Challenges!

As if 24 hours of marathon reading and blogging weren't enough, I'm going to go ahead and set some reading challenges for the rest of the year. I thought about it at the end of 2009, but I had gotten very lax about posting to the blog, so I didn't step up to any challenges. I am, however, still reading and keeping lists (such as the Books Read in 2010 page), so all I need to do is sign up for a couple of challenges, and make a public announcement about my goals. And then, of course, I need to post about my progress toward meeting the challenges.

The first challenge is the 12 by 12 Reading Challenge. The idea behind this challenge came from FOMA’s National Just Read More Novels Month and Pizza’s Book Discussion. There are twelve book bloggers who are hosting their own Just Read More Novels Month throughout 2010. April's challenge is hosted by Sheila over at One Person's Journey through a World of Books. If you want to join me, see the sign-up post.

The rules are simple:

1. Must Be A Novel. Works of fiction only, please. Memoirs, non-fiction, how-to books, and Garfield collections don't count.
2. Memoirs Aren't Novels. No matter how made up the story, anything ostensibly true isn't a novel. Also known as The James Frey Rule.
3. Start and Finish in ****. (April, for example)
4. Re-reading Doesn't Count. Try something new. Read something by your favorite author or try an entirely new author or tackle that novel you have always wanted to read.
5. Have Fun. Nobody is grading you or paying you or judging you. Read what you like and like what you read.

My personal challenge will be to complete 12 novels in the month of April. Now I think this is going to be a pretty easy challenge. After all, I read mostly novels, and I've read 11 or more books every month this year (so far). I sneak in an occasional memoir, but no other non-fiction and I detest short stories, so it's novels all the time. I won't claim that much of what I read falls into the "literary novel" category, but I do plan to expand my horizons this year.

I'm also going to join the Anthony Trollope Mini-Challenge. This challenge asks each participant to read two of Trollope's works by 31 December 2010. I've been intending to read Trollope for a while, so by announcing my participation in this challenge, I'll be aware that there may be some others who will be watching to see if I meet my goal. My personal challenge will be to read the first two books in Trollope's Chronicles of Barset, alternately called the Barsetshire Chronicles. These first two novels are The Warden and Barchester Towers. Since the text of these novels is now in the public domain, I will download them for reading on my Kindle or Sony reader.

Why Trollope? and Why the Barset Novels? Well, I've long felt that I needed to fill in the gaps in my reading of literary novels and in particular those by writers of renown. The Barset Novels have been described as "hugely entertaining series of novels set among the clergy and landed gentry of Barsetshire." So, I'm going to start with this series and hope that I get much farther in than just the first two books before the end of the year.

Watch this space, 'cause I see some other challenges I may accept. And a personal challenge to update this blog at LEAST two times a month.