Outmoded Authors Challenge

This Challenge has ended. See here for my final thoughts.

Imani set up this challenge, which will last for six months ending on February 28th 2008. During that time the challenge is to read however many books by however many authors you like from a good long list. I've never heard of some of them, so that's another opportunity to broaden my reading. The rules of the challenge are here. I decided to limit my choice to books I already have or can borrow from my local library.

So far I have read:

1. Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe. See my review here.
2. D H Lawrence, Sons and Lovers. See my review here.
3. D H Lawrence, The Man Who Died. See my review here.
4. Olivia Manning, The Great Fortune. Review here.
5. Olivia Manning, The Spoilt City. See my review here.
6. W.Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence. See my review here and here.

Other books I would like to read are:

1. G K Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown. I've read some of Chesterton's books before, but none of the Father Brown books. There's a copy in my local library - in the Reserve Stock.


2. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley.


3. Somerset Maugham, Books and You & The Moon and Sixpence. The library has copies of both of these. Books and You sounds intriguing from its title.


4. John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga. I'm surprised to find that I've never read any Galsworthy either, but as The Forsyte Saga has been serialised on TV I know the story. I'll be interested to see how faithful the series was to the book. Sometimes, I don't like a film or TV dramatisation if I've read the book first, but it's usually ok the other way round.


5. Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy. I know nothing about Manning's books. The on-line catalogue of my local library lists this one volume book comprising The Great Fortune ; The Spoilt City; Friends and Heroes. So far I have read The Great Fortune and The Spoilt City. I've ordered Friends and Heroes from W H Smith - not arrived yet.


6. Italo Svevo, As a Man Grows Older. I know absolutely nothing about this author and have never heard of him before, so this may or may not be a good choice. I borrowed this from the library and couldn't get interested in it so returned it unread.

Revised 2 March 08

Celebrate the Author Challenge

This is a twelve month challenge starting on January 1 2008 set up by Becky. The challenge is designed to "celebrate" authors' birthdays. Choose one author for each month of the year. Read at least one book a month. You can choose alternatives for each month and you do NOT have to choose a book until the very moment you're ready to start reading. You can change your mind so long as you change your list to reflect that change.

This suits me very well as I have a long list of books to be read and so the authors I’ve currently chosen are all taken from that list. I particularly like the idea that I can change my mind as I do like to read spontaneously and this gives me that freedom of choice. I hope that this challenge will help me clear the backlog of unread books!

January - Virginia Woolf -The Death of the Moth and Other Essays - see here

February - Paul Auster - The Book of Illusions - see here

March - Robert Frost - see here

April - Ian Rankin - see here

May - Daphne Du Maurier or Richard Adams or Margaret Forster

June - Orhan Pamuk or Thomas Hardy

July - Alexander Dumas or Joanne Harris

August - Irving Stone or Jorges Louis Borges or Mollie Panter-Downes

September - Kiran Desai or Chimananda Ngozi Adichie or Elizabeth Gaskell

October - Melvyn Bragg or A N Wilson

November - George Eliot or Chinua Achebe or Mark Twain

December - Jane Austen or Sophie Kinsella

Revised 28 April 08