Tuesday, January 2, 2007

2007 Challenges



So, I'm adding to my reading challenges this year. With some overlap, I've decided to take on the Chunkster Challenge and the TBR Challenge.
What gibberish is this, you ask? It's just me binging on my need to read. :)

The Chunkster Challenge pushes you to read big, fat books. I hope to read 5 big, fat, books in the next 6 months, from the following list. The ones in bold are the books I plan to read, but I'm throwing some other options in there in case my mood changes.
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
- Don Quixote - Cervantes
- The Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
- Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra
- Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
- The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The 12 books I have picked from my ginourmous TBR pile, to read one each month, are (in no particular order):
1. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
2. A Short History of Progress - Ronald Wright
3. Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (i know, i know, i'm overlapping the 2 challenges, but this is a DENSE book)
4. Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
5. I, Rigoberta Menchu - Rigoberta Menchu
6. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
7. Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
8. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
9. Survival in Auschwitz - Primo Levi
10. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
11. Bee Season - Myla Goldberg
12. Fall On Your Knees - Anne Marie MacDonald

Alternates:
1. Lies My Teacher Told Me - James Loewen
2. Castro's Final Hour - Andres Oppenheimer
3. Untangling My Chopsticks - Victoria Riccardi
4. Hilda and Pearl - Alice Mattison

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm curious as to what you will have to say about James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. It sounds like an interesting book, but that doesn't mean a thing.
I've put books down in the past that sounded just great, because I couldn't finish them - and I've started books with a "I'm never going to finish it, but then I can at least say I tried"-feeling, and they ended up being wonderful reads...