2018 Reading Challenges

I just found out that reading challenges are a thing, so of course the only thing to do was to sign up for as many as I can.

Here's what I'm planning to do for 2018:

Back to the Classics

Tentatively, my list is:

1.  The Well at the End of the World, by William Morris

2.  East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

3.  Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

4.  The Shahnameh, by Ferdowsi and translated by Dick Davis

5. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

6.  The Moonstone, by Wilke Collins

7. The Odyssey, by Homer (hoping to pick up the new translation!)

8. Middlemarch, by George Eliot

9. The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy

10. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

11. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

12. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Banned/Challenged Books Reading Challenge

Still waiting on a link for this one (2016 version), but no harm in deciding early to do this.

No real list of books yet, but I'm adding these to my list of books to consider:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

Books n Tunes

I'm aiming for Hum Baby - pairing up 10 songs and romance-centered novels. A disturbing portion of my life is dedicated to Buffy music videos right now (it goes well with physical therapy exercises) and sending songs to my Buffy buddy. Might as well extend this to other fandoms!

 As an additional challenge, I'm thinking it might be fun to cover these songs on the guitar.

Wild Wild West Reading Challenge

One of my other hobbies is tabletop gaming. My GMing dream is to run a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game set in a Western setting. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about the intrusion of the supernatural into a specific setting (suburbia, high school, college) to make statements about adolescence, relationships, and feminism, and I think a Weird West BTVS game would be lovely and have a lot of potential! Unfortunately, this is hampered by not having read enough Westerns. (And a lack of general GMing skills, lack of familiarity with the ruleset, and players, but that's all out of scope for this blog.)

Bandana and Vest is the level I'm aiming for (4 books).

Currently considering:

Centennial, by James A. Michener
Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey
The Virginian, by Owen Wister
The Ox-bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Nonfiction Reading Challenge

I'm planning on doing the Dewey Decimal Challenge. Reading more nonfiction has been a goal of mine. I read 18 this year, but unfortunately, it skewed heavily self-help.