Reading Challenges

I’ll be using this page to track my progress on my (overly ambitious) list of reading challenges for 2010. Progress will be updated at least once a month, so this is not up-to-the-minute up-to-date by any means.

The Time Quartet Read-a-Long

I hope to keep up with this challenge, then continue it to finish up with An Acceptable Time.

• January: A Wrinkle in Time [Read 11/30/09… I know, I know, cheating all ready]
• February: A Wind in the Door [Read 2/15/10]
• March: A Swiftly Tilting Planet [Read 10/16/10]
• April: Many Waters
• May: An Acceptable Time

Hosted by Kailana at The Written World.

Final Update: Fell two books short on this one. Hope to finish the Time Quartet in 2011.

Graphic Novels Challenge 2010

I think I can easily do the Expert (10+) level, plus maybe some mini-challenges, since this is a genre I frequently read anyway.

January: Five read! (single volumes of Y: The Last Man, The Good Neighbors, Ex Machina, and Fables and Girl Stories by Lauren Weinstein)

February: Nine read! Technically, this means that my challenge is completed already, but I’m going to continue keeping track for the rest of the year. Also, did the animals mini-challenge by reading a volume of Fables (others read were Lost Girls, Kampung Boy, Town Boy, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, which is more comics strips but I’m counting here, The Color of Earth, and single volumes of Ex Machina, Fables, and Jack of Fables)

March: Five read! Aya, Aya of Yop City, Daredevil: Yellow, and two volumes of Jack of Fables.

April: Five read! The first volume of Irredeemable, one Jack of Fables, and three Runaways re-reads.

May: Nine read! Fray, two volumes of Rick Geary’s Treasury of Victorian Murder, the graphic adaptation of the U.S Constitution, two Jack of Fables, one Fables, and two Serenity comics.

June: Eight read! Six volumes of Runaways, Same Difference and Other Stories, and It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken.

July: Four read! One Courtney Crumrin, two Runaways, and the first volume of The Stand adaptation.

August: One read (slow month). Superman: Red Son.

September: Eight read! Three volumes of Emma, Shirley, The Sons of Liberty, one each of The Stand, Ex Machina, and Jack of Fables.

October: One read (slow month AND this was the last graphic novel for the year). The Color of Water.

Hosted by Nymeth and Chris.

Final Update: Blew this challenge out of the water with 55 graphic novels read in 2010.

YA Through the Decades Challenge

Another challenge that sounds fun and not too out of the way of my normal reading patterns to accomplish, although I won’t be reading my books in chronological order.

January: Counting Beautiful Creatures for the 2000s.

February: Very Far Away from Anywhere Else for the 1970s.

December: A Countess Below Stairs for the 1980s.

Hosted by Whitney at Youth Services Corner.

Final Update: Fell short… didn’t really put in the effort on this one.

2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge

Another challenge that I think I can cruise through (if you notice, I prefer T-ball to baseball when it comes to reading challenges), so I’m signing up for the Just My Size with 25 books and will pleasantly surprise myself if I do more.

1. Beautiful Creatures (January)
2. Lips Touch: Three Times (January)
3. Living Dead Girl (January)
4. Shiver (January)
5. The Summoning (February)
6. Radiant Darkness (February)
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (February)
8. Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (February)
9. Going Bovine (March)
10. Numbers (April)
11. The Clone Codes (April)
12. After (May)
13. Possessed (May)
14. The Ghosts of Ashbury High (June)
15. Dark Life (June)
16. Dirty Little Secrets (July)
17. Brightly Woven (July)
18. Peeps (July)
19. Not That Kind of Girl (July)
20. Liar (August)
21. You Are Not Here (August)
22. Empty (August)
23. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (August)
24. Mockingjay (September)
25. The Romeo and Juliet Code (October)
26. Words in the Dust (October)
27. Road to Tater Hill (October)
28. A Swiftly Tilting Planet (October)
29. Cold Hands, Warm Heart (October)
30. The Emperor’s Code (October)
31. Storm Warning (October)
32. Into the Gauntlet (November)
33. When You Reach Me (November)
34. What I Call Life (November)
35. One Crazy Summer (November)
36. Clone Codes: Cyborg (November)
37. Consumed (December)
38. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl (December)
39. Goth Girl Rising (December)
40. Boy Toy (December)
41. A Countess Below Stairs (December)
42. Numbers: The Chaos (December)

Hosted by J. Kaye.

Final Update: Aced this challenge with 42 YA novels read in 2010.

The One with the Series Challenge: Season 4

OMG, I need this challenge in my life. I’m pretty awful at starting a series of books and then letting years go by between readings until I’ve prolonged the whole experience past the point of remembering what happened in the beginning.

