Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Twitter & Blog Challenges

Hello All!

I have been on Twitter for about 5 months now, and have found a whole bunch of book bloggers to follow! It's a lot of fun, seeing and hearing about what others are reading and blogging about, and for me, easier than following blogs via RSS.

Several of these bloggers, and I assume many others, make up or follow reading challenges. These are lists of books to read in a particular genre, by a certain author, or just a number of books to read by a certain date. There are two cool ones in particular I'm planning on participating in:

Lost in Books blogger Rebecca (http://imlostinbooks.blogspot.com/2009/09/4-3-2-1countdown-challenge.html ) is participating in a countdown challenge, and this one may only sound like fun to me, but I think I can come up with a good list for this:

"What is the Countdown Challenge? The goal of this challenge is to read the number of books first published in a given year that corresponds to the last digit of each year in the 2000s — 10 books from 2010, 9 books from 2009, 8 books from 2008, etc. The total number of books required, therefore, is 55.

This challenge lasts from 9/9/09 through 10/10/10.

Crossovers with other challenges are allowed and your lists may change at any time.So that is a total of 55 books that can be overlapped with other challenges. Plus, as long as the book is published in the year you put it for, it can be fiction, nonfiction, biography, mystery, literary fiction, romance, whatever."

Making the list may be the most fun part...

The other challenge I'm looking forward to I read about on http://www.bookclubgirl.com/, and it seems as if Booking Mama conceived this one. It's the Shelf Discovery challenge, based on the book by the same name, which I happened to receive as an advance reading copy last year. The full title of the book is Shelf Discovery: Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzy Skurnick, and it's lists and commentary on classic teen books girls loved to read. I loved this book the minute I got it, and it's going to be such fun to make a list from this book too. The lists probably won't cross over, as the dates won't work, but it'll take me back to my teen years. I'm going to try not to reread favorites, but that may be hard to resist!

"SHELF DISCOVERY is a "reading memoir" which features over 70 MG and YA classics with Ms. Skurnick's unique impressions. There are also essays about these classics written by current women writers including Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman, Cecily von Ziegesar, and Jennifer Weiner. Details: The Shelf Discovery Challenge will run for six months (November 1, 2009 - April 30, 2010). To join me in this challenge, all you need to do is grab a copy of SHELF DISCOVERY and pick out what six books you want to read (of course, you can read more than six!) Then, after you read a book, just write a "book report" to share your thoughts with others!" More info about the challenge is at http://bookingmama.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-shelf-discovery-challenge.html

I'm excited about making the lists, and participating in the book/reading blogosphere more than I have in the past. Anyone want to join me?

Happy Reading!
Patti
On Twitter, I'm @bkwmn1992

2 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Here's the ultimate challenge: read a book a day for a year. And hard ones. http://www.readallday.org/

Patti L said...

Nahhh, not a real challenge for her; she has housecleaning help, and I don't think she works, or if she does, she doesn't work full time. That article has driven me crazy since it came out.