Thursday, November 09, 2006

Contests and Challenges Everwhere

So this idea of contests and challenges issued via blogs seems to be taking on a life of its own.

First, there was Carl V's RIP Autumn Challenge. Officially, 51 people signed up -- but there were probably more who participated via the comments section of the post. I've been reading for several days now, on many different blogs, about the From the Stacks Challenge. The idea is to read at least five books from your TBR pile between November 1 and January 30, 2007. As of today, the list of participants is at 72 -- and seems to be growing exponentially.

But we're not done with this year yet. Kailana has issued a November Reading Challenge with the theme of books set during World War I or World War II in honor of Remembrance Day. If you're looking ahead, there's the 2007 TBR Challenge. This also capitalizes on all those books that have been lying around (in this case for at least 6 months) that we've never read. Pick 12, read 1 a month during 2007. The participant list is still small, but I bet it will grow.

I'm working on my list for the From the Stacks Challenge right now. I've decided it's not really fair to include the books that have been loaned to me, so I'm going to have to see what else I can find in my library. This may mean I finally have to read some Thomas Hardy (whom I've never been able to crack).

I've barely touched the surface of challenges, I'm sure. If there are others you know about or are starting, let me know and I'll start a running list.

2 comments:

Carl V. Anderson said...

Despite being slightly off the rules I included a couple of loaners for my From the Stacks challenge as they are indeed on my stack of to be read books.

Unknown said...

Yeah -- not choosing loaners is definitely my ultra-anal thing. Mostly because I didn't necessarily want to read the loaners, but they were foisted on me with urgent pleas of "You have to read this!" And trust me, I have plenty of my own books that I haven't read to choose from!