Read lists for various reading Challenges
"What's In A Name?" Reading Challenge
Dates: January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2008
The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.
1. A book with a colour in its title.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
2. A book with an animal in its title.
Twelve Red Herrings by Jeffrey Archer
3. A book with a first name in its title.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Stowe
4. A book with a place in its title.
The Russia House by John Le Carre
5. A book with a weather event in its title.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
6. A book with a plant in its title.
King's Oak by Anne Rivers Siddons
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The Expanding Horizons Challenge will run January through April of 2008. The purpose of this challenge is to read works by authors of ethnicities other than your own. There are two ways to approach this challenge. Either read four books by authors in one of the six categories (you can read more than one category, but you must read four books; not two books in one category and two in another) OR read six books, one from each of the six categories. The categories are:
1. African/African-American.
2. Asian/Asian-American (This is not just East Asian -- Chinese, Korean and Japanese -- but also Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, and the Central Asian -Stans.)
3. Hispanic/Latin American
4. Indian/Indian-American (Again, books by Indian authors; not books by white authors set in India.)
5. Middle Eastern (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Turkey...)
6. Native Peoples (Can include Native American, Inuit, Polynesian --Maori, Samoan, etc -- Siberian natives and Australian Aborigines.)
My Tentative 6 books are:
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Italian)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian)
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan-born British novelist)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Japanese)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Hispanic)
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk ( Turkish Novelist)
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Speculative Fiction Challenge Timeline:
The Date You Are Reading This - April 1st, 2008
Elaborations:
- Speculative fiction
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy
- Alternate History
- Magic realism
My tentative list:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Sophie's World By Jostein Gaarder
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The First Men in the Moon by H G Wells
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Dracula By Bram Stoker
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For Numbers Challenge, one is to read 5 books whose titles have a number in them.
It goes on from Jan 1, 2008 to June 1, 2008.
My tentative list:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Twelve Red Herrings by Jeffrey Archer
Three Muskeeters by Alexander Dumas
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Second Glance by Jodi Picoult
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
( I know these books overlap other challenges!!)