It's that time of year again when I sit down and think "What do I want to read this year?". When I first started my personal book challenge it was 2010 and half the year was already gone. So I randomly said 25 books because there were about 25 weeks left in that year. Then in 2011, I said 52 books because I really did want to try and read one book per week. I had no rhyme or reason to what I picked up. If it looked interesting, I started reading it. I was in graduate school at the time, so I will readily admit that sometimes if it looked like "light/easy reading" I scooped it up too. Not much thought went into the selections.
This year, I am finished with school and basically will be back to a relatively normal working schedule so I should have more time most evenings to read a little bit. I wanted to actually take some time this year and pre-select the books so I could read with intention. Well before I get too Zen on you, here is the breakdown of my 2012 reading challenge.
6 categories: 5 books from each category....so 30 books total
Here is the list for each category:
BIOGRAPHY / MEMOIR
1. Malcolm X: A Life of Re-invention by Manning Marable
2. Open Wide the Freedom Gates by Dorothy Height
3. Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
4. Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda
5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
CLASSICS
1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
RECOMMENDED (by friends or websites)
1. 18 acres by Nicole Wallace
2. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
3. Game of Thrones by George Martin
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
5. Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran
NON-FICTION
1. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
2. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
3. The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins
4. Happier Than a Billionaire by Nadine Hays Pisani
5. Life is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel by Judith Fein
RE-VISITS (I want to see if I have more insight this time around)
1. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
2. A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin
3. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
ON THE SHELF (a.k.a. books that have been staring at me from my book shelf for years)
1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
3. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
4. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
5. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
I have no idea if I will make it through all these books, but the whole point is to have fun and learn something new. I know I will do that! Happy Reading!
