaction to whether we like them or not, or if they make sense. I studied literature at university, and it killed my ability to write for several years after. Not on purpose, but the critiquing of method, novel set-up, characterization, etc, made me incapable of writing anything because I was instantly analyzing before I had finished putting it down on paper! We need literary critics, and I also now think the book world needs us - we're the ones who love books, and pay our money for them, and we treat what we read with respect - even if we don't like a book, we give a thoughtful approach to why. And it's fun, it's like we have a huge book circle! Oprah, move over, the real book-reading world has far better choices about what to read! Hmmm,
and this is really odd - further signs of synchronicity - over at Neil Gaiman's journal site he has just written several answers to questions in the last week on creative writing classes and writing, and do they help or hurt writing? Oh....and he's gained "a tub' size in jeans, I'm not the only one this long long winter has affected!! Oh hurray!! very shallow of me, but hey, you have to read his description of his closet (see journal entry "snowdrops"....). note to self: must get a copy of "Odd and The Frost Giants" somehow......

- we really like fairy tales.

- it's really fun to sign up for challenges!!

- and even more fun to choose the books for each challenge!

- I got my sister to read Jane Austen for the first time through this blog! (Stand up, Lady P!!)

- Oh - Inkheart is getting better near the end, I'm almost finished!

- and the best of all, you, dear Gentle Readers. Meeting you, finding your blogs, sharing books and ideas and thoughts, I had no idea this was waiting for me. So, as I reflect on my first six months - I can't believe it's been only 6 months! - of blogging, I raise my milk bottle (baby blog can't drink yet...) to you in a toast - thank you - and I really thank all the writers out there, old ones and new, because without them we wouldn't have any books at all. And it's now 25 weeks, 2 days, 22 hours, and 35 minutes until *Neil's* next book, "The Graveyard Book" is out in the US (and hopefully Canada and the UK). :-)

Non-Fiction Five Challenge (aka THE LAST CHALLENGE)

Once again, raidergirl3 brought this to my attention on her blog: Raidergirl3
(look, I'm getting better at the links!!!) It's being hosted over at Thoughts of Joy
The rules are:

A FEW POINTS OF INTEREST:

1. Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May - September, 2008 (please link your reviews on Mister Linky)

2. Read at least one non-fiction book that is different from your other choices (i.e.: 4 memoirs and 1 self-help)

My five choices are:
1. The Secret Language of Signs - Denise Linn - DONE

2. The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Elizabeth Gaskell
3. The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell - DONE June 2008
4. Cosmos and Psyche - Richard Tarnas
5. 1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare - James Shapiro

Four of these books are on other challenges, so again, I have not stressed myself too much by adding more books to read. And that is it. I will be stretched to read all the books on my challenges - but that is partly why I joined so many challenges this year. I want to read more books. I want to read a wider variety of books, and I wanted to challenge myself - how many can I read in one year? How wide a variety can I read? I collect enough books in different categories; it was time to start reading what I did have. Plus, I like challenges. I am a competitive person by nature. What I am remembering though, as I join these reading challenges, is that I am doing this for fun, and I WANT to read all these books. These are all ones I already own (90 % of them), and the other 10% are ones I wanted. So while I have never achieved reading 100 books in a year, that has been my goal for many, many years, and this is a good way to prod myself to read more. How many books can I read this year? And, I think a really important point to make to myself is - if I don't read them all, that's ok. At least I made an effort to read more, and more widely. However, I joined to win - and the competition is myself. So - let's get reading!!

Happy book reading, everyone. May you find time to read, this Easter Weekend. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring you a new book? I have two - Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas, and The Dream-maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn, that I bought this week. Not that I can read them yet, I have to get started on the banned book challenge, and the fantasy challenge, and I hear Canadian book challenge calling......If someone hadn't already taken 'So Many Books, So Little Time' for the name of their blog (thanks!), that was my first choice, since I am often heard mumbling this to myself! Then again, I firmly believe you can never have too many books - although that man in the Barnes and Noble clip on my blog a few weeks bag comes close, if only because he has them hidden in shelves on the basement. I definitely have room for more books! I believe I am already looking ahead to next year's book challenges.......