Challenging

I started 2008 with the intention to participate in the Decades Challenge, but various turns of life took my reading in other directions (or temporarily stopped it entirely), so I decided to bow out, rather than driving myself crazy over a game.

But I want to expand my book blog reading, so in 2009 I think I'll try to follow through on some challenges. There are enough of them that dovetail with what I'd be reading anyway, and I guess what I need is undemanding networking.

Linked from Bookgirl's Nightstand is this challenge clearinghouse maintained by Wendy, where I found a number of possibilities:

• Read 12 books from your public library.
• Read a selected number of books you own.
• Read 6 books in translation.
• Read books linked thematically by title.
• Read from A to Z (title or author).
• Read a few classics.
• Read those books that Yann Martel keeps sending to Stephen Harper.
• Read Chekhov stories.
• Decades (again)

The first three, especially, should be almost effortless, though I'm quite fond of the Chekov one as well.

Decades Challenge

My whole reason for being here is to boost my reading life with some added structure, and to that end, I've decided to participate in some reading challenges this year. 3M's Decades Challenge was a natural first choice. You can read all about it at the challenge site, but here's my proposed list (subject to change):

• 1991: Possession - A.S. Byatt
• 1989: A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
• 1975: A Month of Sundays - John Updike
• 1964: In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
• 1955: A Gift from the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• 1947: Galileo (American Version) - Bertolt Brecht
• 1938: Our Town - Thornton Wilder
• 1925: The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• 1915: Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
• 1906: The Man of Property - John Galsworthy
• 1891: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
• 1881: Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
  
• 1875: The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
  
• 1866: Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• 1859: A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
• 1842: Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
• 1839: The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
• 1827: Vivian Grey - Benjamin Disraeli
  
• 1818: Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley
• 1795: Lady Susan - Jane Austen
• Others TBD