Thursday, June 16, 2011

Art of the Novella (and other Summer Goals!)

Have you seen this challenge?  I'm at least fascinated, perhaps even captivated...and trying to find an excuse (and the momentum) to be an unstoppable bibliomaniac.


Curious – Read 1 novella
Fascinated — Read 3 novellas
Captivated – Read 6 novellas
Passionate — Read 9 novellas
Mesmerized – Read 15 novellas
Obsessed – Read 21 novellas
Fanatical – Read 27 novellas
Unstoppable — Read 33 novellas
Bibliomaniac — Read all 42 novellas

They're cute, they're short, they're written by great authors, (go look at all the titles here,) they're accompanied by prizes, and August sounds like a great month for reading, don't you think?  :)  I'm going to join the challenge, but I'm going to resist going whole hog.  For now.



Other Summer Goals:
Since wrapping up May's reading, I've been trying to decide what my reading goals for the summer should be.  Of course, I'll never reach them, but I love to have something to aim for.  

Today I was sorting through some bookshelves, and am really feeling the need to get through/get rid of some of the Junior Fiction on my shelves.  For the most part, my kiddos aren't interested in Newbery-type JF unless I've read it and highly recommend it.  Which means that my bookshelves are full of books that will never be read unless I read them first...and kids grow quickly, so I'm running out of time.  Since reading through some of these books will help me accomplish two of my other goals (reading the books on my shelves, and reading the Newbery winners) I'm thinking this is a good plan.

There are some other books (for challenges) that I want to have read before school ramps up again after Labor Day:  - Alexander's Bridge,  O Pioneers (Willa Cather Challenge) and Gone With the Wind (Back to the Classics Challenge) at least.

Wish me luck...let summer officially begin!

8 comments:

  1. Melody: This looks like so much fun. I have been wanting to find a way to switch up my reading this summer and this may be perfect. Of course, when I see a set of something, it's very hard for me to buy just a few of the set. This is going to be naggling at me all day.

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  2. Oh my word! This is awesome! The authors alone are very tempting. The covers, however, are very uninspiring. Let's see what should I be? Captivated???

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  3. PS I didn't know that Jane Austen wrote a novella. I'm going to have a hard time choosing which ones to read. Maybe instead of a summer challenge, it needs to be a long term challenge. Funny, in the Well Educated Mind, Bauer doesn't have a short story/novella section.

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  4. I know very few of those titles, but the authors! Oh man -- what great authors! I'll be very impressed with you if you do this challenge.

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  5. Belle, I hear you with wanting the whole set. I keep telling myself to hold my horses--reminding myself that I just bought a Nook. I think I'll work on exhibiting remarkable self control. :)

    Heidi, I've looked at WEM quite a few times, but always end up being too intimidated (by the structure as much as some of the texts). Are you using it? I agree that the authors of these novellas are really what sold me. Getting exposure to some classic authors without an enormous time commitment sounds like a great idea.

    Wallace, I didn't realize most of those authors even had novellas...or that some were considered novellas (Hound of Baskervilles, The Awakening). 42 novellas in a month? That's around 10 a week, more than 1 a day--craziness! I don't know if I'm quite up to that challenge.

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  6. This is really really tempting. I like novellas and have already read a few on the list. However, I don't have most of them and I am not really up to buying any of them at the moment (I'm broke and there are many other novellas I'd like to read / buy); pity!
    Have you heard of Quattro Books? They're a Canadian publishing house specialised in the novella (I posted a couple of reviews on my blog).

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  7. A worthy challenge! Unfortunately, I'll probably be skipping this one because I already feel slightly overwhelmed by my reading goals, but I'm drooling anyhow!

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  8. Em, I hadn't heard of Quattro Books--thanks for mentioning them. I'll definitely look them up. I'm thinking that I should be able to find most of these classic novellas @ my library, but it would be so much more fun to read them on my own, new, colorful copies. As much as I'd love to buy the whole set, I just can't justify it!

    Andi, I hear you about overwhelming reading goals! I think that I've been so goal-oriented all year that I was primed and ready for a distraction. Most of my reading so far this year has been regular Adult Fiction (as opposed to my Junior Fiction, Classics and Nonfiction from the last few years) so spending my summer with more JF and classic novellas sounds fun. I think this challenge just happened to hit me at the right time. :)

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