My Reading Challenges

-
Here are the challenges that I'm committing myself to for 2010. You'll also find here links my reading goals or resolutions for the year.


Challenges for 2010:
My personal reading goal is to read 41 titles from my TBR. I chose these 41 books because each is present in at least one of the lists in my perpetual challenges. Considering this reading goal, I've officially joined the following challenges:

The 2010 TBR Challenge

hosted by Miz B
Books for this challenge:
  1. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  2. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
  5. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
  6. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
  7. Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg - DONE
  8. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  9. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (DONE)
  10. The Sea by John Banville
  11. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
  12. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
Chunkster Reading Challenge



hosted by caribousmom
Books for this challenge:
  1. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1474 pp.)
  2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (822 pp.)
  3. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (511 pp.)
  4. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (700 pp.)
  5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (936 pp.)
  6. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (576 pp.)
  7. Watership Down by Richard Adams (474 pp.) - DONE!





The other titles in my personal reading challenge for 2010
  1. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
  2. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
  3. Delta of Venus - Anais Nin
  4. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
  5. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
  6. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  7. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
  8. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
  9. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
  10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  11. Neuromancer - William Gibson
  12. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
  13. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  14. Saturday - Ian McEwan
  15. Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
  16. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
  17. Sula - Toni Morrison
  18. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
  19. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
  20. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
  21. The Gathering - Anne Enright
  22. The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Soledad's Sister by Jose Dalisay, Jr.

-
Image
Soledad's Sister  by Jose "Butch" Dalisay is the first Philippine novel to be shortlisted for the distinguished Man Asian Literary Prize  in 2007. I remember reading about the Man Asian at that time and finding out about Dalisay's shortlisted novel. And I recall thinking, "Well, that sounds about right." After all, Butch Dalisay is one of the country's premier writers.This much is evident when you read Soledad's Sister . Way back in college, I was fortunate enough to have Butch Dalisay as one of my professors. The class was an undergrad course on Survey of American Literature, and I remember every single story and poem we took up to this day. I also remember him reading to us one of his essays during class. He had his Mac open on his desk and was reading his essay from the screen. Back then, I was thinking, "This should be boring. But it isn't." And I realized it wasn't boring because I was entranced by his words. The summary...
Read more

Filipino authors with internationally-published books

-
Image
Some of the books from Filipino authors published by intl. publishers. Clockwise from top left: Age of Blight by Kristine Ong Muslim; The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco; The Courageous Princess Vol. 1 by Rod Espinosa; Learning To Fall by Mina Esguerra, Smaller And Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan; The Last Time I'll Write About You by Dawn Lanuza. It seems an exciting time for Filipino authors. A Filipina YA author was at the Brooklyn Book Festival and other festivals, some Filipino authors just wrapped up panels during the Fil-Am International Book Festival in San Francisco , a few other Fil-Am authors are coming out with new books from a major publisher in the next few months ( literary fiction , young adult , and middle grade ), and another classic author was recently published by Penguin Classics. Not to mention that a few Filipino authors have been pitching at #dvpit and have already found agents . And I'm pretty sure I'm barely scratching the surface her...
Read more

The El Bimbo Variations by Adam David

-
Image
When reading a poetry collection, one of the last things you expect to do is laugh out loud. But, if you were to read Adam David's new edition of The El Bimbo Variations , that is exactly what you'd be doing. My advice: try not to read it in public, unless you're okay with people looking at you weird because your shoulders are suddenly shaking in laughter or you have a snap-happy grin on your face. I first read The El Bimbo Variations back when it was still in pdf format. Four years ago, the poet Adam David gave a talk to one of our high school junior classes during a yearly activity where we expose students to real-life writers. In preparation, he sent us  a copy of his El Bimbo Variations , and told me that we could distribute it to the students so that they'd know his work. We photocopied them for the classes assigned to Adam and, on the day of the talk, I went in and listened to his session where he got riled up about big publishers and their limited repertoire...
Read more