Book Goals, 2010
This is the danger with being (a) unemployed, (b) active in online book communities, and (c) waaaaaaaay too happy to make lists.
I have joined four (!!!) reading challenges for this year; two of them I even organized myself. If I don't double-count books, I have committed myself to reading 109 new-to-me books this year, including some very long ones (Three Musketeers, Anna Karenina, something by Dickens. . . all for my classics challenge; plus 85 of the books are going to be either science fiction or fantasy, where the average page length for newly published books has to be 500+).
I'm not doing too badly so far. . . I'm on my fourth book of the year and all of them have filled a challenge category in one of my challenges. However, already I have come up on two major flaws in this brilliant plan of mine: first, the book I am currently reading (Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) has me craving a reread (of Connie Willis' tribute to this book, aptly titled To Say Nothing of the Dog) and I didn't plan time for rereads; second, in the course of these challenges I have already discovered two new series' that I love (Kage Baker's Novels of the Company series and Barbara Hambly's Sun Wolf and Starhawk series) but I've already filled all of the categories that these books can count for and there are still more in the series!
So what's a poor anal-retentive girl to do at this juncture? Do I start double-counting, or have books qualify in multiple challenges? Do I set my sights a little lower and aim for modified challenges? Or do I just buckle down and read even more than I would normally, so that I can fit in my rereads, my new series', and still complete the challenges I signed up for?
Really, I don't have much choice, do I?
In case anyone is curious about the challenges I signed up for, I will post them here; feel free to join me -- I think they're pretty fun. I'm already tracking my progress on two other websites (Shelfari and PaperbackSwap; you should be able to find me and the challenges without much trouble if you belong to either of those sites, and if you don't already but want to join please do list me as your referral!) so I may or may not update LiveJournal with my day-to-day progress as well, but I'm sure I will at the end of the year when I have either succeeded or failed miserably because my eyes have fallen out of my head with fatigue (or because I got a job and could no longer spend massive amounts of time reading -- really I'd prefer this outcome to the other).
And if you can guess which two challenges bear my authorial mark, you get a (theoretical) gold star! :)
I have joined four (!!!) reading challenges for this year; two of them I even organized myself. If I don't double-count books, I have committed myself to reading 109 new-to-me books this year, including some very long ones (Three Musketeers, Anna Karenina, something by Dickens. . . all for my classics challenge; plus 85 of the books are going to be either science fiction or fantasy, where the average page length for newly published books has to be 500+).
I'm not doing too badly so far. . . I'm on my fourth book of the year and all of them have filled a challenge category in one of my challenges. However, already I have come up on two major flaws in this brilliant plan of mine: first, the book I am currently reading (Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) has me craving a reread (of Connie Willis' tribute to this book, aptly titled To Say Nothing of the Dog) and I didn't plan time for rereads; second, in the course of these challenges I have already discovered two new series' that I love (Kage Baker's Novels of the Company series and Barbara Hambly's Sun Wolf and Starhawk series) but I've already filled all of the categories that these books can count for and there are still more in the series!
So what's a poor anal-retentive girl to do at this juncture? Do I start double-counting, or have books qualify in multiple challenges? Do I set my sights a little lower and aim for modified challenges? Or do I just buckle down and read even more than I would normally, so that I can fit in my rereads, my new series', and still complete the challenges I signed up for?
Really, I don't have much choice, do I?
In case anyone is curious about the challenges I signed up for, I will post them here; feel free to join me -- I think they're pretty fun. I'm already tracking my progress on two other websites (Shelfari and PaperbackSwap; you should be able to find me and the challenges without much trouble if you belong to either of those sites, and if you don't already but want to join please do list me as your referral!) so I may or may not update LiveJournal with my day-to-day progress as well, but I'm sure I will at the end of the year when I have either succeeded or failed miserably because my eyes have fallen out of my head with fatigue (or because I got a job and could no longer spend massive amounts of time reading -- really I'd prefer this outcome to the other).
And if you can guess which two challenges bear my authorial mark, you get a (theoretical) gold star! :)