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Bandiet posted:No vanilla number for me, that felt silly this year and I am comfortable with the amount of books I read. But I will do the rest of the booklord challenge. Yeah this is my exact sentiment, I pushed myself to break my record this year (read more than 80) but I want to reserve the option to take it slow and switch it up at points. I will definitely read well over 60 so I can put that as a goal but it seems perfunctory at that point: Name: Guy A. Person Number: whatever Book Lord: Yes
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Dec 30, 2016 05:39
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:11 |
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Lots of cool wild cards on this page, someone wild card me too
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Dec 30, 2016 23:20
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I started this year by cycling through a bunch of the "Best American" series from 2015; specifically short stories, essays, science & nature, nonrequired and scifi/fantasy. I find them slightly better than hit and miss but I find the gems to be worth the cost and can always just start skimming if an entry is boring me. Also since they're collections I was thinking about how to apply the percentage challenges to them. On the plus side they're really good about having approx 50% women contributors but not as great about non-white contributors (only about 16% of the total entries by my calculation) so I am going to count the 5 books as "1" for purposes of books by women and "1/2" for purposes of books by non-white authors (so if I read 3 in my next ten it will equal out). I haven't really been paying much attention to the challenge proper outside of that because I had a bunch of leftover library holds or things on my shelf, but I am going to start focusing at the beginning of next month.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:42
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Late on my January update as usual but got a decent amount read through first week of Feb (and about to finish another book tonight) 1. The Best American Short Stories 2015 2. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015 3. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 4. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 5. The Best American Essays 2015 6. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut 7. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson 8. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman 9. Shifu You'll Do Anything for a Laugh by Mo Yan 10. Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil 11. Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole 12. The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville 13. Aquarium by David Vann A little light on non-white authors so far but I have some coming up. Everyone here should read Aquarium if they haven't already. And Mo Yan for that matter. Oh also someone should read My Name is Red for non-human perspective, even though it's not on my list here. Challenge status: 2. 23% 3. 19% 5. Read Mother Night and also reading The Plague this month so I might be able to keep this up all year 7. Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe fills this but honestly I will probably be getting some books that come out in '17 including the new Arundhati Roy 9. Shifu You'll Do Anything for a Laugh There's probably more but I have to give them more proper thought!
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Feb 9, 2017 20:27
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Franchescanado posted:I really like Sum, but some of the ideas were a little heavy. What'd you think? It was interesting; not exactly what I thought it'd be or in many cases what was advertised. Usually just science-philosophy brain teasers more than anything. Some ideas were really compelling and could have used longer stories, others were obvious filler or repeats. A bunch of them ended with the typical moral of "hey you don't want to live for eternity anyway right?" But it was fun and light (for weird philosophical short stories about death that is). I read his book Incognito a while back and I liked that considerably better.
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Feb 9, 2017 22:00
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nerdpony posted:NYPL posted this list of 365 books by women today; maybe it will be a good source of recommendations for books by women (and authors of color, for that matter) for some of you! Wow that is straight up a list of 365 books in a row. I think it would have probably been better to do 100 or even just 50 with an actual short review/summary tho? But still thanks for posting, there are definitely some good books on here and it reminded me of some I wanted to read (specifically the New Jim Crow)
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Mar 11, 2017 08:01
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Franchescanado posted:The Peregrine by J. A. Baker Hey I just read this. It was cool, thanks for the suggestion.
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Apr 12, 2017 23:51
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Haven't updated in a long time, but I just finished my 100th book of the year tonight. Pretty proud, first time I've ever done that. And I still have 2 months left  Also I think I finished the book lord challenge but I lost track, I should be pretty close regardless. Will post a more in depth update later in the week.
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Nov 2, 2017 05:20
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Corrode posted:On which note, someone needs to step forward to run the 2018 thread. I was gonna ask if anyone has volunteered yet. I would be interested.
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Nov 23, 2017 15:42
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USMC_Karl posted:You're up, I'll totally take part but am not confident in my ability to make a fun challenge. I've had some ideas kicking around in my head for some (hopefully) fun variants. I have been getting my rear end kicked at worked lately but I have the week between Christmas and New Years off, so I'll have time to write something up.
