Sunday, January 9, 2011

Reading Resolutions

Laura Miller at Salon.com has encouraged her readers to explore the world of online reading challenges. You sign up, thereby publicly promising to read a certain number of books over the coming year, and then share your reviews of those books with the other participants as you go.

I've been reading anywhere from 60 to 100 books a year for quite a while now, but still seem to have an ever increasing back log of books "to be read." I keep buying new titles (some of them quite old, actually) that create precarious towers around my office and on my bedside tables. So, anything that can help me catch up with my reading intentions will be a welcome prod.

Having explored several of the challenges Laura highlighted, I've decided to throw my lot in with the 2011 To Be Read (TBR) Pile Challenge, which requires reading 12 books taken from your To Be Read stack, each selection to have been there for at least a year. Once specified, the list is fixed, although two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the "can't get through" pile.

 
My Twelve Chosen are as follows:

01. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer. (Complete 1/17/11.)
02. Democracy in America, by Alexis de Toqueville. (Complete 2/5/11.)
03. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. (Complete 2/7/11.)
04. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. (Complete 5/30/11.)
05. Light in August, by William Faulkner. (Complete 6/18/11.)
06. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway.
07. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. (Complete 9/23/11.)
08. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. (Complete 11/25/11.)
09. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. (Complete 12/18/11.)
10. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren. (Complete 9/13/11.)
11. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. (Complete 12/20/11.)
12. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.

My Two Alternates:

01. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller. (Complete 5/21/11.)
02. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser.

Wish me luck!

3 comments:

  1. I have full confidence in you -- and may add a couple from your list to my own.

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  2. An impressive list. I'm happy to say that I've read three of the titles, but that leaves plenty to go. You must be a much faster reader than I am - and have more time?? - to read so 60+ books per year. You've made good progress so far. Keep it up.

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  3. Just checking-in on your progress for the 2011 TBR Pile Challenge - how are things going so far?! Don't forget to link your reviews to your master list. :)

    Also... BIG Giveaways are happening on my blog this week, and TBR Pile Challenge participants earn extra entries for linking to their lists, so be sure to visit my Giveaways section soon! ;)

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