Reading is Challenging!

My main reading challenge this year is The ARC Reading Challenge 2010.  I have 67 books on my ARC-alanche pile, and I swear I will read and review them all before the end of this year.  Some of them have been on this pile since I started blogging, The Aviary Gate, Stealing Athena,The Good Thief, and Zoe’s Tale just to name a few.  Some have already made it to audiobook form, The Crying Tree is one such ARC.  Some have been nominated for awards, like The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.  The pile sits on my chest-of-drawers and mocks me.  Books fall off and rain down on Missy, whose bed is just below.  It mocks me!  I wake up in a sweat and look over at it.  Well, NO MORE.  This is the year I WILL get them all done.  I’m keeping track of my progress on the It’s an ARC-alanche!! page.

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I’m also doing the What’s In a Name?3 Challenge.  For this challenge, you have 6 books to read, one for each title category:

•  A book with a food in the title:  Fruits Basket, volume 5 by Natsuki Takaya (reviewed here)
• A book with a body of water in the title:  The Mysterious Receding Seas by Richard Guy
• A book with a title (queen, president) in the title:  Vampire Knights, volume 1 by Matsuri Hino
• A book with a plant in the title:  The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
• A book with a place name (city, country) in the title:  Strange But True, America:  Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
• A book with a music term in the title:  The Organ Grinder and the Monkey by Sam Moffie

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Manga Challenge – The goal is to read a minimum of 6 mangas. There will be the odd prize throughout the year and bonus points if you manage to watch at least one anime film or 3 episodes of a series.

• Fruits Basket volume 5 by Natsuki Takaya (reviewed here)
• Fruits Basket volume 6 by Natsuki Takaya
• Fruits Basket volume 7 by Natsuki Takaya
• Ranma 1/2 volume 1 by Rumiko Takahashi
• Ranma 1/2 volume 2 by Rumiko Takahashi
• Vampire Knight volume 1 by Matsuri Hino

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Okay, so I’ve decided to give in and join Beth Fish Read’s The Sookie Stackhouse Challenge. It would seem that I’m going to buy the books anyway… lol, even though I told myself I wanted to wait to see if I LIKED the first book first, I went ahead and bought the second book. So I’ll “goat head” as my mom always said, and join the challenge. There doesn’t seem to be any specific number for this challenge other than to read the books, so for now, I’ll just start off with the two on Mt. TBR.

1. Dead Until Dark
2. Living Dead in Dallas

 

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And last, but not least, I’m excited to be hosting my first reading challenge:  The Welsh Reading Challenge.  There are 3 levels of reading with this challenge, 1-3, 4-6, and 7 and more.  I plan to read a Welsh-related book each month in 2010.

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• The Mabinogion
• Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce
• Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce
• A Writer’s House in Wales by Jan Morris 
• Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
• How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
• Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies 
• On Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
• The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales by Gerald of Wales
•  A String In the Harp by Nancy Bond
• Evans Above (Constable Evans Mystery) by Rhys Bowen

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And one more because I’m probably not going to be able to complete them all anyway:

Terry Pratchett 2010 Challenge hosted by Marg at ReadingAdventures

The challenge will start from 1 December 2009 and run through to 30 November 2010. There are several different levels of participation for you to choose from:

1-3 books – Cashier at Ankh-Morpork Mint
4-5 books – Guard of the City Watch
6-8 books – Academic at the Unseen University
9-10 books – Member of Granny Weatherwax’s Coven
10-12 books – Death’s Apprentice

You can either be reading the books for the first time, rereading, or even watching the TV adaptations if you like! As long as everyone has fun I will be happy! Please also do not feel limited to only reading the Discworld books as any books by Terry Pratchett will count for this challenge.

I’m shooting for Cashier level.  Right now, I only have 2 titles planned:

• The Color of Magic
• Good Omens co-authored with Neil Gaiman

if I do more that that, I’ll post the titles and review links here 🙂

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I decided to sign up for the New Author Challenge 2010 hosted by Literary Escapism as it will be easy to complete with the ARC Reading Challenge. 

I want this to be an easy challenge, so you can pick to do either 15, 25 or 50 new authors.  It all depends on how fast you read and how adventurous you want to be.

I’m signing up for the 50 level, and figure that’ll be easy enough with over 60 titles on the ARC-alanche -which I WILL finish all of the books on that list before the end of the year or NO DESSERT!  or something like that…. lol.

The reviews will be linked on my ARC-alanche page, but I’ll keep a tally of new authors here.  I’m pretty sure they’ll all be new, but this way I can keep track of all the new authors, including the ones from other challenges like the Manga and Welsh Reading Challenge.

Read 6 new authors so far

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My challenges just didn’t feel complete without a Jane Austen Challenge.  I mean, I’m gonna read her anyway, so why not sign up for a challenge and get extra-credit for them, right?

Haley at the Life (and Lies) of an Inanimate Flying Object is hosting a Jane Austen Challenge. 

