Planning Ahead to 2010

Even though I'm still in a reading slump, I'm making plans for reading in 2010. Just a couple of challenges this year, and nothing so grandiose as 125 books. Plus: most of what I've got on my lists are books that are already on my shelves!

First off, I joined the 1010 Category Challenge over at Library Thing. The idea is to come up with ten different categories in 2010 and read any # of books in each category - you decide the # for yourself. Though many people are reading 10 in each, I decided to go easy on myself and choose five for each one.


I've picked my categories and have most of the books chosen in each one, though that's flexible.

Here are my categories:

1. A day without Orange is like a day without sunshine - Orange prize winners and nominees
2. We Like Short Shorts! - short story collections
3. She’s a Classic - classics written by women
4. Booker, Dano! - Booker prize winners and nominees
5. Dust Collectors - books that have been on my shelves more than two years
6. Border crossings - books from countries other than the US or UK
7. The Bigger they are, the harder they fall - chunksters, 500 pages and over
8. News to me - authors new to me
9. Pulitzer Prize winners
10. The whole truth and nothing but the truth - nonfiction

Bonus category:
11. Play it again, Sam - re-reads, or books I started and didn't finish and want to try again.

Yesterday I stumbled across the 2010 version of my favorite 2009 reading challenge: What's In a Name. I jumped right into this one in '09 and met my challenge by the end of February.

Six new categories this year and some possible books to meet the challenge:

1. A book with a food in the title: The Mammoth Cheese; Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; Sexing the Cherry; Fruit of the Lemon; The Fortune Cookie Chronicles; Winter Wheat
2. A book with a body of water in the title: Peace Like a River; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; The Sea, The Sea; The Sea
3. A book with a title (queen, president) in the title: Madame Bovary; The Master; The Princess Bride; The Queen of the Tambourine; The Emperor of Scent; The Senator’s Wife
4. A book with a plant in the title: The Poisonwood Bible; Like Trees Walking; The Lotus Eaters
5. A book with a place name in the title: A Sand County Almanac; The View from Castle Rock; The Septembers of Shiraz; The Little Giant of Aberdeen County; Moonlight in Odessa
6. A book with a music term in the title: Song of Solomon; A Continuous Harmony; The Fish Can Sing; An Equal Music; Dirt Music

A few of these are crossovers with the 10/10 challenge. That's all perfectly legal!

I'm looking forward to a lot of these books. Mostly right now I'm looking forward to finishing a book this month.


Image from Vladstudio.