Reading Challenges

Literary Cache is hosting the 2007 TBR Reading Challenge. My list, which sadly does not include more than one of my books for the From The Stacks challenge because I've already started all but one of the books on my list and because the 2007 TBR Reading Challenge starts in, oh, 2007, oddly enough. Which it isn't here yet. And no, you can't cheat! Cheating is bad. Besides the more TBR books read, the better. Justifies buying more.

My list:

In absolutely no particular order and chosen randomly from my shelves::

1. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

2. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

3. The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words by Deborah Tannen

4. What If? edited by Robert Cowley

5. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past by A Roger Ekirch

6. The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the year 1000 by James Reston Jr.

7. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

8. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

9. The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton

10. The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall

11. The Hollow Crown by Miri Ruben

12. Queen Isabella by Alison Weir

And for extra credit (which I may or may not get to, or may swap with the List):

The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private and the Division of Knowlege by Michael McKeon

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara

Murder of Angels by Caitlin R Kiernan

Bookfoolery and Babble is hosting the Chunkster Challenge, a challenge I wasn't going to take up because I'm frakking busy Feb-Mary, until I realized that she is so flexible that I can read JUST ONE chunkster book from Jan 1st - to Jun 30th. I've got two on my 2007 TBR Reading Challenge list anyway, so if I manage to read one of those......

so it's either

- The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private and the Division of Knowlege by Michael McKeon

or What If? edited by Robert Cowley.

How I think I'm going to manage this when I still haven't finished Frankenstein, the November Knit The Classics book choice, at a mere 260 pages (and could the Frankensteins be more self involved? Sheesh.) we won't get into.

KNITTING: Oh, it's just all so painful. After all that torment yesterday on the Gingerbread Castle (destined to be a mere lowly dishcloth, for the love of mud) and thinking I had it whipped, I knit up the rows blithely and in all innocence - and it was still 5 stitches short.

Grrr, argh, etc. does not begin to cover it.

It turns out that I was mistaking the knitting abbreviation of P2B, which turns out to mean Purl Two Stitches EACH through the back loop for P2togB which is, duh, Purling Two Stitches TOGETHER though the back loop. No wonder I was coming up 5 stitches short the next row and the pattern was goofy.

Speaking of goofy, what the heck happened to the font/text? Copying that list, no doubt.

Comments

[Marina]

OT ... why do you TypePad people upload anywhere from 10 to 25 messages once, twice, dozen times in the space of a few days, every month? Backing up? Grrr!

It's going to look beautiful when it's done. Deserves to be framed!

[Chris]

Hmm, I might need to pretend I didn't see that reading challenge... ;)

[Jennifer]

Reading? What's that?

[Brigitte]

Your list looks really, really interesting! There's more than a few I'd love to read, may have to look a few of them up.

You know what - at first glance I would have read it "purl 2 together through back loop" too...

[Charity]

Look at that list! What fun! :0)

[rhelynn]

Ouch on the Gingerbread Castle :o( Hope it stops being stubborn!

[kelpkim]

augh! that is so frustrating! when you think "oh, i know what this acronym means! i'm such a smart knitter! i can read patterns!"
THEN right when you think you can turn it into an FO, "S***! WHAT Happened Here?" (singing to yourself "one of these things is not like the other") :o)
let us know what happens next!

[kelpkim]

oops! the One Word Meme/Memo was from Rabbitch! sorry about that! :o)

[Kim D.]

I'm still trying to figure out how you manage to get all the knitting done, and the reading too. Do you knit and read at the same time?

[cyn]

could you please read #1 and write a 2-3 page book report and have it to me by Thursday? ha ha. Pinker is on my list of theorists for a class i'm taking/finishing up. I'd love ot hear what you think.

[ObsidianKitten]

speaking of books, was it you who had recommended that A to Z book awhile back (a linguistic book, organized by each letter of the alphabet)?

b/c I went looking for it, couldn't find it, but wound up instead with this fantastic book by John McWhorter titled "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language"--fun fun! (well, fun, that is, if you're a word geek who, uh, likes that sort of thing)