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Nov 29, 2017 03:22
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Safety Biscuits posted:Do you know something about literature, though. I know at least/most one thing A human heart posted:That wasn't a requirement this year so I don't see why it would hurt his chances if he doesn't By all means go for it, I'm not married to the idea
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Nov 29, 2017 17:57
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The Berzerker posted:I basically gave up on the challenge when I realized, after several abandoned starts, that I was never going to read my enormous 2500 page wildcard. I will play again next year though it might be good to have some guidelines around that stuff, like maybe you can only recommend a wildcard if you're actually doing the challenge. Next year read The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion by Henry J. Darger
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Dec 15, 2017 15:44
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Yours truly
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Dec 16, 2017 03:02
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Probably not going to finish anymore in the next few days, so going to post my final tally. I shattered my previous records by a lot, and while I did have some shorter plays and poetry in there I had a lot of larger books too: 1. The Best American Short Stories 2015 2. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015 3. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 4. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 5. The Best American Essays 2015 6. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut 7. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson 8. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman 9. Shifu You'll Do Anything for a Laugh by Mo Yan 10. Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil 11. Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole 12. The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville 13. Aquarium by David Vann 14. Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera by Anne Carson 15. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine 16. The Plague by Albert Camus 17. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi 18. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 19. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende 20. David Lynch: The Man from Another Place by Dennis Lim 21. Oblivion by David Foster Wallace 22. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong 23. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin 24. Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City by Italo Calvino 25. The Tempest by William Shakespeare 26. The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso 27. White Teeth by Zadie Smith 28. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 29. The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To by Dean Burnett 30. The Odyssey 31. Vertical Motion by Can Xue 32. To Live by Yu Hua 33. Serve the People by Yan Lianke 34. The Peregrine by J.A. Baker 35. Five Spice Street by Can Xue 36. The Wes Letters by Ben Segal, Brett Zehner, and Feliz Lucia Molina 37. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 38. But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman 39. Absolutely on Music: Conversations by Haruki Murakami 40. The Best American Short Stories 2016 41. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 42. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 43. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 44. The Best American Essays 2016 45. The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward 46. Eight Skilled Gentlemen by Barry Hughart 47. Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch 48. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney 49. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay 50. This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society by Kathleen McAuliffe 51. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 52. The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley 53. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges 54. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky 55. Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century by Chuck Klosterman 56. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander 57. The Envoy by Edward Wilson 58. How to Be Both by Ali Smith 59. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy 60. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene 61. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy 62. Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami 63. Alice in Quantumland by Robert Gilmore 64. The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe 65. Glass, Irony and God by Anne Carson 66. Frontier by Can Xue 67. Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein 68. Patriotism by Yukio Mishima 69. Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood 70. The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku 71. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 72. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier 73. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 74. Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson 75. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 76. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi 77. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber 78. The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston 79. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland 80. Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital 81. Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt 82. Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving by V. Anton Spraul 83. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer 84. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay 85. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill by Jessica Stern 86. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle 87. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 88. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 89. It by Inger Christensen 90. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright 91. Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas 92. What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night by John Brockman 93. A Delusion Of Satan: The Full Story Of The Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill 94. Song of the Shank by Jeffery Renard Allen 95. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro 96. Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich 97. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 98. The Sellout by Paul Beatty 99. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 100. The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) by Macedonio Fernández 101. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski 102. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders 103. In Parenthesis by David Jones 104. The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson 105. My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki 106. The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Presten and Mario Spezi 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. - should have said 100 but I didn't believe in myself 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. - 36/106 = 34% 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. - 35/106 = 33% 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Ali Smith 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - The Plague, Salt, Ficciones, Blackwater 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) - The Peregrine 7) Read something that was recently published - Ministry of Utmost Happiness 8) Read something which was published before you were born. - The Odyssey 9) Read something in translation. - The Obscene Bird of Night 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. - Picnic at Hanging Rock and Oyster (Australia) 11) Read something political. - The New Jim Crow 12) Read something historical. - Salt: A World History 12a) Read something about the First World War. - A Farewell to Arms 13) Read something biographical. - David Lynch biography 14) Read some poetry. - Anne Carson 15) Read a play. - Waiting for Godot 16) Read a collection of short stories. - a couple, including Best American Short Stories 2015/16 17) Read something long (500+ pages). - A Little Life 18) Read something which was banned or censored. - Serve the People 19) Read a satire. - Five Spice Street 20) Read something about honour. - Where Men Win Glory 21) Read something about fear. - Art and Fear and Hex 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. - My Year of Meats (gluttony) 23) Read something that you love. - Oblivion by DFW 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. - White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi A few of the challenges I probably did a few times over but just marked them off as I did them and don't want to comb back through. Too much to go over in one post (should probably post more frequently next year) but want to highlight Helen Oyeyemi and Can Xue as two authors I fell in love with this year. Also really enjoyed Aquarium and Lincoln in the Bardo which got a ton of buzz around some other threads. And a bunch of other books were ones I noted from following the "Quit (being a/loving a) child and read some real literature" thread, although I didn't note down who recommended them so if you see a book you recommended on my list thank yourself for me. Also Count of Monte Cristo and Lolita from the SHAMEFUL thread. So basically a really fuckin good year of reading largely thanks to the Book Barn. --- On another note, I have been drafting a list of challenges and guidelines for the next thread and hope to have that posted in the next few days, NYE eve (12/30) at the latest. Hope to see a bunch of you back next year.
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Dec 27, 2017 23:35
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Just posted the new thread for people to sign up and start planning strategies.
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Dec 29, 2017 23:48
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