Thursday, December 28, 2006

The "To Be Read" Challenge

This looks like fun, so I'm doing it. The "To Be Read" Challenge from MizB of Literary Cache. I found it via Wanderings of a Student Librarian.

The idea is that before 1 January 2007, you list in your blog 12 books that have been on you TBR list for more than 6 months. Then, you read one per month. And..there's a sweetener from MizB:
Every 3 months, for the duration of the challenge, I will pick one challenge participant's name from a "hat". That person --if they've read the amount of books for that time (ie: 3 books in 3 months; 6 books in 6 months, etc)-- will receive a small gift (via snail-mail) from me.
If you have a "Staff's favourite picks" list on your website or posted in your library, why not add a "Staff's TBR list"? It would be great to share with your users, they'd get to know a bit more about you, about some of your bookstock and it would provide such an interesting talking point.

As I wrote the last paragraph, I thought "of course, this would only apply to public libraries". But I'm wondering...."Why couldn't we do it in an academic library?". Too worried about our credibility as a research institution, or that our users don't come to us for THAT kind of thing. If not, why not?

Here's my list. It turned out to be harder than I thought. I've just found out that I'm pretty good at following up and reading books on my TBR list:

  1. A delicate balance - Rohinton MISTRY

  2. Tipping point:how little things can make a big difference - Malco

  3. Born on a blue day - Daniel TAMMET

  4. A spot of bother - Mark HADDON

  5. Martini: a memoir - Frank MOOREHOUSE

  6. A prayer for Owen Meany - John IRVING

  7. The night watch - Sarah WATERS

  8. I know why the caged bird sings - Maya ANGELOU

  9. The tent - Margaret ATTWOOD

  10. The bone people - Keri HULME

  11. One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ

  12. History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand RUSSELL

Special mentions, but published in the last 6 months:

  1. The inheritance of loss - Kiran DESAI

  2. Chart throb - Ben ELTON

  3. Moral disorder - Margaret ATTWOOD
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

UPDATE 29.12.06: This one has been sitting on my bedside table so long that it's become part of the furniture, so I owe it a mention to prod me into finishing it:

  • Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna CLARKE

1 comment:

Elizabeth Kilpatrick said...

In another just released book, Strange Son, a very unusual young man named Tito who falls on the opposite end of the autism spectrum, shares his equally unusual experience of the world. Tito is severely autistic and nonverbal and yet, astoundingly, he has a high IQ and writes poetry. One hopes that these two books appearing on the scene at nearly the same moment in history, suggests that we are on the verge of a new understanding of the autism spectrum disorders; an understanding that comes from the inside out instead of from the theories and hypotheses of "experts". While the biological causes of autism still remain undiscovered, these firsthand accounts are not only the most valuable tool scientists have to study autism, they are the beginnings of a new understanding of autism for us all. Although the wide-ranging abilities and expressions of the human mind never cease to amaze us, the opportunity to glimpse the world through the unique consciousness of these two young men offers a dazzling and unexpected gift like none that we have encountered in recent memory.