Return of the Missing Blogger

I have been busy though not on the blog. I have been reading. With one day to go, I have read 11 books. I may have another by the end of the month. IN any case, this has been a good month for reading. I have read books for simple enjoyment; I have read for my book clubs, and I have begun reading for my monthly classic challenge (see my March 21 post).

Breaking them down-

For the book clubs: 1

For the monthly classics challenge: 1

For learning/study: 2

For enjoyment: 7

Another way of looking at them-

Fiction: 8

Nonfiction: 3

I am actually in the process of selecting my next monthly classic. After reading The Warden I decided I wanted to read something from the 20th century. I was looking at five books when I came across this Facebook post from one of my reading groups:

So I decided to see if that might help me. Here are the first sentences of each book. See if you can identify any of them.

"Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down."

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"U Po Kyin, the Subdivisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda."

"Hughes got it wrong, in one important detail."

"Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes."

Before I give you the titles and the names of the authors, try to see if you know any of them, have read any, or can just guess from the first line. (Note: I will tell you that the fourth one is not by an author on my original list of the March post, so it doesn't really count. It was in the pile just I could decide if I wanted to begin reading it.)

So here they are:

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell

Burmese Days by George Orwell

Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

Animal Farm by George Orwell

I'll choose by Saturday. Any suggestions before that?

A Reading Challenge

It's almost the end of the month and there will be nine reading months left in the year. Trying to decide on what classics to read has been a chore for some time. So I have decided to make it a little easier. I am going to choose 10 authors I have either not read or if I have read them it has been so long I can't remember what I read of them.

Why ten authors, not nine, so each could have their own month? Because that would be too easy. This is more of a challenge. I have a couple more limitations/rules, but first, here are the authors in no particular order:

1. Jane Austen
2. George Orwell
3. Anthony Trollope
4. Sherwin Anderson
5. George Elliot
6. Charles Dickens
7. J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Thomas Hardy
9. Aldous Huxley
10. (TBA later)

Looking at the list I see that male authors greatly outnumber female writers. Even if I chose a woman writer as my tenth choice, it won't make much of a difference. So be it.

Any other rules or limitations on the title selections? I don't think so at this time, but that may change.

How will I update the list? I will enter an update in a future blog post and include the label "Reading Challenge" with any others for that post.