2009 Reading Challenges

When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

In 2008, even as a reluctant unspoken good-bye was finally said, a torrent of hellos came rushing up to me in the form of the books that found their way into my home in the latter part of the year. One love lost, and a lost love found. Fair trade, I would say.

And the torrent has taken over with much cooperation from me. Among the finished reads in the last two months were Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the first two books of The 39 Clues, John Dunning's Booked to Die, Seth Godin's Tribes, Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book [my first Gaiman read!], Leonard Elmore's 10 Rules of Writing, and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. All magical works that reminded me why I opened a bookstore and why I love books so much.

So in 2009, to channel the continuing torrent of books, I have chosen to participate in reading challenges. These are well-defined reading tasks with specific quantitative or qualitative targets, sometimes focusing on genre or authors or a mix, depending on the creator of the challenge.

My chosen challenges are

- The Year of Readers
- The Rescue Challenge
- 1% Well-Read Challenge
- 50-Book Challenge on Library Thing
- The Olympic Challenge: London 2012

Will be blogging more about these challenges as the reading progresses. Found my way back home to me by getting lost in the world of books.