It’s that time of year…and I had planned to talk about it in this week’s Sunday Salon, but I didn’t get a chance to write one. However, when Weekly Geeks posted it as this week’s topic, I decided I’d make my response a special belated Salon post as well. Becky asked:
Do you plan on participating in any reading challenges in 2011? Are you planning on hosting any reading challenges? Are there any challenges you are looking forward to that haven’t been announced yet? Regardless of your challenge plans, are you starting to plan ahead for next year? Do you make lists or goals? Are you a person who enjoys reading more if it is structured? Or are you all about being free to read what you want, when you want?
I’ve had a mixed record with reading challenges, so I try not to sign on for too many. I’m not officially on board with any 2011 challenges yet, but I have been thinking about them as I see new announcements posted every day. I plan to sign up again for Melissa’s Memorable Memoirs Challenge once she opens it up – memoirs are my preferred nonfiction genre, so I’m pretty motivated for this one. (UPDATED: Signups for this challenge are now open!)
“Read books related to Mad Men.
And when I say “related,” the relationship can be tangential… You get to choose.
Think:
– books read by characters on the show
– books published in the late 1950s and early/mid-1960s
– books about the early/mid-1960s: JFK, LBJ, feminism, race relations, space race, Cold War, Vietnam War
– books about advertising
Anything that you can tie in to Mad Men qualifies.”
I’m mad about Mad Men, so I’m not even trying to resist this year-long challenge! But I’m keeping it relatively low-key, and committing to the HALF-PAGE AD level, which requires me to read just 3 books—at least 1 fiction and 1 nonfiction.
In other encore challenges, I’m waiting to find out whether MizB will be hosting the Read Your Own Books Challenge again. This challenge has helped me fight the temptation to get buried in review books and kept me on track to read at least 20 of my own books in 2009 and 2010; I almost feel a need to participate in it!
In other reading plans, I’ll be starting 2011 heavy on the nonfiction as part of the judging panel for that category of the inaugural Indie Lit Awards. I’m also excited about participating in the 2011 edition of the Faith and Fiction Roundtable (and yes, our host Amy is well aware of my questioning tendencies and non-churchgoing status, so I particularly appreciate her accepting me into the group), and I’m open to more read-alongs. At this point, I intend to scale back back even further on general review-book commitments, but I’ve said that before, so we’ll see how well I manage to adhere to it…
What items have made it on to your 2011 reading agenda so far?
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