reading challenges « A Progressive on the Prairie

A personal challenge to read the world

I gave up on book challenges a year or so ago. Part of it stemmed from the fact that, as I’ve said earlier this year, I want to read what I want to read when I feel like reading it. While I still let a few book reviews impact that, I’ve stuck pretty close to [...]

Looking ahead to a new reading year

My year-end list and recaps will be coming at, you guessed it, year end. I have, though, been pondering 2011 in reading and have decided upon a (overused) motto — less is more. No, I don’t mean anything foolish like borrowing, buying or reading fewer books. Instead, it’s a reduction in what I call the [...]

Mid-year reading report card

As usual, my reading personality is split this year. By the end of June, I’d read 52 books this year, 25 fiction and 27 nonfiction.

Of the fiction, nearly half (12) were works in translation with French and Spanish accounting for three each. Of the nonfiction books, 10 were history (if you include recent [...]

Reading challenge flops on the horizon

It looks like my reading challenge efforts are more than a little weak this year. If you take a gander at the list of them to the right, there’s two I’ve done nothing toward. And the others aren’t get much better.

In one — a challenge I came up with — I’ve only read one [...]

A Books of the Century reading challenge

I was so intrigued by Daniel Immerwahr’s creation, The Books of the Century website, that I decided to launch a reading challenge based on it.

Immerwhar has compiled a list for each year of the 20th Century based on

The top ten bestsellers in fiction, as recorded by Publishers Weekly; The top ten bestsellers in [...]

Finalizing the challenge list

As the end of the year approaches (and with it my books of the year post), I think I’ve settled on my reading challenges for the next. Because I am still in the midst of the Random Reading Challenge, at least for now I’m only doing three others this year:

As I previously noted, I’m [...]

Bookish challenges for next year

There’s a few things I’m going to embark on for next year from both a personal and blog standpoint. One is reading challenges and the other deals with book reviews.

I joined four reading challenges in 2009, two of which I completed by the middle of the year. I completed the third August 1 and [...]

Challenging that TBR stack

Call it coincidence. Call it serendipity. Either way, the conjunction of a post that reminded me just how big the “to be read” stacks are and the announcement of a reading challenge have motivated me to whittle down those stacks.

It’s the Random Reading Challenge. The rules are fairly simple: (1) randomly select any number [...]

Midyear Reading Challenge report

As a follow up to this week’s Musing Mondays, I figured this would be a good time to check on how I’m doing on the reading challenges I adopted for the year. So far, more than so good. I’m actually one book shy of completing all three. Here’s the tally so far:

Notable Books Challenge [...]

Book Review: God’s Mercy by Kerstin Ekman

Sense of place is not just a combination of geography and culture, it is a synergy of the two. Swedish author Kerstin Ekman doesn’t seek to describe sense of place in her novel God’s Mercy. She does something far more difficult. Sense of place so permeates the novel it moves from being a setting to [...]

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A personal challenge to read the world

Looking ahead to a new reading year

Mid-year reading report card

Reading challenge flops on the horizon

A Books of the Century reading challenge

Finalizing the challenge list

Bookish challenges for next year

Challenging that TBR stack

Midyear Reading Challenge report

Book Review: God’s Mercy by Kerstin Ekman

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