Tafadhali's 999 Challenge

I didn't do 888, but this looks like fun and I read *far* too many books for class and not nearly enough for pleasure. Plus, I find it easy to get sucked into reading plays and YA novels because they take less time, and this might be the kick in the rear I need to get out of my rut.

I. 19th Century Classics
II. Books Made Into Movies
III. Plays
IV. Fantasy/Science Fiction
V. Detective Novels
VI. Biographies
VII. Fun with Postmodernism!
VIII. Post-Colonial
IX. Young Adult

I. 19TH CENTURY CLASSICS

1. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen DONE, 1/24/09
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen DONE, 2/4/09
3. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens DONE, 3/27/09
4. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
6. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
7. Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
9. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell DONE, 2/9/09

III. PLAYS

1. The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge DONE, 2/7/09
2. Godly Queen Hester by Anonymous DONE, 2/19/09
3. Measure for Measure by Shakespeare DONE, 3/8/09
4. The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard DONE, 4/29/09
5. Zoo Story and the American Dream by Edward Albee DONE, 9/24/09
6. A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee DONE, 10/8/09
7. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee DONE, 11/5/09
8. Henry IV, Part II by Shakespeare
9. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

IV. FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION

1. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
3. Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey DONE, 8/13/09
4. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova DONE, 12/10/09
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
7. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
8. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury DONE, 2/10/09
9. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

V. DETECTIVE NOVELS

1. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle DONE, 2/16/09
2. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King DONE, 8/16/09
3. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers DONE, 5/16/09
4. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
5. The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
6. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin DONE, 12/28/09
7. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy DONE, 12/26/08
8. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde DONE, 12/31/08
9. Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith DONE, 5/19/09

VI. BOOKS FROM MY FATHER

I thought seriously about myself and decided that, yeah, there was no way I would get through so many biographies, so I created a new list based on some of the 50-odd books my father gave me for my high school graduation, that had some profound impact on his life. Basically, I love my dad.

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams
2. Novum Organum by Francis Bacon
3. Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
4. Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman
5. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
6. King Solomon's Rings by Konrad Lorenz
7. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
8. Micromotives and Macrobehaviors by Tom Schelling
9. Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut

VII. FUN WITH POST-MODERNISM!

1. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon DONE, 3/2/09
2. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
3. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut DONE, 2/16/09
4. Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami DONE, 4/8/09
6. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
7. Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson DONE, 4/5/09
8. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen DONE, 12/26/09
9. Junky by William S. Burroughs DONE, 1/26/09

VIII. POST-COLONIAL

1. Shame by Salman Rushdie
2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
3. Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said
4. The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy
5. David's Story by Zoe Wicomb
6. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
9. Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita

Great categories and book choices. You have an interesting, diverse section of books. In fact, I'm just taking a few notes for my own challenge.

Thanks -- I wanted to have some variety, so that I'd always have options in regards to what to read.

II. BOOKS MADE INTO (my favorite) MOVIES

I accidentally deleted this category while copying my lists into Excel yesterday. Way to go, hyperlinks.

1. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
2. The Front Page by Ben Hecht ("His Girl Friday")
3. The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle
4. All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein
5. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
6. Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella ("Field of Dreams")
7. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
8. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
9. Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

Hi Tafadhali. I'm actually reading The Mists of the Avalon at the moment - I'm about 2/3 of the way through - and I'm loving it. I think it's an excellent choice for your fantasy / science fiction category. Hope you end up enjoying it as much as I am :-)

I like your Shakespeare category. I think I'll add some to my 999 challenge.

You do have a very diverse collection here. I think that it will give you plenty of variety so that you'll always have something on it that suits your mood. The Wonder Boys is a fast-paced, fun read.

Interesting choices. I've always intended to read more Shakespeare plays but never quite got around to it and don't think 2009 is going to be the year for me to do it. I studied Henry IV PartII at university and really enjoyed it.

I did Film Adaptations for the 888 challenge and had Fight Club in my list too.

I'm planning on doing graduate work in Shakespeare, but my courses still seem to cover many of the same texts over and over, and there are a ton I've seen but haven't read, or even that I've had no contact with at all, so it seemed that this year would be good for it.

Of course, I have to reread Lear and Tempest this afternoon, so maybe I'll feel a little more burned out after that.

>>14 Elee:

I also have choosen The Mists of Avalon for my challenge. I have this book for so long, but there always seems to be a book I want te read more. I'm almost avoiding the book, but I don't know why.

Re: #7, What a great gift from your father! That's really a "forever" present that will continue to get even better as you both grow older. I wish I would have thought of that! I think that's one of the reasons why discovering LT was so exciting to me. The books I choose to read say something about me and the issues I care about, so when I invite my family and friends to see my library, I'm also inviting them to see me.

IX. YOUNG ADULT

I gave in. I read a billion young adult novels a year. No. This is me.

1. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery DONE, 1/23/09
2. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery DONE, 2/8/09
3. Hero by Perry Moore DONE, 2/3/09
4. Shadowland by Meg Cabot DONE, 4/15/09
5. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien DONE, 3/22/09
6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott DONE, 4/1/09
7. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson DONE, 7/12/09
8. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly DONE, 5/22/09
9. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman DONE, 4/15/09

>7 Tafadhali:, Wow, that is wonderful.

For my own sake, a (sort of late) Quarterly Report:

I. 4/9
II. 0/9 (At least I seem to be leaving a fun category for later, as I devour YA novels...)
III. 1/9
IV. 1/9
V. 3/9
VI. 0/9 (They were too nice to bring abroad with me!)
VII. 5/9
VIII. 0/9
IX. 7/9

Total: 21/81

Third Quarterly Report(ish)

Since I didn't read in June...

I. 4/9
II. 0/9
III. 1/9
IV. 2/9
V. 6/9
VI. 0/9
VII. 5/9
VIII. 0/9
IX. 9/9

Total: 27/81

Final Report (Though I Suppose I Could Always Surprise Myself)

I. 4/9
II. 0/9 (So, this and others might make my 10-10-10)
III. 7/9
IV. 3/9
V. 7/9
VI. 0/9
VII. 6/9
VIII. 0/9
IX. 9/9

Total: 36/81
Page Count: ~10,600

I never expected to finish, and am not very surprised that I didn't, but it was good at giving me some direction to my reading, especially when I was living in Ireland in the Spring and actually had free time.