FOT SUMMER READING CHALLENGE

[~L]

Challenge yourself to an old-fashioned summer of reading!
Post your challenge here: how many books you'd like to read over the summer or how many hours per week you hope to spend reading.
List your books read and post your progress here.
Kind of like weight watchers for readers, but no money down, and without the guilt if you slip!
Let the reading begin!
 

[dave from knoxville]

I am recreationally reading about an hour a day; have been for the last year or so. During that time I have read Les Miserable, War and Peace, Philip F Dick's Ubik, and I am about a week from finishing Infinite Jest (for the 3rd time, but the 1st time I feel I have really connected with it, to the point that I feel I am about to lose an old friend.)

I forgot what the other questions were.

[davidgoeschatting]

I will read at least an hour a day, and I will have read from 8-10 books by the end of summer.

Will I? I hope so.

[~L]

I am immersed in the George R. R. Martin series "A Song of Ice and Fire." I am half way through book 3.  My challenge is to finish reading all through Book 7 this summer.
Also I am reading Tina Fey's "Bossypants" as fast as I can, as it's due back at the library and two other people are waiting for it!

[Pregnant Pause]

I am immersed in the George R. R. Martin series "A Song of Ice and Fire." I am half way through book 3.  My challenge is to finish reading all through Book 7 this summer.
Also I am reading Tina Fey's "Bossypants" as fast as I can, as it's due back at the library and two other people are waiting for it!

Hate to break it to you, but only 4 books have been published.  Number 5 comes July 12

[~L]

Thanks for the heads up I hadn't realized.  Now I'll request my library hold volume five for me when it comes in!  So, if I can get through the 400 pages I have left on #3,  and 784 pages of volume 4, and I'll be ready for 5 when it comes out in July.  That would be a decent amount of reading for the summer, then "Winter is coming."

[Lothar_Brightblade]

I am reading For Whom the Bell Tolls right now as part of my year-long effort to read a bunch of books that are culturally significant.

Other books I read as part of this series already, I was originally only going to read fiction, but that didn't work out:
Mysterious Stranger - Mark Twain
Timequake - Vonnegut
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
Looking Backward - Bellamy
The Autobiography of MLK - MLK (sort of ghostwritten by Claybourne Carson)
Ethics - Spinoza (a good one for the kids!)
The Jungle - Sinclair
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Dune - Herbert (never seen the movies, but I'm really interested now)
East of Eden - Jon Steinbeck (my new favorite book)
1984 - Orwell
Fugitive Days - Ayers
A couple of books written about socialism as part of a reading group I'm in.

All of them were pretty good reads, Ethics was a slog but I liked it in retrospect.

I'd like to read 7 or 8 more books by the end of the August. That's probably doable since I was forced to give my notice at my job the other day and will be out of work for the immediate future.

Some of the books I still want to read:
Going Rogue - Palin (I already have this a quarter of the way done. I had to put it down because I honestly feel like it was an assault on my (and hopefully anybody who reads it) intelligence.)
Hocus Pocus - Vonnegut (This is the book I read when I go to particular cafe in town that has it on one of their bookshelves)
Silent Spring - Carson
The Value of Nothing - Raj Patel
Altas Shrugged - Rand (Reading it for roughly the same reason as the Palin book)
The Corner - David Simon
The Prison Notebooks - Gramsci
The Politics of Genocide - Herman

[Big Plastic Head]

Lothar, I see some Vonnegut on your list. I would like to recommend GALAPAGOS if you haven't read it. I would switch it out for TIME QUAKE myself.

[dave from knoxville]

I was just about to ask if TimeQuake was worth the time. Personally, my favorite is Slapstick.

[buffcoat]

I was just about to ask if TimeQuake was worth the time. Personally, my favorite is Slapstick.

Hi ho.

[Lothar_Brightblade]

TimeQuake was good. He breaks from the narrative a lot and it's very autobiographical. A Man Without A Country, which was his last book, has a similar voice (since it was basically a collection of articles and new material). I read Galapagos in a single day and loved it, I consider it in the upper echelon of Jackie Kennedy fanfic. I've read about half of his books, but I want to take my time with them so I have something to read later on.

In Indianapolis they have a Vonnegut museum now, which I hope to visit this summer.

[JonFromMaplewood]

My goals are modest. I plan to read:

- "A Clash of Kings"
- About 200 more pages of "The Power Broker" (I'm taking it in parts over many years)
- Any quality book I can find about the history of Israel and Palestine that is not Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem"

Coming Summer 2012:

ULYSSES

[Steve of Bloomington]

TimeQuake was good. He breaks from the narrative a lot and it's very autobiographical. A Man Without A Country, which was his last book, has a similar voice (since it was basically a collection of articles and new material). I read Galapagos in a single day and loved it, I consider it in the upper echelon of Jackie Kennedy fanfic. I've read about half of his books, but I want to take my time with them so I have something to read later on.

In Indianapolis they have a Vonnegut museum now, which I hope to visit this summer.

I didn't know there was such a thing up there. I'll have to visit. I went through all the Vonnegut books (pre-1986) in High School and saw him speak a couple of times. I remember an exchange in the early 90s where a guy asked him if he knew about alt.books.vonnegut, or whatever the Vonnegut related Usenet group was, and Vonnegut pointed out that some of those people were probably in the room, so he should try to get to know some of them IRL. He didn't use the acronym 'IRL', though. Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 are my favorites from him.

[~L]

Yay!
I finished "Bossypants".  I finished "A Storm of Swords."  Starting "A Feast for Crows" today!
I saw Mr. Vonnegut once at Studio 54 a long long time ago.  He is on my list of famous people I have brushed shoulders with, and regret not having spoken to, who have since passed away. 

[Tor_Hershman]

Read
"My Life As A Small Boy"
by
Wally Cox.

Some of you youngin's may feel that moi 'tis makin' that up BUT some of you thought MOI MADE I up.

Stay on groovin' safari,
  Tor