100 Shots of Shorts

Dates: Whenever. (Gotta love that!)

Host: Rob

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Read one hundred short stories.

My list:

1. "Down to a Sunless Sea" by Mathias B. Freese (1/3/09)
2. "I'll Make It, I Think" by Mathias B. Freese (1/10/09)
3. "The Father Thing" by Philip K. Dick (1/12/09)
4. "Orange" by Neil Gaiman (1/17/09)
5. "Ass-Hat Magic Spider" by Scott Westerfeld (1/17/09)
6. "The Menace From Earth" by Robert Heinlein (1/17/09)
7. "The Home Team" by Greg Wickenhofer (1/17/09)
8. "Summer All in a Day" by Ray Bradbury (1/18/09)
9. "Cheats" by Ann Halam (1/18/09)
10. "The Fluted Girl" by Paolo Bacigulupi (1/18/09)
11. "The Harvest" by Amy Hempel (1/23/09)
12. "The Surfer" by Kelly Link (1/31/09)
13. "The Chatham Bear" by Mathias B. Freese (1/31/09)
14. "Herbie" by Mathias B. Freese (2/14/09)
15. "Alabaster" by Mathias B. Freese (2/15/09)
16. "Juan Peron's Hands" by Mathias B. Freese (2/15/09)
17. "Little Errands" by Mathias B. Freese (2/16/09)
18. "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father Was a Nazi" by Mathias B. Freese (2/17/09)
19. "Echo" by Mathias B. Freese (2/20/09)
20. "Chicxulb" by T.C. Boyle (2/23/09)
21. "Young Man" by Mathias B. Freese (3/1/09)
22. "Nicholas" by Mathias B. Freese (3/7/09)
23. "Billy's Mirrored Wall" by Mathias B. Freese (3/8/09)
24. "The Babysitter's Code" by Laura Lippman (3/9/09)
25. "Unanswerable" by Mathias B. Freese (3/12/09)
26. "For a While, Here, In this Moment" by Mathias B. Freese (3/17/09)
27. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor (3/17/09)
28. "The April Witch" by Ray Bradbury (3/21/09)
29. "Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair" by Charles de Lint (3/22/09)
30. “No One’s a Mystery” by Elizabeth Tallent (3/23/09)
31. "Repair Kit" by Stephen Baxter (7/5/09)
32. "Phantom Pain" by Lydia Peelle (8/3/09)
33. "Madame Rosette" by Roald Dahl (9/6/09)
34. "Man from the South" by Roald Dahl (9/6/09)
35. "Sound Machine" by Roald Dahl (9/?/09)
36. "Taste" by Roald Dahl (9/25/09)

*Stories by Mathias B. Freese are from Down to a Sunless Sea.

9 for '09

Dates: December 27th of 2008 through December 27th of 2009

Host: Isabel

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Read one book from each of nine categories. All books must already be in your TBR pile.

My list:

*The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. (This is for the "long" category. Each participant gets to choose their own definition of long...it is to be longer than one's typical read. But I read books of all different lengths, so I wasn't sure what to choose. Finally went with a book that would have fit in the Chunkster Challenge parameters at 485 pages.)

*News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (This is for the "free" category. I got this one from Paperback Swap.)

*Black Sunday by Thomas Harris (This is for the "dusty" category. I've had this one on my shelves for well over 5 years.)

*Five Past Midnight in Bhopal by Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro (This is for the "used" category. Bought this used from Amazon.)

*The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (This is for the "letter" category. For this category, one needs to choose a title that has a letter of one's name in it. I found one that had all the letters of my first name in it.)

*Sleeping With Ward Cleaver by Jenny Gardiner (This is for the "strange" category. Chick lit is definitely out of my comfort zone.)

*The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan. (This is for the "cover" category. I love the cover of this one! Definitely why I picked it up to start with.)

*An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (This is for the "alive or dead" category. For this category, one needs to choose a book by an award winning/award nominated author. The book chosen for the challenge does not necessarily have to be the award winner/nominee.)

