Showing posts with label reading challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading challenge. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Reading Challenges for 2011

As if I didn't have enough on my plate already, and as if I didn't know what I'd be in for judging from my experiences with the A-Z Reading Challenge in 2010, I took on-- not just one-- but two challenges this year! Yes, I'm a laidback kinda girl...


I signed up for FFP's 2011 Quantity Challenge, where I get to dictate how many books I aim to finish, which is good except I put down 100 books because it's such a pretty number, without really thinking if I can read that many. Anyway, I figure I can make things easier by reading 50 children's books, because they are books, too, and 50 novels. But knowing me, I'll think that's cheating so that won't happen. In fact, for the A-Z, I read the books in alphabetical order, because that's how the alphabet goes. Just so you know, I finished way before the deadline. [insert smug grin here]



I also signed up for another one, the Whodunit Reading Challenge by GatheringBooks because, hopefully, it can push me to blog more often; because it sounds like a lot of (geeky) fun; because they have cute buttons I can decorate my page with; because there are book prizes and I have never won anything in my life; because I'm a big masochist (duh); and because it can overlap with the other challenges I've already signed up for. Besides, I'm only supposed to read 9 or more crime/mystery/suspense novels to reach Level 4: Criminal Genius/Mastermind. That's not so many.


I'm currently on my 23rd (and 24th, and 25th... I'm a polybookist) book for the year so I only have to read... hold on while I do the math... one book every 4.35897436 days!


So if there's anyone out there who wants to talk to me or invite me for coffee, please pencil me in for January 2012. This one's going to be a busy year.

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Monday, February 1, 2010

I need a life


Curse the A-Z reading challenge.

Despite my misgivings, I accepted the challenge to read works by 26 authors whose last names represent each letter of the alphabet, in the hope of broadening my literary spectrum and to push myself to write more often, as I plan to post a review of each book on my blog. Alphabetically, of course -- both in reading and writing the reviews-- for no reason other than I'm horribly sick that way.

It's been a month since I picked up my first book for the challenge, a Paul Auster, and I'm currently engrossed in the first few chapters of Mary Gaitskill's Veronica. I've been burying myself deep into the pages of, luckily, one good book after another, getting less than my minimum requirement of vitamin D when I step out of the house in search of those authors' novels missing from my list.

I perform the necessary daily ablutions, albeit mindlessly, and satisfy my need for nourishment, but I can't remember the last time I brushed my hair and I often find myself wondering where Friday (or Saturday, or Sunday...) went. Every weekend, my in-laws come to visit. My mother-in law claims I'm shades fairer and thinner, and she has taken upon herself the frustrating chore of fattening me up and entertaining me with her anecdotes (most of which I swear I've heard many times over), because, apparently, she thinks I'm in need of social interaction as well.

But for all my love for her and gratitude for her efforts which do not go unnoticed, as she is wont to perform them with theatrical flourish, I can't wait for the elusive lull in the conversation so that I can go back to my reading.

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Thursday, January 7, 2010

The Reading Challenge


Books are an addiction. Admittedly, I find perverse comfort in simply being surrounded by them, each one covered snugly in plastic and lined up neatly in the shelves. But more than that, I'm wont to read ravenously, insatiably. Sometimes, though only temporarily to restore some semblance of sanity and domestic peace, I willfully wean myself off reading especially after a rapid succession of novels, because the activity is all-consuming and so enthralling that it renders me emotionally incontinent. My moods during these rabid phases are ordained by what I'm currently reading-- irritable when the characterization is shoddy, giggly when the dialogue is witty, relaxed when the pace is leisurely, and ebullient when the writing is brilliant. Changes in domicile are largely due to one author or another.

It is for this reason that I feel I cannot write an acceptable book review. I am too neurotic. The best I can do is offer my opinion on whether I liked a book or not, because reading is such pure personal pleasure that it is impossible for me to be unemotional about it, or at least write with a modicum of objectivity.

But I will write some, in spite of.

I have started 2010 in the time-honoured tradition of making a new year's resolution I'm bound to break anyway. I accepted a challenge to read works by authors whose last names represent each letter of the alphabet. This is not a doomsday prophesy as much as it is an admission of stubborn pride. I am viscerally averse to being told what to do, and in this case, what to read, by virtue of the authors' last names. However, I must confess to something of a taste for challenge. And to help me keep track of my progress, I will try to blog about the books I've read. Loosely, for purposes of classification, to write book reviews.

Hopefully, I don't get sidetracked and rearrange the alphabet along the way.

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