addendum: The 2010 Challenge is now up here
OK, who is up for participating in this this year? If you are in indicate with a comment below
The inspiration for this annual challenge came from livejournal where I temporarily blogged. They had challenges like these and I participated but gradually I reached the point where I was only posting there to participate in the challenge so I rarely post there anymore.
In 2007 I asked if there was interest in a challenge to Newsviners to read at least 50 books and/or watch 50 movies. I went ahead and set up topics to do exactly that.
That year there was a lot of initial interest but few actually participated.
This year (2008) too there was some initial interest and more people writing book and movie reviews but few kept track. I even lowered the reading level from a minimum goal of 50 to 25 too.
Last year's movie movie challenge was here and the reading challenge was here.
So if you like this idea and want to participate please indicate with a comment below.
Personally this will be the third year that I'm shooting to read between 50 and 100 books.
I had planned to write an index of the books I read this year but its one of those projects that got delayed when I was computerless for two months. Sometime around Feb I'm shooting to index all my author interviews - i'm still averaging about one book a week.
There are at least three ways you can do this? I make a point - learned the hard way while student teaching - of modelling (no, not like Vanna White but like a teacher) so...
You can link below to your reviews... or post mini-reviews below... or you can do what I do which is a list - updated regularly - of all of the movies I've seen so far this year. See here for my full list
The idea here is not "who can read the most?" or "who can see the most movies?" so much as motivating more of us to share what we are reading and watching. I LOVE reading reviews by other people and comparing their opinions of a work to my own. Or, better yet, reading about something and deciding to check it out.
This is an automated message (just go along with this) reminding you that the Newsvine
reading and movie challenge are starting on Jan. 1 so if you get any good books
or movies from Santa or others come join us. The more the merrier. Or as I said in
high school, "be there or be trapezoid."
(Put another way while this technically starts Jan. 1 you can include things you read or saw in December.)
My list for 2009
1 - Carrie Fisher - Wishful Drinking
Tonight I finished Carrie Fisher's new memoir and I loved it.
She is incredibly frank and witty and wacky(but in a good way.) She is also incredibly blunt about matters like being bipolar.
Take this excerpt for example about a psychiatrist who got her to address her being manic-depression:
"And I ultimately not only addressed it, I named my two moods Roy and Pam. Roy is Rollicking Roy, the wild ride of a mood, and Pam is Sediment Pam, who stands on the shore and sobs. (Pam stands for "piss and moan") One mood is the meal, and the next mood is the check.
There are a couple of reasons why I take comfort in being able to put all this in my own vernacular and present it to you. For one thing, because then I'm not completely alone with it. And for another, it gives me a sense of being in control of the craziness. Now this is a delusion, but it's my delusion and I'm sticking with it. It's sort of like: I have problems but problems don't have me."
I want to quote an excerpt from the press release that came with this book:
"Fisher's realization that she is an alcoholic and her on and off periods of sobriety and relapse provide a tender through-line in WISHFUL DRINKING, as she comes face to face with her addictions and the reality of her bi-polar disorder, with its incredible, energetic highs and its depths-of-depression lows. It's not without its compensations: "Having waited my entire life to get an award for something, anything (okay fine, not acting, but what about a tiny award for writing? Nope), I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill. I'm apparently very good at it and am honored for it regularly….[I]t's better than being bad at being insane, right? How tragic would it be to be runner-up for Bipolar Woman of the Year?""
A section about her mother, Debbie Reynolds, having Cary Grant (yes, that Cary Grant) call Carrie to lecture her about taking acid had me laughing out loud causing my nieces to think I was acting even more odd than usual.
She talks about how freaky it is to encounter people who used to masturbate to her as Princess Leia and those ex-boyfriends who used to put pins in Princess Leia dolls when mad at her. But her best take on this comes when someone tells her to go (bleep) herself and she describes in detail trying to do exactly that with a lifesize doll that was made of her but finding it not actually possible.
Let me end (this somehow makes sense given the book's contents) with a comment from the beginning of the book, namely the dedication:
"To my DNA jackpot - my daughter, Billie. For all you are and all you will be. I want to be like you when I grow up."
2 - No Time To Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle :
3, 4- Jump the Shark and Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV
5 - Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper
6, 7 - Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly and Exit Music by Ian Rankin
Book #8 - Jan Burke - The Messenger - Interview with her here
Book #9 - Kate Atkinson - When Will There Be Good News - review here
Book #10 - David Denby - Snark
Book #11 - Dog On It
Book #12 - Interview with Lisa Lutz about her latest comic mystery
Book #13 - Steve Martin - Born Standing Up -
Book #14 - An interview with Tim Green, author of Above the Law.
Book #15 - The Horse Boy
Book #16 - An Interview With Michael Specter About "Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives"
Book #17 - Googled by Ken Auletta
Books #18- The Line UpThe Line Up edited by Otto Penzler
Book #19 - Rough Country by John Sanford
Book #20 - Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman
Book #21 - 9 Dragons and Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
Book #22 - The GuineaPig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs
.
Book #23 - Second Sight by George Shuman
Book #24- Googled by Ken Auletta
Book #25 -