*The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost (This is for the "distance" category. For this category, one needs to choose a book set over 1,000 miles from one's home. The South Pacific definitely fits the bill.)

42 Challenge

Dates: January 1st through December 3rd of 2009 (officially)...but permission has been granted to start anytime

Host: Becky

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Read and/or watch and/or listen to 42 items in the realm of science fiction. No need to make list ahead of time.

My list (to be filled in as I go):

1. The Thing, directed by John Carpenter (film)
2. Fahrenheit 451, directed by François Truffaut (film)
3. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (novel)
4. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (novel)
5. "I Am The Doorway" by Stephen King, from Night Shift (short story)
6. "The Father Thing" by Philip K. Dick (short story)
7. "Orange" by Neil Gaiman (short story)
8. "Ass-Hat Magic Spider" by Scott Westerfeld (short story)
9. "The Menace From Earth" by Robert Heinlein (short story)
10. "The Home Team" by Greg Wickenhofer (short story)
11. "Summer All in a Day" by Ray Bradbury (short story)
12. "Cheats" by Ann Halam (short story)
13. "The Fluted Girl" by Paolo Bacigulupi (short story)
14. "The Surfer" by Kelly Link (short story)
15. The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge by Harry Harrison (novel)
16. A Sound of Thunder directed by Peter Hyams (film)
17. The Dead & the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (novel)
18. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (novel)
19. "Repair Kit" by Stephen Baxter (short story)
20. Masters of Science Fiction "A Clean Escape" (TV show episode)
21. Masters of Science Fiction "The Awakening" (TV show episode)
22. Stargate directed by Roland Emmerich (film)
23. Masters of Science Fiction "Jerry Was a Man" (TV show episode)
24. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
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RIP IV

Dates: September 1st of 2009 through October 31st of 2009

Host: Carl

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Read 1, 2, or at least 4 books of a mysterious, suspenseful, chilling, creepy, gothic, horrific, etc. nature.


My list:

*Pemba's Song: A Ghost Story by Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
*The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Classics Challenge '09

Date: April 1st through October 31st of 2009

Host: Trish

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Choose a level (4, 5, or 6 classics). For extra fun, add a bonus of a modern/future classic from the list of suggestions that the participants come up with.

My tentative list:

*The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

*All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

*The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Bonus book:

???

The End of the World (As We Know It) '09

Date: March 10th through October 9th of 2009

Host: Becky

For details: Click here.

The challenge (put simply): Read at least four books of the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic variety.

My list of possibles (with the exception of the last on the list, I stuck with books we already own):

*The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers

*Germ by Robert Liparulo

*The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

*Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

*Category 7 by Bill Evans

*Black Hole by Charles Burns

*Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

*Folk on the Fringe by Orson Scott Card

*The Road by Cormac McCarthy

*Cell by Stephen King

*World War Z by Max Brooks

*The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

*Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

*The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

*Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (as a possible reread, because I really don't remember it)

*The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (which I just got out of the library...how convenient)

Non-Fiction Five '09

Dates: May 1st through September 30th of 2009

Host: Trish

For details: Click here.

The Challenge (put simply): Read 5 non-fiction books, with at least one of them in a different "category" than the rest.

My list of possibles:

*Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (science)
*The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA by Mark Schultz (science)
*The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (history)
*Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (graphic memoir)
*The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarte Troost (travel)
*Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul by Edward Humes (current events)
*Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (diary)
*The Hot Zone by Richard Preston (medicine)
*Zodiac by Robert Graysmith (true crime)
*College-Prep Homeschooling: Your Complete Guide to Homeschooling through High School by David P. Byers, Ph.D. and Chandra Byers (how-to)
*Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (economics/sociology)
*Walden by Henry David Thoreau (environmental essay)
*Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon (economics/travel)
*Pedro and Me by Judd Winick (memoir?)
*Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey (language/writing)
*Normal by Amy Bloom (sociology/science)
*Affluenza by DeGraaf, Winn, and Naylor (sociology/economics/environment)
*A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (history/personal stories)