Thursday, September 24, 2009

Combining challenges

Here I'm going to combine the Fall into Reading and the clearing your shelves challenges to see if I call fall into reading and giving away books. This means no physical library books (books on CD are the exception, and I can't read while I drive anyway), and my personal challenge of reading 20 books that I own to clear out my nightstand. These challenges are complicated by the fact I'm taking a graduate class and work full time, but hey. 

Books I want to read before Dec. 20:

Basic Research Methods for Library Sciences
Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code (reading this to Olivia, my youngest)
Eyes Like Stars (reading this to Hannah, my middle kid)
Secret of Lost Things
An Evil Guest
Road Trip of the Living Dead
Await Your Reply
Past Imperfect
Person of Interest
Lion Eyes
Wapshot Chronicle
My Name is Will
All Shall Be Well, and All Shall be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall be Well
The Afterlife
Europe Central (this is the big challenge)
I am Fatty

That's an ambitious list; we'll see if I make it through. Here's a list of the books I've read so far this year. There are a number of YA titles because I took a course in Young Adult Services during the summer, with how I rated them (one- to five-star scale):

1.       Liberty l *** (Garrison Keillor)

2.       Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England o **** 

3.       The Thin Place o **** (She's coming to Alabama this academic year.)

4.       A Month of Sundays l **** (Right after Updike died.)

5.       Widows of Eastwick l **** (Ditto)

6.       Online Retrieval o *** (For a class)

7.       The Graveyard Book l **** (Gaiman's coming to Alabama, too)

8.       The Small Public Library Survival Guide l *** (Again for a class)

9.       Quiet, Please o **** (This book was for a class, but I enjoyed it nonetheless)

10.    Introduction to Reference Work, Vol. 1 o **** (Actually this is well-written)

11.    Captain Freedom o *** (I bought this at Square Books in Oxford, Miss.)

12.    A Tree Grows in Brooklyn l ***** (Finally listened to it. A lot earthier than I thought it was going to be.)

13.    Young Adult Literature in Action o **

14.    Speak o *** (Required for the YA class)

15.    Hogfather l **** (Pratchett's books are a lot of fun to listen to.)

16.    What They Always Tell Us o *** (A very good debut; it's about Tuscaloosa teens)

17.    Paper Towns l **** (I've become a fan of John Green; he really captures adolescent boys)

18.    Nation l **** (More Pratchett)

19.    Gospel According to Larry l ***

20.    A Separate Peace l ***

21.    Spud l **** (Hilarious book in diary form about a boy's school in South Africa in the early 1990s)

22.    Twilight o *** (Yeah, well. It was required. Enough already with Edward being hot. We get it.)

23.    Death on the Nile l **** (I enjoyed this even though I knew the ending.)

24.    Vibes l **** (A really good teen novel)

25.    Preposterous l ***

26.    Fortune’s Folly l ****

27.    On Beale Street l *** (We had visited Memphis in April, so I knew many of the places the author wrote about.)

28.    Serving Older Teens l ***

29.    Looking for Alaska l **** (Half-way point; more John Green)

30.    The Lighthouse l **** (PD James is my favorite mystery author0

31.    Real-Life Marketing and Promotion Strategies in College Libraries l **

32.    All Together Dead l *** (I was curious about the whole Stackhouse thing) 

33.    The Boy Detective Fails l **** (This book is really good in a meaty, postmodern kind of way; very dream-like)

34.    Thirteen Reasons Why  l *** (Kind of cheats toward the end.)

35.    Marketing and Promoting Electronic Resources l ***

36.    Marketing the Academic Library: A bold new approach l ****

37.    Slaughterhouse 5 l **** (Ethan Hawke does a good job reading this, and I had never read it, even as a teen.)

38.    Villette o **** (I read this last Bronte novel as part of an online summer reading group led by Rohan Maitzen. It was a lot of fun and fulfilled my one-classic-a-year goal.)

39.    Third-Class Superhero l ***

40.    Electronic Reserves l **

41.    Living With Saints o **** (This is where I began my personal challenge of reading books that had been on my shelf for a long time. I bought this book when it came out at Tower Books in Sacramento, one of my favorite bookstores. It was in a complex with the original Tower Records store, near the Tower movie theatre. Alas, it closed when Tower went under. I bought it because the author was living in Lawrence, Kan., where I lived in the early 1990s. It was a quick and fun read; every story relates to the life of a saint.)

42.    Carry on, Jeeves l **** (Made car rides fun.)

43.    Magistrum o **** (I had received this Matthew Hughes book for Christmas a couple of years ago. It was so good I immediately read the sequel, Spiral Labyrinth. They are great, short SF mysteries with a protagonist who is of two minds, literally -- one rational and one magical. I loved the satire of Canada in Magistrum.)

44.    The Spiral Labyrinth o ****

45.    House at Riverton o **** (I had been reading this off an on for a year; I finally sat down and finished it.)

46.    The Known World l **** (This is fairly confusing listening in a car in short spurts, but the narrative voice is excellent.)

47.    Heroes: Saving Charlie o ** (Ugh. Off my shelf now.)

48.    The Calligrapher’s Daughter o **** (This is a brand-new book I received through Amazon Vines, but I'm counting it anyway.)

1 comment:

Nise' said...

If I want to clear my shelves, I have to quit going to the library and I just can't bring myself to quit going! Happy reading.