What I’d like to finish (tentatively, to start with):

1. Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan et al. (FINISHED in January)
2. Fables by Bill Willingham et al. (FINISHED to date in May)
3. Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan et al. (FINISHED to date in September)
4. Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
5. The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
6. Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan et al. (FINISHED to date in July)
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (even though I hate them, but I’ve read the others, so I should be able to knock this out) (FINISHED in February)

Hosted by Kathrin at Secret Dreamworld of a Bookaholic.

Final Update: Did OK with this challenge (although I’m now behind with the purple Wimpy Kid… *le sigh*).

2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge

Oh, this is gonna be a cakewalk. Since I generally read nearly 200 books a year, and I’m cheap as hell and never buy books, and always epic!fail out of reading my own books, I should be able to clear the Super Size Me 100 books level in my sleep. Of course, I have the resources of two great public library systems at my disposal.. in fact, to slightly handicap myself, I won’t count any books borrowed from my own school library. Still, though, I should rock the house on this one.

January: 14 library books read

February: 18 library books read

March: 9 library book read

April: 10 library books read

May: 13 library books read

June:  7 library books read

July: 15 library books read

August: 5 library books read

September: 11 library books read

October: 7 library books read

November: 5 library books read

December: 6 library books read

Hosted by J. Kaye.

Final Update: Great success with 116 library books read in 2010.

2010 A Buck a Book Challenge

What will I do with all my COLD HARD CASH, y’all? I mean, I pretty much already get paid to read since I’m a librarian, but I like literalism.

Cash total as of December: $202.00

Hosted by DelGal.

Final Update: I’m rich!

2010 TBR (To-Be-Read) Challenge

Here’s a challenge that will be a real… challenge. I’m absolutely miserable about reading my own books. Thankfully, I’ve slowed furious acquisition of new books since I’ve moved into a series of smaller and smaller apartments, but that hasn’t stopped me from hauling around books that have remained unread for ten years or more. So I’m going to have to make a concerted effort for this one.

Here’s my list (first twelve titles are the “real list” and the next twelve are “alternates”):

1. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Mimus by Lilli Thal
3. Fire by Kristin Cashore
4. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
5. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
6. Affinity by Sarah Waters
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller [READ 5/4/10]
8. The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
9. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
10. Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville
11. Black Maria by Kevin Young
12. Warhorses by Yusef Komunyakaa
13. Rats by Robert Sullivan
14. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
15. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
16. The Bedside Book of Beasts by Graeme Gibson
17. The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller
18. Readicide by Kelly Gallagher [READ 2/19/10]
19. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
20. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
21. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
22. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
23. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
24. Food Matters by Mark Bittman

Hosted by MizB.

Final Update: Epic!fail with reading my own books. I really suck at this.

Clover, Bee, and Reverie: A Poetry Challenge

Poetry is probably my biggest genre love, after fantasy and science fiction, but I far too rarely pick up a new book of poems to read. Here’s to making a concerted effort to change that this year. I’d love to sign up for the highest level of this, but it’s probably best to be slightly more conservative, so I’m trying for the “limerick” level, which would be five books of poems and two more books that are connected in some way (same form, author, time period, country of origin, etc.) Also, this challenge has the absolute BEST logos of all the ones I’ve seen, so props for that.

1. On Speaking Terms
2. Lighthead
3. Think Again
4. Questions About Angels
5. Fancy Beasts
6. Child of Nature [translation]
7. If There Is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems [translation]

Hosted by Jason Gignac.

Final Update: Success with seven poetry books read in 2010 and one mini-challenge completed.

The Short Story Reading Challenge

I always try to have a short story collection going alongside all my other reading, so I think this challenge will be great for encouraging me to read more than one story in a sitting and finish the anthologies I have piling up. So I’m going to try to read five short story collections this year, and hopefully I’ll actually finish more than that.

1. There Once Was a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales
2. Firebirds Soaring
3. The Dragon Book
4. The Beastly Bride

Hosted by Kate S.

Final Update: Fell slightly short on this one with four short story collections read in 2010.

Chunkster Reading Challenge

Last one, I swear! And probably the most foolish, given how many of these goddamn things I’ve signed up for, but I am nothing if not a reading masochist. I’m sure some of those big ol’ Pulitzers will help with this too, so I’m in for the “Mor-Book-Ly Obese” (har har), or six behemoths in 2010. Saints preserve us.

1. The Store (571 pgs.)
2. Catch-22 (454 pgs.)
3. Years of Grace (592 pgs.)
4. The Passage (784 pgs.)
5. The Help (451 pgs.)

Hosted by Wendy.

Final Update: Fell slightly short with five behemoths conquered in 2010.