Saturday, March 31, 2012

Once Upon a Time VI...It's Time!

COMPLETED!

Of course, I was SO looking forward to this 'challenge' (I even bugged Carl about it..."When is Once Upon a Time?"...whine, whine, whine...LOL) and then I promptly didn't have time to make my list until the last day to sign up.  Stupid busy-ness!

So, if you haven't heard of the wonderful Once Upon a Time (What?  Really!?!), it is a wonderful reading 'challenge' (event) hosted by the awesome Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings.  Here are some details as outlined at Carl's blog:

“Once upon a time…”

Perhaps you too have heard that voice whispering on the spring wind, or perhaps Old Man Winter continues to drown out the sound; either way that time has come: Once Upon a Time is here!

Wednesday, March 21st begins the sixth annual Once Upon a Time Challenge. This is a reading and viewing event that encompasses four broad categories: Fairy Tale, Folklore, Fantasyand Mythology, including the seemingly countless sub-genres and blending of genres that fall within this spectrum. The challenge continues through Tuesday, June 19th and allows for very minor (1 book only) participation as well as more immersion depending on your reading/viewing whims.


(Dates:  March 21 - June 19)

Come away, and I’ll tell you more…

The Once Upon a Time VI Challenge has a few rules:

Rule #1: Have fun.

Rule #2: HAVE FUN.

Rule #3: Don’t keep the fun to yourself, share it with us, please!

Rule #4: Do not be put off by the word “challenge”.

While this event retains the word “challenge” from its earliest days, the entire goal is to read good books, watch good television shows and movies, and most importantly, visit old friends and make new ones. There are several ways to participate, and I hope you can find at least one to your liking:

To read about the various levels, visit the post HERE.

I have decided to participate in the following levels:
This is really as simple as the name implies. It means you are participating, but not committing yourself to any specific number of books. By signing up for The Journey you are agreeing to read at least one book within one of the four categories during March 21st to June 19th period.Just one book. If you choose to read more, fantastic! If not, then we have still had the pleasure of your company during this three month reading journey and hopefully you have read a great book, met some interesting people, and enjoyed the various activities that occur during the challenge. It has always been of utmost importance to me that the challenges that I host be all about experiencing enjoyable literature and sharing it with others. I want you to participate. Hence, The Journey.
This quest involves the reading of one or more short stories that fit within at least one of the four genres during the course of any weekend, or weekends, during the challenge. Ideally you would post about your short story readings on Sundays or Mondays, but this is not strictly necessary.
Stories are not just limited to the printed page. Many entertaining, moving, profound or simply fun stories are told in the realm of television and film. To participate in this quest simply let us know about the films and/or television shows that you feel fit into the definitions of fantasy, fairy tales, folklore or mythology that you are enjoying during the challenge. 

The Journey--I know it seems odd that I'm only committing to one book, yet I have a whole list below.  Well, as Carl said, at least one, but if you read more...great! So, one for sure, but hopefully more from this list. =O)
  • The Dragon's Harp by Rachel Pruitt
  • A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin (partial read)
  • Graceling by Kristin Cashore
  • Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  • The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Short Story Quest--I've been wanting to read this book of short stories (fairy tales retold) for over a year:
  • My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer
Quest on Screen--I plan on seeing Snow White and the Huntsman on the weekend of June 1st so this one is a no brainer! Might just pull out Ever After and watch it too (love that movie)! Oh, and I watch Once Upon a Time and Grimm on TV every week so those qualify too.  Cool!

Snow White and the Huntsman

I love this because it's three months so it gives me more wiggle room. =O)  What fun!

Photobucket

Sunday, March 11, 2012

The Classics Club

The Classics Club is the brainchild of Jillian at A Room of One's Own.  It's not only a reading challenge, but a kind of book club for like minds to share (and perhaps discuss) a certain amount of classics over a certain amount of time (participants discretion).  Listed below are the club basics, as outlined by Jillian.  Visit this POST for complete details on how everything works.

The club basics:
  • choose 50+ classics
  • list them at your blog
  • choose a reading completion goal date up to five years in the future and note that date on your classics list of 50+ titles
  • come back here and link your classics list to this blog according to these instructions
  • write about each title on your list as you finish reading it, and link it to your main list
  • when you’ve written about every single title, come back here and reply to your initial comment when you joined, to let us know you won (instructions when you achieve your challenge)!
My plan:
I will read 100 classics in five years time.  I am also participating in the Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project, which is also 100 books in five years time, but these can be any books from your to-be-read list (or in my case, shelves) that you've been wanting to read.  My FITG list consists of some classics so I did not include them on my Classics Club list.  I figure I can easily manage 200 books over five years for both challenges.  My Classics Club list is mostly culled from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Peter Boxall) book, the three editions combined, 2006, 2008, and 2010.  I will be including modern classics as well from the 1001 lists and the remainder are classics (books written more than 50 years ago or modern, prize winning/nominated books) that are not on the 1001 list.  I already own every book on my list so I do not have to buy or borrow any books for this challenge.  Woot! Also, my good friend Heather at Between the Covers (and my loyal TuesBookTalk buddy) is doing this challenge as well and I told her I would pick some of the books from her list so we can discuss the books from time to time.  It turns out that a lot of the ones I wanted to pick were on her list so there are a lot of shared titles on our lists.

