I’m a voracious reader under normal circumstances, and pandemic life has cut down on some of my other forms of entertainment, so I’m reading even more. Recently I ran across the Popsugar Reading Challenge, so I’m giving it a go this year.
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The challenge is a sort of literary scavenger hunt: read a book this year for each of 50 categories. (As far as I can tell, there’s no rule that the same book can’t be used for multiple categories if it fits.)
The categories change every year, and they’re a smorgasbord including authors (a book by a Pacific Islander), subgenres (a “social horror” story), topics (a book about a music group), story elements (a book set during a holiday), and even titles and covers (a book with cutlery on the cover — I just gave away one of those without ever getting around to reading it!). Some of the categories lean toward fiction, others are flexible.
Some are easy to find — there’s even a category for “a book you know nothing about.” Some are trickier: “a book with a palindrome for a title.” Some you might stumble across accidentally (“a book with a misleading title”).
So far I’ve knocked out 4 of the easier categories (including the accidental discovery that a feminist SF/Fantasy poetry book fulfilled the “book with a recipe in it” category). I’m only picking up a book if it looks interesting regardless of challenge categories, and so far there’s been a lot of overlap with my existing TBR list. We’ll see how I’m doing in December when I still haven’t found a book with onomatopoeia in the title.
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From thesphinx:
Grumpynerd's very astute analysis of the psychology of the Republican base.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, created by jotter, brought back by elfling and the Help Desk crew: