SqueakyChu's Dewey Decimal Challenge

EDITED TO CHANGE MY CHALLENGE!
See note in this post in italics.

I decided to change my challenge to make it a 1 in 10 or 10 in 1 challenge. My goal is to either read at least 1 book in 10 different categories or 10 books in 1 category. We'll just have to see what comes first! The reason I'm changing my challenge is that I like to pick my nonfiction books at random. So far, I'm closer to my goal in the 1 in 10 rather than the 10 in 1.

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Oh, no! Not another challenge!! I found bfertig's post on yesterday's Hot Topics and can't believe that I found yet another challenge that I tried to decline but then realized I couldn't resist.

I'm setting it up to be as easy as possible. There will be no date limit. I will start with only one book per main category as my challenge objective, although I will list all my non-fiction reads to see which categories I read the most. This should be interesting!

This challenge will have to be incorporated into all of my other reading challenges. It will start with all current and future reads and may take a while as I tend to read more fiction than nonfiction. I will delete any books that I don't finish. I'm hoping this challenge will be a genre bender for me. We'll see.

Thanks, Zoe, for starting this Challenge!

Goal: to read at least ONE book in TEN categories OR TEN books in ONE category, starting in 2009.

Done!!

000 – Computer science, information & general works
1. 002 - Outwitting History - Aaron Lansky - The book
2. 004 - The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch - Data processing & computer science
3. 070 - The Longest Trip Home - John Grogan - News media, journalism, and publishing
4.

100 – Philosophy and psychology
1.

200 – Religion
1. 204 - The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle - Religious experience, life, practice
2. 248 - Dancing with Max - Emily Colson - Christian experience, practice, life
2. 296 - The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things - Steven Z. Leder - Judaism
3.

300 – Social sciences
1. 302 - The Twitter Book - Tim O'Reilly - Social interaction
2. 304 - Eaarth - Bill McKibben - Factors affecting social behavior
3. 305 - My Jesus Year - Benyamin Cohen - Social groups
4. 333 - Diet for a Hot Planet - Anna Lappe - Land economics
5. 338 - Farmer Jane - Temra Costa - Production
6. 362 - Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person -Miriam Engelberg - Social welfare problems & services
7. 362 - Gaby Brimmer - Gaby Brimmer - Social welfare problems & services
8. 363 - Diet for a New America - John Robbins - Other social problems & services
9. 371 - Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson - School management; special education
10.

400 - Language
1.

500 - Science
1. 598 - The Big Year - Mark Obmascik - Aves (Birds)
2. 599 - Zarafa - Michael Allin - Mammalia (Mammals)
3.

600 - Technology
1. 610 - The Tennis Partner - Abraham Verghese - Medical science
2. 616 - Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet - Diseases
3. 617 - Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science - Atul Gawande - Surgery & other related medical specialties
4. 639 - An Eagle Named Freedom - Jeff Guidry - Hunting, Fishing, Conservation
5. 640 - Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability - Greg Horn - Home Economics & Family Living
6. 641 - Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer
7. 641 - The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson - Food & drink
8. 641 - Garlic and Sapphires - Ruth Reichl - Food & drink
9. 641 - Recipes from America's Small Farms: Fresh Ideas for the Season's Bounty - Joanne Lamb Hayes - Food & drink
10. 664 - Maple Sugarin' in Vermont: A Sweet History - Betty Ann Lockhart - Food technology

700 - Arts and recreation
1. 741 - Chi's Sweet Home - Konami Kanata - Drawing & drawings
2. 796 - Outcasts United - Warren St. John - Athletic & outdoor sports & games
3.

800 - Literature
1. 808 - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life - Anne Lamott - Rhetoric & collections of literature
2. 809 - Electroboy - Andy Behrman - Literary history & criticism
3. 811 - Father Said: Poems - Hal Sirowitz - Poetry
4. 811 - Mother Said: Poems - Hal Sirowitz - Poetry
5. 811 - A working girl can't win and other poems - Deborah Garrison - Poetry
6. 811 - X - James Galvin - Poetry
7. 813 - Loon - Jack McLean - Collections in American English
8. 823 - Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter - J. Nozipo Maraire -English fiction
9. 892 - Writing in the Dark - David Grossman - Afro-Asiatic literatures Semitic
10.

900 - History, geography, and biography
1. 906 - Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger's Love Story - Jerry Newport - History, geographic, persons treatment
2. 910 - Honey and Dust - Piers Moore Ede - Geography & travel
3. 920 - Yarn: Remembering the Way Home - Kyoko Mori - Biography, genealogy, insignia
4. 956 - In the Name of Hope and Sorrow - Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof - History of Asia: Near East (Middle East)
5. 973 - The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream - Barack Obama - General history of North America; United States
6.

