Skip to main content

My reading challenges in 2011

As my regular readers may know, I considered a number of reading challenges for 2011. In the end I decided to do two year-long ones with numerous books: my very own Top Mysteries and TBR challenges.

I am stepping up the TBR challenge with the goal of reducing my TBR stack to below 850 books before the end of the year. The rules are, as before, that the stack can be reduced by reading and by culling and the books allowed for the challenge are the many, many books I have accumulated over the years but never read, provided I have owned them for more than a year. Furthermore, I will be unable to do this unless I cut down even more on my book buying. I plan to focus especially on non-fiction and on further reducing the number of my unread short story collections.

In the Top Mysteries Challenge I am planning to read 2 books per month, averaged over the year.

I will also continue the Frankfurter Büchmesse Challenge until the book fair starts in October.

Additionally, I’ll take part in some smaller challenges (6 books or less) organised by others, but only ones I can combine mostly or entirely with one or both of the other two. I am joining the What’s in a Name Challenge, level 1 of the The Read-A-Myth Challenge and level two of the Gothic Reading Challenge. I may add additional mini-challenges after I finish these.

Comments

Amy said…
Just found your blog...I feel like Reykjavik is like home after reading books set there!

How's about an Eastern European Challenge for 2011? It could be fun! Lots of regions.

Anyways, love your blog and blogroll too...lots of exploring to do.

Amy
www.theblacksheepdances.com

Popular posts from this blog

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...