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2011 Challenges: Some success and some idiocy

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At the start of this year, I signed up for three challenges:  The 2011 TBR Challenge hosted at Roof Beam Reader; The 2011 eBook Challenge hosted at The Ladybug Reads...;and, The 2011 Outdo Yourself Challenge hosted at The Book Vixen. 

Of course, it isn't the end of 2011 yet so I can't definitively say how I've done but, seeing as the sign-ups for 2012 challenges are coming up thick and fast, it seemed about time to have a quick review of where I am!

The 2011 TBR Challenge

The twelve books I chose were:  

1.  Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
2.  The Night Watch by Sarah Walters
3.  Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
4.  The Girl at Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks  Finished 23 February
5.  Possession by A.S. Byatt
6.  Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Finished 12 September
7.  To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
8.  The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Finished 3 April
9.  A Changed Man by Francine Prose
10.Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann
11.Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Finished 19 January
12.Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

As is pretty clear, I've done a woeful job of getting through these.  But every one of them that I have read has been brilliant, so I have high hopes for those that remain.  I may well get to a couple of them before the year is out but I'm thinking that the best case scenario for me will be half of them read.  Not great but could be worse, I think. 

The idiocy part:  I had actually convinced myself that Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde were both on this list.  I'm a fool, that's all there is to it.  Both of those also turned out to be wonderful too so I don't begrudge them their spots on my Read List for 2011. I'm not proud of that...

Overall:  Not great...is it wrong that I might re-join this challenge for 2012 and re-use some of the books I didn't get to?  :-s


The 2011 eBook Challenge

When I joined this challenge, I was a fledgling eReader user.  I signed up, however, for the top level of reading 20 eBooks in the year.  

So far this year I've read 24 eBooks, including a recent run of 6 in a row (an all-time high, if you're interested).  

Overall:  Success!  Hurrah!!


The 2011 Outdo Yourself Challenge

The idea was simple:  read more in 2011 than you did in 2010.  Again, I can't quite say how I'm going to do on this as it's purely a numbers game.  

In 2010, I read 48 books.  I aimed to read at least 11 books more than that.  So far this year, I've read 43 books.  

That gives me 5-6 weeks (or something like that...) to read 16 books and hit my goal of 59 books.  

I wish I had a better excuse but, really, it's just come down to me being a heck of a lot busier in my professional life than ever before, my choosing some whopping books this year (e.g. the 1,000 + page Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) and moving house.  Although that was at the beginning of the year, the weekends of decorating and DIY took their toll early on.  

Overall:  Lets have a little positive thinking - it's not even December yet!  I can totally make the result a little less embarrassing in that time!  YEH!

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I hope you've all had fun with the challenges you chose and (maybe) did a little better than I did :)  But the fun's the main thing, everybody says, so I hope that mostly you had that!

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