June's reading plans ...

This month's 12x12 Challenge is being hosted by Stephanie at Misfit Salon. I'm signing up for June. As a reminder, the 12x12 challenge is actually 12 monthly challenges, each hosted by a different blogger. Rules, as posted on Home Girl's Book Blog 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 January June. I guess if you got some cool books for Christmas, Hanukkah or some other gift-giving event and jumped the gun, you can't be blamed. But I only count books I start and finish within the 31 day window.
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 June goal is going to be 10 books. It was almost a stretch for me to finish 10 books in May, so I'm not going to set my goal any higher for June. BUT. I'm not going to count it a success unless I've read either The Warden by Anthony Trollope or The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I'd like to read both of them this month, but realize I might not manage both of those as well as the large list of books which I have promised to book-swapping friends at BookObsessed.

There are 26 books which I have offered in Swaps or Virtual Book Boxes at BookObsessed but I have not yet read. Since there's a six-month grace period, I should have no problems catching up ... unless I get distracted reading something other than a book that I'm using in a swap. Right now I'm busy reading two of the owed books: July's People by Nadine Gordimer and the book that I am playing with in this week's non-fiction swap. As my book hasn't been revealed, yet, I won't post the title here.

And here are some of the books that I need to read in the order that they need to be mailed out:

• July's People by Nadine Gordimer; to be mailed by 19 June to Lisa
• Daughter of Elysium by Joan Slonczewski; to be mailed by 30 July to Fotini
• The Widows Club by Dorothy Cannell; to be mailed by 31 July to Cindy
• Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier; to be read by 19 August to Dana
• Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian; to be mailed by 22 August to Azuki
• Midnighters: The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld; to be mailed by 28 August to Tanya
• Map of bones by James Rollins; to be mailed by 28 August to Dana
• Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs;to be mailed by 28 August to Lisa

While I probably will read most of these books during June, I probably won't read them in precisely this order. I'm going to slip a couple of other books in there just for fun, and as I've already mentioned, I plan to read either the Trollope novel or the first of the Wheel of Time novels.

Books mentioned in this post: