2012 Goals/MiniChallenges

Here's a few books on my Mt. TBR that I'd like to get to in 2012 that will help with my DDC:

002: Outwitting History
003: Chaos: making a new science
070: Personal history
160: The logic of scientific discovery
211: The God Delusion
291: Science and Religion: some historical perspectives
300: McMafia
301: Ants, Indians, and Little Dinosaurs
309: Baltimore in the nation
322: American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the making of a nation
332: Confessions of an economic hit man
509: Galileo, Courtier: the practice of science in the culture of absolutism
520: Galileo's Daughter
557: Basin and Range
557: Rising from the plains
575: River out of eden
579: Mycelium Running
580: A Rum Affair
580: Oaxaca Journal
635: The Brother Gardeners
851: The divine comedy
873: The Aenid
883: The Iliad
883: The Odyssey
971: Island of Seven Cities
975: Pirates on the Chesapeake
975: The Swamp
975: Midnight in the garden of good and evil

I've read 90 categories so far, so my goal is just to do 10 more and reach that nice round number.

Here are a few possibilities from my planned reading for the year:
918 South America: The Lost City of Z
614 Incidence & prevention of disease: The Ghost Map
973 General history of North America; United States: 1776
950 General history of Asia; Far East: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
361 General social problems: Yes You Can!
982 General history of South America; Argentina: Miracle in the Andes

I'm not sure where the other four will come from, but they often just turn up. Or not.

Whenever I set a mini challenge for Dewey I fail miserably. All I want to do this year is get through some of non fiction I've got on my shelves. Some of it ought to be really good. So maybe at the end of the year I will have read a few of these:

Charlatan - Pope Brock
The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart
Laxdaela Saga - unknown
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
Plagues and Peoples - William H.McNeill

I'm afraid to even hope I might get to The Golden Bough or The Gulag Archipeligo. That's just tempting fate.

yeah, i've listed nearly 30 books -- there's no way i'll get to even half of those. last year i had about a dozen books for DDC and that was pretty good I thought. i have the gulag archipelago and have been meaning to read it as well.. i read a day in the live of ivan denisovich in a day and thought his writing was really good.. i dont know that i could take a week of it though, much less hwoever long it would take me to get through gulag

I read Cancer Ward in about a month after having it stare at me from my bookshelf for a couple of years. He's definitely a great writer, it's just no mean feat getting through his books. I'm not as intimidated by The Gulag Archipeligo as I was by Cancer Ward. But it's never going to be a book you pick up lightly.

I'm planning to read:

018: Confessions of a Literary Archaeologist
220: The Bible Tells Me So
221: Moses and Monotheism
235: Magnificent Corpses
273: The Cheese and the Worms
291: Rocks of Ages
328: Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
427: Swearing
493: The Linguist and the Emperor
585: Wild Trees
628: Cleanliness and Godliness
662: Gunpowder
985: Cradle of Gold

I did well with my limited goals last year- one from each of the missing 8xx divisions and one each from the 100, 200, and 400 classes - but I can't decide much definitive for this year.

I'd like to read at least 92x (slim pickings) and 99x (pretty easy) to get me at one of each 900 division. Other than that I'm conflicted. One each from my weakest classes (0, 1, 2, 4, & 7) is a possiblity. As a bonus that would help me crack a 100 sections.

making some progress this year...

How's everyone doing here? I didn't set myself mini-challenges for 2012, but I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do for 2013.

Doing great! My entire reading focus for the last year has been on this project. So much so, that I finished all the divisions and have 127 Dewey books under my belt.

As far as a goal for next year, I'm trying to get to some of the "fat" books I've been avoiding. Once a book bloats over 450 pages I tend to get a little anxious about reading it, so I'm resolved to fit in at least 5 such books next year to assuage my fears.

My other goal is to read all but one of the remaining 15x books I have. It's one of the few divisions for which I own a book in every used section. I say "all but one" because I'm reserving one book from each division for a final "tour" of the Dewey to finish out this challenge (in 2018 or so).

Pretty minimal progress for me; I don't think I met my goal of reading 10 new categories, but I did do at least a few. I have to do a more thorough check, since it seems that I haven't posted in my thread since January, though I did update occasionally. A preliminary glance shows 4 books read.

I'm probably going to stick with my basic goal of just reading 10 new categories. But again, it's not going to be my primary reading goal for the year, by a long shot. So we'll see how it goes.

I've been concentrating on the unread books on my shelves which has been largely fiction because I'd read so much of the non fiction already. I really don't want my TBR stack to become impossible. As it is I've only managed to keep it hovering around 70 books. Eesh. I'd be much more comfortable with it between 20 and 30.

That said I did knock out a few Dewey books this year and I just finished Beowulf yesterday. 829 ftw.

This has been a stressful year for me professionally and personally. I have not had much time for reading. I have only finished 18 books, though I have a decent shot at finishing one or two more by year's end. Of the 28 books I listed only 3 will be knocked off the list. I have been reading fiction... but slowly.

On the other hand, I will have written a fair amount for work, including major contributions to 4 lengthy technical reports (and their revisions), and have gotten 4 academic journal articles published and another submitted (twice - rejected at first).

The other plus of this year is that my wishlist has not grown much since I have not had time to pay attention to pleasure reading. So... maybe by some time in 2013 I can backtrack and actually read/listen to all the books I acquired in 2012 after all... which would be a first.

Congrats on your various publications!

thanks fundevogel... its tempered a bit. due to the length and wackiness of the publication process, only one of them will show up as '2012'. one has been postdated as 2011, and one is already slated for a 2013 issue, and the 4th is still 'In Press', even though it has been in final status and available online as such since June or July of this year, and I have no idea when it will finally receive page numbers. I was bummed that the last one got rejected of course, but the one comment I received (I dont think it was even sent for review) was helpful as I reexamined it for submission elsewhere. So, fingers crossed for 2013.