OK, I’ve decided that I’m not going to feel guilty about the temptation to join reading challenges, and I’m not going to worry about not finishing the ones I’ve joined, and just have fun with it. There are just too many good challenges out there for me to resist. And I like what Kate had to say about them, as she was able to articulate my feelings on the matter much better than I could:

But where challenges are concerned my attitude is unequivocally “the more the merrier.” I’ve never regretted signing up for one even when I didn’t finish it, so great is the pleasure of embarking on a reading journey in the company of congenial fellows, and so great the rewards of the encounters with new authors and books thereby provoked.

So here I go:

I’m going to go with option 3, and choose five short story collections, from amongst my personal collection. Surprisingly, to me at least, it turns out I have quite a few volumes of short stories, which seems odd since I don’t consider myself much of a short story reader. Then again, perhaps I am just good at hoarding books. I painstakingly narrowed down my list of choices, but still could not make the final cut to bring the number down to 5, so here are the six I’ve chosen, which I guess means I’m actually going with Kate’s custom option. Thank you, Kate, for helping me brush the dust off these titles. Perhaps I’ll turn into a short story reader after all.

Stranger Things Happen
Tourist Season
Believers
Jenny and the Jaws of Life
The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales
The Means of Escape

I did pathetically poorly in my last attempt at the Chunkster Challenge, having forgotten about it for much of its duration and then didn’t manage to read the one book I’d specifically chosen for the challenge, although I did read several books that would have qualified as chunksters, if I’d just been smart enough to remember that fact. This time round, the challenge is a little more stringent, which is good for me, as I like to have some parameters I can play with. My four chosen chunksters are:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Terror
The Winter Rose
A Fine Balance

Bonus/Alternate: The Sweet Far Thing

And the final challenge, for now. I enjoy reading memoirs, so this challenge should hopefully be an easy one, especially since there’s no minimum number of books to read. Here are the ones I’ve chosen, 5 titles for now but that may go up or down:

Autobiography of a Face
The Know-It-All
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Chosen by a Horse
Three Cups of Tea

Part of the fun of these challenges is also going through my library at LibraryThing and selecting the various books. Inevitably I come across book I’d forgotten I had, am reminded of books I have been meaning to read, and sometimes veer off and discover new titles to add to my wishlist. I think signing up is one of my favorite things about joining these challenges!