Reading Challenge – 15 Unreads in 18 days.

A while back, I stumbled across A year of reading the world, a blog by a woman who challenged herself to read one book from each of the 195 UN-recognized sovereign states plus Taiwan (for a total of 196) in one year. I thought this sounded both like a fun project, and like a project that’s way too large for me at the moment. So I decided to make an effort to make little reading challenges for myself during those periods when I have a lot of time on my hands, for example when I’m on vacation. I have a few different ideas for what kind of challenges they’ll be: based on theme, genre, country, original language etc. However, the first one will be a little different: I’m going to read books that I have in my bookshelf but haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

As it happens, I will be off work for a grand total of 18 days this Christmas thanks to a very strategically places Christmas Eve, four vacations days and my flexible half-time schedule. Considering a fair few of those days (Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, the 20th when I’m going to a wedding etc) will be spent socializing I’ve decided that 15 books seems like a reasonable goal. Once I’d decided that, I took all my unread books out of my bookshelf to see how many there were. This was the result:

A bit more than 15, as you can see. I will have to do one or two more bookshelf challenges next year before I move on to the others, I think. Anyway, the one’s I ended up choosing for the challenge were (in no particular order):

• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I like my a good dystopia, so I bought a box set last Christmas (or was it two years ago?) but didn’t get around to it.
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I bought it spontaneously because the cover drew me in.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (in the Swedish translation). Don’t know where I got this, but I’ve been meaning to read something of his since I saw The Kite Runner.
• Gösta Bergling’s Saga by Selma Lagerlöf, a Swedish classic that I’ve only read bits of in school and such. In Swedish, obviously.
• Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite. This was given to me by a high school friend but I never got around to it.
• The Ivory Carver Trilogy by Sue Harrisson. I picked this up in a second hand shop because the cover said it was a lot like Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series, to which I have a great sentimental bond.
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke. I don’t remember where I got this either, but it seems interesting.
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, which I gave to my boyfriend when he moved here. Good Omens is the only Gaiman book I’ve read before so that’ll be fun!
• The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. I think I might’ve nicked this from my bf when he was cleaning out this bookshelf at one point…
• The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou. I didn’t actually know this was in my bookshelf. I suspect my grandma gave it to me ages ago, but I was happy to find it because I’ve been thinking of picking up some Angelou lately since I’m way overdue on reading her.
• Linsey’s Story by Stephen King. Don’t know where I got this, but it was the only King in my bookself and I thought it was about time I read something by him.

Quite a mix of box, as you can see. I think it’s gonna be fun! Once I’m done and my holiday is over I’ll be posting about how the challenge went. Hmm… can it be the 20th now please?