It seems that Alex and I are announcing too much at once, but we couldn't wait any longer with this fun project.
We've been talking about reading by themes, to get into subject areas, find out more about certain things. We wanted to finally do what we always say when we read an interesting book - 'I must read up on that sometime'. Well, 'sometime' has arrived and we decided to welcome it warmly and stuff it into a challenge format.
We set up a separate blog where you can sign up and read about the challenge and eventually, hopefully look at all the themes that bloggers are exploring. Unless no one signs up.
I noticed that the tendency in the blogosphere is going towards themes anyway though (see Eva's thoughtful post) so hopefully people WILL sign up.
The idea is to identify subjects that you want to know more about, then rank them in some way to show that you want to go more in depth on some and less so on others. So for theme one you'd read one book, for theme two, two books and so on. From theme 2 onwards you need to read at least one fiction and one non-fiction.
We're very excited about this. :-) If you want to focus and organise your reading next year, join us here!
Here are the themes that I'll be exploring, along with some book ideas. I might add some or change some, who knows, but this is what I'm starting with. Let me know if there's something you think I should add! I have no idea of how I'll rank the themes, I'm leaving that bit open!
(see my wrap-up post here)
New York
- The Island at the Centre of the World by Russell Shorto
- Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
- Ironweed by William Kennedy
- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Ancient Egypt
- Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
- Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods by Dimitri Meeks
Pagan Europe
- A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones
- The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece by Sue Blundell
Witchcraft
- The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story by Angela Bourke
Quantum Theory
- Physics of the Soul: The Quantum Book of Living, Dying, Reincarnation and Immortality by Amit Goswani
- What the Bleep do We Know!?: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering your Everyday Reality by William Arntz
- Quantum Questions: Mystical writings of the World's Greatest Physicists by Ken Wilber
Reincarnation and the Afterlife
- Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
- Talking to the Dead by Barbara Weisberg
Magic
- The Mystic Foundation: Understanding and Exploring the Magical Universe by Christopher Penczak
- The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells: The Ultimate Reference Book for the Magical Arts by Judika Illes
Food and nutrition
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone
Nurturing Superwoman by Carolyn Moody
6 comments:
Naguib Mahfouz has a trio of novellas set in Ancient Egypt. I've read the first one and enjoyed it!
I hope other people sign up so that I can see their theme lists: I bet my TBR list will expand even more! And if I hadn't realised that I'm a horrible challenge participant, I'd sign up too...instead I'll just watch from the side lines. ;)
Weren't you saying that you Mort by Pratchett in your TBR? We can read it together.
NY: Let the Great World Spin
Pagan Europe: The Mist of Avalon
I'll think of others as we go along!
PS: I have Crocodile in the Sandbank in audiobook if you want it. Good fun!
Eva - I've come across that trio and wondered about it, thanks! And I'm totally looking forward to the lists too, I hope that we'll have some takers!
Alex - Let the Great World Spin is already on there, I didn't think of adding Mists of Avalon but now will and I have Crocodile on my shelf, so no thanks!
I'm totally in on this challenge! Must we wait until January to start?! ;)
Jenn - You know what? I don't want to wait either, let's start now then! Yay!
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