You're welcome, and thanks for joining in! I'm looking forward to getting ideas from your thread :)

Zoe, I think this looks like a fun challenge which would be good for people who almost never read nonfiction. The way I have my challenge set up, my own challenge is asking me to read ten nonfiction books, which I love anyway, with no time deadline.

I think you could get more takers for this challenge if it were more highly visible. I only noticed it because I had, for a short while, set my Talk onto "Hot" threads. Perhaps issue an invitation in the Book Talk group? Let it be known that others can make this challenge as easy or as difficult as they would like. I'm not one who is willing to do a 1,000 books challenge. Yikes!! The idea is simply to push oneself into more diverse reading.

After I finish this challenge, I plan to set up another DD Challenge asking that I read twenty books. I'll figure out the exact way I want to do it after I see what this challenge actually entails.

Thanks again.

I finished Bird by Bird (808/.02 20) by Anne Lamott last night. If you're an aspiring writer and want to read something about the process of writing, this is a great entry level book. It tells, with endearing humor, some principles that will set the writer onto the right track. Here's my full review.

I'm too worried about seeming spammy to post an invitation in another group. I do send personal invitations to people who mention that they're trying to broaden their reading, and I sometimes link to the challenge when it comes up in other discussions. I figure since this isn't a time-limited challenge, there's no hurry... People can trickle in gradually :)

I see your point. It's too bad that people will only be able to find this challenge by accident, though.

Perhaps someone (not me) should start a "Challenges" thread to list what is available throughout LT?

I'll try to use the DD Challenge link when I talk about my books elsewhere. This is too much fun to keep as a secret!

Okay, I've made a general thread about challenges here.

I think I'll also start a couple of new threads in this group to promote discussion... the more talking that's going on, the more likely the group is to be found by accident!

Since I've been reading books at random and not particularly to finish this challenge, I'm finding it fun to see in which categories I've been reading the most books. Social sciences is no suprise.

I'm changing my challenge. See the edited notice at the top of this page. This way of doing this challenge will work better for me, I think.

*happy dance*

I picked Honey and Dust to read. It's a book that conveniently fits into a category I haven't touched yet (a 900 category). It looks as if it's going to "bee" a good read. :)

I'm starting to see a trend! :)

Yay! Got another category covered. I'll be finished The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things in a jiffy. It's a small book and a quick read. I'm reading it at whim because it (a future Bookcrossing freebie) was actually en route to a book fair as a leftover book from a Jewish book sale. I liked the title so I thought I'd read it first. It's nice, but nothing particularly earth-shattering or deep.

Not so extraordinary?

The social sciences category seems to be winning. I'm just reading non-fiction books at random to see where they take me.

That's the best way! I can never manage to read a category deliberately.

I'm deliberate (on the class level at least), though at this point there's so much I haven't read that I haven't had too much trouble finding interesting things, or at least things I expect will be reasonably interesting when I pick them up.

I really would like to finish the challenge, but I know I won't if one day I realize I have nothing but 000's and 400's left.

I really would like to finish the challenge, but I know I won't if one day I realize I have nothing but 000's and 400's left.

...which is exactly why I structured my challenge the way I did.

I'm counting on natural variation of interests to get me through, at least for now. I did read three C.S. Lewis books in three different 200 categories near the beginning of the challenge, because I was worried I'd be stuck with the 200s at the end, but that was enough for me for a while.

but that was enough for me for a while

:)

Hooray!! I finished this challenge in 1 year and 9 months!!

I was able to read 10 books in the Dewey Decimal 600's.

Congratulations!

Have you decided whether to try a second challenge?

Thanks, Sandy. In fact, I already started my second DD challenge. Here it is! I got attracted back to this challenge after I saw how much work Zoe and Carly put into creating the Suggestions wiki.

I think you deserve credit for demonstrating with TIOLI how useful and easy a wiki can be!

Thanks for that, Sandy!

I'm really glad that so many people jumped on the bandwagon, were willing to try out the wiki (although some reluctantly), and are now unafraid to use it.

I also was so glad that Tim gave us the chance to learn how to use it here on LT. It adds a whole new and different dimension to this website because we, as a group, can work together on a project using those wiki pages. Very few other websites have this.

Even though I wholeheartedly agree that you deserve much praise for encouraging lots of people to learn to use a wiki, the comment at #24 was from Zoe, not me!

I'm glad you're giving the Dewey Decimal challenge a second go.

Ooops! Thanks, Zoe!