The 50 Book Challenge

[Cicada]

You know the idea, read at least 50 books by New Years 2011, easy for some, not so much for others. Simply list them as you make it through them and see how quickly you can get there, or if you can at all.
Feel free to add comments/ratings/number of pages, etc, and if you're going to include things like manga or journal articles you may want to keep them in a separate list. And yes, this is just a silly motivational tool.
I failed abysmally last year, but had good reason to be busy.

1. Haruka Cook and Theodore Cook - Japan at War: An Oral History

[KatDJZ]

Ooh, I'm in. I usually hit around 50-60 a year, not counting manga. For 2009 I read 49, with manga and comics it was 193. Anyway, here we go:

1. Trenton Lee Stewart - The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma
2. Laurie Stolarz - Black is for Beginnings
3. Henry H. Neff - The Tapestry: Book 1 - The Hound of Rowan
4. Charlaine Harris - Dead to the World
5. Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail
6. Charlaine Harris - Definitely Dead
7. Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail
8. Jen Yates - Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong
9. Charlaine Harris - From Dead to Worse
10. Marie Phillips - Gods Behaving Badly
11. Dominic Smith - The Mercurial Visions of Louis Daguerre
12. Henry H. Neff - The Tapestry: Book 2 - The Second Seige
13. Cathy Yardley - Turning Japanese
14. Jeffrey Deaver - Broken Window
15. Charlaine Harris - Dead and Gone
16. L.J. Smith - The Vampire Diaries: The Awaking
17. L.J. Smith - The Vampire Diaries: The Struggle
17. L.J. Smith - The Vampire Diaries: The Fury
19. L.J. Smith - The Vampire Diaries: Dark Reunion
20. Joshua Gee - Encyclopedia Horrifica
21. Ellen Schreiber - Vampire Kisses: The Beginning
22. Ellen Schreiber - Vampire Kisses: Dance with a Vampire
23. Kelly McClymer - Must Love Black
24. Adam Selzer - I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It
25. Bill Willingham - Fables: The Good Prince
26. Bill Willingham - Fables: War and Pieces
27. Bill Willingham - Fables: The Dark Ages
28. L.J. Smith - The Vampire Diaries - The Return: Nightfall
29. Ellen Schreiber - Vampire Kisses: Coffin Club
30. Neil Pasricha - The Book of Awesome
31. Deborah Noyes - Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales
32. Christy Yorke - The Secret Lives of the Sushi Club
33. Duff Goldman - Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes
34. Ellen Schreiber - Vampire Kisses 6: Royal Blood
35. Charlaine Harris - Dead in the Family
36. Charlaine Harris - A Touch of Dead
37. L.J. Smith - Shadow Souls
38. Ellen Schreiber - Love Bites
39. Michael Scott - The Necromancer
40. Bill Shapiro - Other People's Rejection Letters
41. Jeffrey Deaver - Roadside Crosses
42. Justin Halpern - Sh*t My Dad Says
43. Stephenie Meyer - The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
44. A.J. Jacobs - The Year of Living Biblically

[Jensling]

1. Tad Williams - Otherland vol 3. Mountain of black glass

[Jakarrd]

Hmm...

Lets see what I currently have to read thru.

#01. Mark Z Danielewski - House of Leaves
#02. Terry Brooks - Armageddon's Children
#03. Terry Brooks - The Elves of Cintra
#04. Terry Brooks - The Gypsy Morph
#05. CS Friedman - Feast of Souls
#06. Adam-Troy Castro - Emissaries From the Dead
#07. Taylor Anderson - Into the Storm (destroyermen #1) [finished]
#08. Allan Cole & Chris Bunch - The Far Kingdoms [finished]
#09. Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury
#10. Jim C Hines - The Stepsister Scheme [finished]
#11. Jim C Hines - The Mermaid's Madness
#12. Neal Stephenson - Anathem [Finished]
#13. Kay Kenyon - World Too Near (Entire and the Rose Series #2) [finished]

[Panta]

I'll accept the challenge :D

I'm currently reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Knife of Dreams.

I have a few Dean Koontz, Sword of Truth and Dune books to go at. And one Terry Pratchett I got for Xmas. Also need to make a start on Homer's Odyssey.

[Dralha]

List for 2011

#01. Deathlands - #1: Pilgrimage to Hell by James Axler -- the first in a many-volume series set in post-apocalyptic America. It's got a definite B-movie feel to it, but it was entertaining.