My start date:  March 11, 2012
Finish date goal:  March 11, 2017
My Prize: I'll treat myself to a nice lunch by myself at 50 and 100 books read.
Books in red are re-reads
Books in blue are not on the 1001 lists
Books marked with an (H) are shared titles with Heather

All reviews on books I read for this challenge will be posted on The True Book Addict (or on Castle Macabre in the case of horror or speculative fiction titles).  All challenge progress (titles crossed off) will be tracked here on this blog.  Completed titles will have the month completed beside them and will be linked to my review.

My List:

Peter Ackroyd
1. The Lambs of London

Jane Austen (H)
2. Emma
3. Mansfield Park
4. Northanger Abbey
5. Persuasion  (completed January 2013 review)

Louisa May Alcott
6. Little Women  (H)

Isabel Allende
7. The House of the Spirits

Maya Angelou
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Anne Bronte
9. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall  (H)

Charlotte Bronte
10. Jane Eyre
11. Villette  (H)

Emily Bronte
12. Wuthering Heights

Anthony Burgess
13. A Clockwork Orange

Albert Camus
14. The Plague 

Truman Capote
15. Breakfast at Tiffany's  (H)
16. In Cold Blood

Lewis Carroll  (H)
Dual Review Here
17. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (read in 2012)
18. Through the Looking Glass (read in 2012)

Blaise Cendrars
19. Moravagine

Paulo Coelho
20. The Devil and Miss Prym

Wilkie Collins
21. The Woman in White

Thomas B. Costain
22. The Silver Chalice

Honore de Balzac
23. Cousin Bette

Charles Dickens
24. David Copperfield  (H)
25. Great Expectations  (H)
26. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
27. Little Dorritt
28. A Tale of Two Cities  (H)

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
29. Out of Africa

Fyodor Dostoevsky
30. Crime and Punishment  (H)  (currently reading)

Margaret Drabble
31. The Red Queen

Daphne du Maurier
32. Rebecca  (H)

Alexandre Dumas
33. The Count of Monte-Cristo  (H)
34. Queen Margot

George Eliot  (H)
35. Middlemarch  (read in 2012 review)
36. The Mill on the Floss
37. Silas Marner

Bret Easton Ellis
38. American Psycho

Henry Fielding
39. Tom Jones

Gustave Flaubert
40. Madame Bovary  (H)

E.M. Forster
41. Howard's End  (H)

John Fowles
42. The Collector
43. The French Lieutenant's Woman

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
44. The Sylph

Stella Gibbons
45. Cold Comfort Farm

H. Rider Haggard
46. She

Thomas Hardy
47. The Mayor of Casterbridge

Nathaniel Hawthorne
48. The House of Seven Gables  (H)
49. The Marble Faun

Victor Hugo  (H)
50. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
51. Les Miserables  (currently reading)

Aldous Huxley
52. Brave New World

John Irving
53. The World According to Garp

Kazuo Ishiguro
54. Never Let Me Go

Henry James
55. The Portrait of a Lady  (H)
56. The Golden Bowl

Barbara Kingsolver
57. The Poisonwood Bible

D.H. Lawrence
58. Sons and Lovers  (H)

Sheridan Le Fanu
59. Uncle Silas

Gaston Leroux
60. The Phantom of the Opera

Doris Lessing 
61. The Golden Notebook

M.G. Lewis
62. The Monk

Cormac McCarthy
63. All the Pretty Horses

Ann-Marie McDonald
64. Fall on Your Knees

Thomas Mann
65. Buddenbrooks

Rohinton Mistry
66. A Fine Balance

Iris Murdoch
67. The Bell

Joyce Carol Oates 
68. Blonde

Michael Ondaatje
69. The English Patient

George Orwell
70. 1984

Boris Pasternak
71. Doctor Zhivago

Sylvia Plath
72. The Bell Jar

E. Annie Proulx
73. The Shipping News

Ann Radcliffe
74. The Mysteries of Udolpho  (H)

Jean Rhys
75. Wide Sargasso Sea

Marilynne Robinson
76. Gilead  (read in 2012- not reviewed)

Carl Sagan
77. Contact

J.D. Salinger
78. The Catcher in the Rye  (read April 2012 review)

Sir Walter Scott
79. Rob Roy

Mary Shelley
80. Frankenstein  (H)

Carol Shields

81. The Stone Diaries

Robert Louis Stevenson
82. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (read in 2012 review)

Patrick Suskind
83. Perfume

Booth Tarkington
84. The Magnificent Ambersons

Donna Tartt
85. The Secret History

William Makepeace Thackeray
86. Vanity Fair  (H)

Colm Toibin
87. The Master

J.R.R. Tolkien
88. The Hobbit  (H)  (read December 2012 review)

Leo Tolstoy
89. War and Peace  (H)

Sigrid Undset
90. Kristin Lavransdatter

Kurt Vonnegut
91. Slaughterhouse Five

Lew Wallace
92. Ben-Hur

Sarah Waters
93. Fingersmith

Evelyn Waugh
94. Brideshead Revisited

Edith Wharton
95. The Age of Innocence
96. Ethan Frome  (H)
97. The House of Mirth  (H)

T.H. White
98. The Once and Future King

Virginia Woolf
99. Mrs. Dalloway  (H)
100. Orlando

Photobucket