Over a month ago, Mark came up with a new book challenge for the year he called The Two-Thirds Book Challenge.
Right away I made my own list for the challenge but didn’t take the time to post it anywhere. I could cheat, use the same list, and declare myself halfway done … or I could revise the list and still give myself a decent challenge.
The original list:
- Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
- Technology Training in Libraries by Sarah Houghton-Jan
- Project Management book
- Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutcher
- Serendipities by Umberto Eco
- Lectures by Nabokov
- Lectures by Calvino
- Lectures by Borges
- Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris
- Late American Novel edited by Jeff Martin
- The Complete Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
- a poetry handbook or criticism book, of which we have several
- at least three fiction books from author’s I haven’t read yet
Of those books, I have since finished The Late American Novel (excellent!), more than three fiction books by new-to-me authors, I’m halfway through the Technology Training book, and I dismissed the project management book I had in mind because it turned out to be awful. Also, I am going to be honest with myself and admit that I will probably not read any of the Lectures books until possibly late December.
I’m also learning something about myself over the past year of trying to read various “lists” of books — I don’t really do specifics. As in, within six weeks of listing a specific title, I probably won’t want to read it anymore if I haven’t read it already. But I do follow themes. Themes and general topics with plenty of room for options works very well for me. Therefore my Two-Thirds Book list will not be a list of titles, but of themes that I want to pursue, with some potential titles as examples. If I can read from two-thirds of these themes over the next twelve months, I will be very happy indeed.
With all that in mind, here is my new list, with links to the respective GoodReads shelf I’ve created for each:
One of the benefits of looking at my books in themes and then setting myself the challenge of reading from at least two-thirds of the themes is the opportunity to get more diverse reading in. I’ve been a glutton for fiction lately, and my GoodReads list shows that — 34 books to read in fiction! No other “theme” gets even close to that. The next highest is a shelf called “Books on Books” with 18 titles, some of which overlap with the “Erudition” shelf listed above.
If you’d like to participate in the challenge, create a list of books (or themes) somewhere and put the link in a comment on Mark’s blog. Happy reading!
Epist 
1 comment
November 13, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Beth
Themes work better for me. I will get excited about a book I hear about but then disappointed when bogged down in the second chapter. Themes are flexible and leave room for changing my mind. Not that I do that a lot…but specific titles are good too, sometimes. Depending on my mood or hot flash or whichever comes first…. Reading, yes!