As the year progressed I didn't follow it as much, but I got most of them one way or another.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 01/01/2012 01:43:29 PM
Did you succeed with all you were doing?
The Not-So-Dirty Half Dozen Challenge.
The Tasks:
1. Read a work of Classic literature - one you've never read before.
Check (Paradise Lost, and many others throughout the year).
2. Read a book by an author from a country you've not read a book from before.
Check (My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk - I had intended to take an obscurer country though, or at least an author that I didn't already intend to read anyway, and failed at that).
3. Read one Scifi, one Fantasy and one Spec Fic book (i.e. three separate books, and they can be books you've read before, if you like).
Check, but not in that time period, I don't think.
4. Read a graphic novel, a play or a collection of poetry you've not read before.
Check, but again not in those months - read Tennyson's incredible In Memoriam A.H.H..
5. Read a book and then watch a film of that book (again, you can have read the book before).
Check, though I forgot to make a post about it, and the book was perhaps a bit of a lightweight: Breaking Dawn.
Didn't get around yet to watching the We Need To Talk About Kevin movie. 6. Read a non-fiction book you've not read before.
Check, various throughout the year, currently am reading another one but not finished yet.
Genre Challenge
Quite simply, just read one book from each of the genres below before the year is out. Rereads are allowed; it's up to you whether you choose all new books or not. I probably won't.
I haven't reread a single book all year, a decision I took when after a number of months I realized I'd only been reading new books so far. I don't intend to make that decision permanent or anything, though.
- Historical Fiction/Alternative History
Sir Walter Scott - Waverley (and others)
- Western
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
- Horror
The closest I came was probably some short stories in Michel Faber's The Fahrenheit Twins. So not really.
- Mystery
Idem.
- (Auto-) Biography
André Castelot - Bonaparte, Anthony Summers - Goddess (Marilyn Monroe), and currently Lawrence J. Quirk - Fasten Your Seatbelts (Bette Davis).
- History
Various, including most notably Tony Judt - Postwar and Hugh Kennedy - The Great Conquests of the Arabs.
- Family chronicle
D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow (though I didn't really think about this when picking it to read, it's just in hindsight that I realize it qualifies...)
- Allegory/parody/satire
Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities
- Surrealist novel
Thomas Pynchon - Vineland
- Extra option for those who can: a novel in a foreign language
German: Charlotte Link's Das Letzte Spur, Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete, Cornelia Funke's Tintentod.
French: Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, Elisabeth Vonarburg's Les Rêves de la Mer, Milan Kundera's L'Ignorance.
Funnily enough, looking at my list of books I've read this year, I have to conclude I've read a grand total of zero novels in my native language (I did read a few non-fiction books in Dutch, but still only a handful). Which is becoming a bit shameful, I suppose... I'm getting to be far better read in British and even French literature than in contemporary Flemish and Dutch literature.
Old Favourite:
The 50 Book Challenge. Says it all, really.
Made it, but with absolutely no room to spare - currently busy with the 51st book. And the first book on the list I'd mostly read in 2010, as I recall, so...
I doubt I'll get there again this year, especially if I continue my extremely time-consuming efforts to read the Qur'an, or something else in Arabic.
If you're an extra-speedy reader then make it 100 books. List 'em all, starting from January.
See my profile.
And one more thing:
It's a good time for you to pick up a book you've been meaning to read for ages. Just tell us which book it is in the post that will be made on 1 January and then read it sometime in 2011.
I think I picked Paradise Lost for this, there's a few others that might qualify.
The 2011 RAFO Challenges: how did you get on?
- 01/01/2012 11:05:22 AM
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I achieved some and failed at others.
- 01/01/2012 11:32:00 AM
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Some interesting things in your list... a few that I really need to read.
- 01/01/2012 01:58:34 PM
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I really couldn't get into The Dervish House when i tried to read it.
- 01/01/2012 02:06:31 PM
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Re: Some interesting things in your list... a few that I really need to read.
- 01/01/2012 04:02:41 PM
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As the year progressed I didn't follow it as much, but I got most of them one way or another.
- 01/01/2012 01:43:29 PM
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