–Levels:

**Newbie 2 books by J. Austen, 2 re-writes, prequels, sequels, or spoofs (by other authors)

**Lover 4 books by J. Austen, 4 re-writes, prequels, sequels, or spoofs (by other authors)

** Fanatic 6+ books by J. Austen, 5+ re-writes, prequels, sequels, or spoofs (by other authors)

I’m not sure, but I think this is a challenge for books, not movie adaptations, so I’m going to shoot for the Newbie Level.  I think I can swing two or three books.  My planned reading list for this is:

Persuasion 

Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Seth Grahame-Smith

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Okay, I swear this will be my last challenge but I couldn’t resist it.  Sarah at Behold, the thing that reads a lot is hosting her first challenge, and it’s a good one 🙂  Inspired by her love of all things 80s, she’s taken Billy Joel’s 80’s “History of the 20th century in less than 5-minutes” song, or “We Didn’t Start the Fire?” and made a reading challenge out of it.  Titled the We Didn’t Start the Fire Challenge 2010 (hmm, makes sense), participants are challenged to read books and learn about the topics mentioned in the song’s lyrics.  You can read fiction, non-fiction, or a combonation of both.

COMBO

Bronze Combo: Read any combination of 5 fiction or nonfiction books related to the song.

Silver Combo: Read any combination of 8 fiction or nonfiction books related to the song.

Gold Combo: Read any combination of 10 fiction or nonfiction books related to the song.

I’ll be going for the Bronze Combo, as I’m not sure how many books I have that can overlap this one.  I know Last Night I Dreamed of Peace will deal with Vietnam during the war, so it’ll fit in here, but not sure what else I’ll get in.  If nothing else, I’ll be more aware of the topics while reading and learn more from the books because of it.

A quick list of the lyrics with a video can be found here.

1. Nim’s Island by Wendy Orr ~ takes place in the South Pacific.
2. Islands Apart by Ken McAlpine – non-fiction about stuff in California
3. Push by Sapphire – deals with AIDS, among other things

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I keep saying last one, but this time it’s got to be.  How many more could I possibly overlap?  I read about this challenge on BethFishRead’s first challenge wrap-up post of 2010.  She’s already finished her first book challenge, and I liked the idea of the 451 Challenge which gets it’s name from Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 in which a small group of people work to memorize a book in order to save the ideas found within so that, thought the physical book itself may be destroyed, it will live on in them.  These Book People are then known not by their given names, but as the book they now carry. 

451 Fridays asks what books you feel passionate about. What book do you think is so important that you would be willing to take on the challenge of “becoming”?

Here is how it will work: between January 1, 2010 and November 30, 2010, participants are challenged to read books on the 451 master list. There will be several levels of participation:

Spark – read 1-2 books from the master list
Ember – read 3-4 books from the master list
Flame – read 5-6 books from the master list
Blaze – read 7 or more books from the master list

You can find the master list in the sidebar of the 451 Challenge blog.  I’m going for the Spark level, and plan to read Persuasion by Jane Austen.  I might end up at the Ember level, because I do want to join the Tolkein read-a-long.

1. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

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I keep saying I’m done, and I’m getting better, but I couldn’t resist Bookalicio.us’s POC Reading Challenge. 

Level 1: Read 1-3 POC books
Level 2. Read 4-6 POC books
Level 3. Read 7-9 POC books
Level 4. Read 10-15 POC books
Level 5. Read 16-25 POC books

I don’t normally pick books based on the color of the author or characters, and I certainly don’t have a lot of leeway with my reading this year given the stack of ARCs that is laughing at me, but I’ll put down the titles and links of the reviews of the books I do cover that fit this category.  I’m sure I can at least commit to level 3, 7-9 POC books.

• Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan ~ Asian author about Asian characters
• Fruits Basket, Volume 5 by Natsuki Takaya ~ Asian author about Asian characters
• The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine ~ About Asian characters
• Push by Sapphire – African-American author and characters

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Not saying “LAST ONE!” anymore… because there never seems to be a “last one” LOL.  But one more, one I could NOT resist.  I mean, come on, it’s LOST 😀

Amy of My Friend Amy and Heather J of Age 30+… A Lifetime of Books created the LOST Book Challenge, which has been open since January 2009, as a challenge to read the books referenced in the television show LOST.  The final season of the show begins on February 2, and Mags and I can’t wait!  Squee!  Less than a week to go 😀

WHAT: Read 5 or more books alluded to or mentioned on LOST. Find books here, here, or here. There are some GREAT books on those lists!

And, upon closer look, this challenge is suppose to end with the series finale (whenever that will be), which will be a fairly short time from now in terms of reading, so I may just keep going to the end of the year, as I’m just now joining it.  That’s right, I made my OWN rules for me… lol.

Planned books to read:

1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol -planning to read this with Mags anyway.
2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowlings – planning to read with Mags anyway.
4. Are You There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume – Mags is just the right age for this.
5. Lord of the Flies by William Golding – I’ve been wanting to re-read this one 🙂
6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery – maybe, if I get to this.

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