#02. The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman [currently reading]

#03. Deathlands - #2: Red Holocaust by Laurence James [currently reading]


List for 2010

#01. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne -- a great adventure tale...except for the long-winded species descriptions.

#02. Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi -- a collection of 11 short stories, most of them post-apocalyptic with a dash of social commentary. Very dark, very gritty stuff. The author has one of the stories, The Fluted Girl, posted on his website here. My favorite was The Calorie Man.

#03. Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks -- time travel fun with the world's most famous Time Lord. It provided a good overview of the Doctor Who universe as the eighth Doctor visits his seven previous incarnations.

#04. Infernal Devices by K.W. Jeter -- that was quite a romp. George Dower gets caught up in a web of mystery and intrigue in this Victorian fantasy of clockworks and mad science.

#05. Bloodring by Faith Hunter -- the setting would make a great RPG: an ambiguous apocalypse occurs, one based loosely on judeo-christian mythology. Winged "seraphs" from the realm of light wage war against demons who abide underground. Humans get caught in the middle. Some humans have become mages and are able to manipulate creation energy. Thorn St. Croix is a "stone mage" and secretly lives among humans in a small town in the Appalachians. Recent events threaten to reveal her identity...

#06. The Black Star by Lin Carter -- an older fantasy/adventure novel set in Atlantis. Pretty standard sword & sorcery fare, with a satisfying conclusion. It was supposed to have been the first of a trilogy, but the other two books never materialized.

#07. Time Machine 16: Quest for the Cities of Gold by Richard Glatzer -- this is one of those old "choose your own adventure" books. Luckily, I chose the correct item in the beginning so I didn't get caught in one of those infinite time loops.

#08. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest -- steampunk & zombies. Gritty setting & a wild ride.

#09. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull -- it's geared towards younger readers, but it was still a great read.

#10. The Guardians of Time by Poul Anderson -- a compilation of scifi short stories written in the 50's and 60's, all revolving around the Time Patrol and agent Manse Everard. Not as good as Anderson's Time Wars, but interesting nonetheless.

#11. Son of Darkness by Josepha Sherman -- a modern fantasy tale set in NYC, complete with museums, magic, & a Sumerian demon unleashed by cultists.

#12. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi -- an awesome adventure tale set in Bacigalupi's realistic and plausible vision of a post-apocalyptic Earth.

#13. Everyday Life in Early America by David Freeman Hawke -- very vivid and interesting portrayal of life in 17th century colonial America.

#14. Jennifer Government by Max Barry -- that was a blast, a very fun & fast-paced read. It explored the sort of world we'd all live in if the anarcho-capitalists/libertarian lunatics ever got their way.

#15. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790 - 1840 by Jack Larkin -- the second in a four-volume series on life in early America.

#16. Spice and Wolf, Vol. 1 by Isuna Hasekura -- that brought back a lot of good memories; the anime was pretty faithful to the book.

#17. Flyte by Angie Sage -- Volume 2 of the Septimus Heap series. A quick read, as it's geared towards younger readers, but it was still interesting, with some clever gimmicks peppered throughout.

#18. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860 - 1876 by Daniel Sutherland -- the third installment of the "everyday life" series, focusing on the years of the Civil War, the rise of industrialization, and the westward expansion. It's fascinating reading, with a lot of old diary entries mixed in with the narrative.

#19. The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia -- very cool steampunk fantasy tale. A sentient clockwork automaton trained in alchemy finds herself caught up in a political struggle between the alchemists and the mechanics.

#20. Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony -- this was a revisit to the fantasy novel that got me into fantasy about 30 years ago, read on my new Sony pocket e-reader. It's interesting how the visualizations I had back then came back as I was reading it.


That's only 20 for 2010. At some point in September, I stopped reading novels and started reading bits and pieces of coffeetable-type books, which wouldn't really count towards the list.

[herrwolf]

1. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

[chii]

hahah there is NO way i could ever read 50 books in a year XD *maybe* 10 at the most and that's if i tried really REALLY hard

gl in your quest

does manga count as a book? :P

[SeiyaManG]

Well, I might actually get near the 50 book goal this year, judging by how it's looking like right now. I have a few books I've really been meaning to read, but haven't, Currently I'm reading Hitler's Weltanschauung by Eberhard Jäckel and will soon be reading:

Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browing

Hitler: Profiles In Power by Ian Kershaw

McMafia by Misha Glenny

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

[Holychrono]

Do college textbooks count? =D

But besides that I have Guin Saga #2 & #3 and whatever books we read in detective fiction.