FOT SUMMER OF 2012 READING CHALLENGE

[~L]

Step away from your technical gadgets, unless it's your eReader...
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]

Just finished "Stiff", which I though was a whole lot of fun http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32145.Stiff. About halfway through Wodehouse's "Leave it to Psmith". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1244295.Leave_It_to_Psmith

[Kevin from Pittsburgh]

I just discovered Thrift Books and their great deals, so my summer list is a bit eclectic:

A Confederacy of Dunces
Legends of a Suicide and Caribou Island
Little, Big
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

I know the first on the list is recommended by many, so I'm really excited to get into it!

[buffcoat]

I read A Confederacy of Dunces many years ago.  My recollection of it is in line with most great first books (and often, only books):

- great idea
- wonderful writing
- runs out of steam
- last third is incoherent
- the writer had no idea how to end it

Does that track?

[Kevin from Pittsburgh]

I read A Confederacy of Dunces many years ago.  My recollection of it is in line with most great first books (and often, only books):

- great idea
- wonderful writing
- runs out of steam
- last third is incoherent
- the writer had no idea how to end it

Does that track?

As long as it's a good read, I won't mind.  It can't be worse than some of the stuff I've read.  That's what happens when you don't cut your losses and stop.  Gotta get to the end!! 

[davidgoeschatting]

Just finished The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross this week. I got it as a gift and really don't know much about classical music, but getting through it was pretty rewarding. Though some of the music jargon is lost on me, Ross does a great job of describing trends/movements in the last 100 years or so of classical music and how it's influenced by, and itself influences, popular culture. Very interesting. Plus, you get turned on to a grip of fascinating modern composers.

I don't know how much I'll read this summer. Last year, I was like, "I'm reading 100 books," and I think I got through like 3 or 4. We'll see.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I loved A Confederacy of Dunces and have no recollection at all of the ending.

Do research books count?  I just read five in rapid succession in the last two weeks, somewhat overlapping:

Breaking The Rules: The Wooster Group by David Savran
Nine Years Among The Indians, 1870-1879 by Herman Lehmann
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
On the Art of Noh Drama by Zeami, translated by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu
Occasional Work and Seven Walks from The Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson

Nine Years Among The Indians was actually a pretty fun read, if disturbing, and the Lisa Robertson book is pretty amazing.

I want to get back to something fun, or perhaps a classic, but in between all the research reading and my work, all I have the brainpower for are comic books.  I've had Tearing Down The Wall of Sound out from the library for over a year now, and am hoping to get to Sam Lipsyte's The Ask.

[Drew D]

The Ask is excellent, as is all Lipsyte.  I find some of the zanier parts in it and Homeland/Venus Drive to occasionally flirt with Newbridge style humor, especially since he deals with Jersey a lot.  But I guess it maintains a darker edge.

[gravy boat]

I just finished Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I'm going to go with something lighter now, Franzen's Freedom, then read a classic I have never read--Tale of Two Cities. Having read the ending but still actually having no idea how it ends, I plan to re-read Blood Meridian later in the summer.  That's probably the only 3 I'll read.

[buffcoat]

Freedom is light compared to Cormac McCarthy, but not light in and of itself.

[yesno]

Little, Big

I just read the Aegypt cycle.  I need to tackle Little, Big next.  John Crowley is so good.

Currently trying to get through 50 pages a day of Middlemarch.  50 pages a day has been my standard for a few months (it helps that I read while walking the dog now instead of listening to podcasts) and I've managed to get through quite a few great books recently---Moby Dick, the Book of Disquiet by Pessoa, Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, the Essential Alan Coren, Greenblatt's the Swerve, Sum by David Eagleman, In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin, Strange Forces by Leopoldo Lugones, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, Consent of the Networked by Rebecca MacKinnon.  I recommend all of these.

If Middlemarch doesn't kill me my reward is "The Audacity of Hype" by Armando Iannucci.  I also want to read "The Most of S.J. Perelman" pretty soon and the last few years of "The Best American Comics."  Also "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford.

[~L]

This summer my reading plan is to alternate reading fiction with non-fiction.
I just finished PURE by Julianna Baggott; Sci-fi post-disaster, with characters that have altered body parts and are very Tim Burton-esque.
Started INCOGNITO: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman; about how our subconscious brain is busy doing millions of amazing things while we are oblivious.
Meanwhile reading: THE DRAGON'S PATH by Daniel Abraham; Fantasy, battles and gore, and those made up names that are hard to pronounce.
Also reading DROP DEAD HEALTHY by A.J. Jacobs; who was featured on Seven Second Delay recently, the book follows his OCD year long quest to be the healthiest he can be.

[Rick in Salt Lake]

I just finished Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I'm going to go with something lighter now...

Isn't the ending to that a motherfucker? I thought the book was a tad dull for stretches but it had some great moments and the last chapter is certainly one of those great moments... Believe it or not-- although it has been five or so years since I read "Blood Meridian" the final scene of The Judge was the first thing I thought of when I saw the "Rated GG" cover...

Supposedly Tommy Lee Jones owns the film rights...

[Eric Fishlegs]

I almost hate to do this because it feels like a kiss ass move, but I just read A BAD IDEA I'M ABOUT TO DO by Chris Gethard and it really is a funny book though I admit I am certainly predisposed to like any book by a socially awkward geek who was/is obsessed with pro wrestling.

CLEVELAND by Harvey Pekar was also a good read if you're a Pekar fan.

[Steeley Chris]

Working my way through the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I just finished "A Storm Of Swords." They're long, but so easy to read - Stephen King meets Tolkien.
Rereading The Razor's Edge. I just saw the Bill Murray movie, which I thought was pretty good, and I haven't read the book since I was 15. It's not a long book by any means, but judging by the first paragraph, this may be a slog.
I have to finish More Information Than You Require, Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist (I have no idea how this book came into my possession), and William V. Shannon's The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait which I've been working on for a couple of years now.