I think I’m going to join two new reading challenges:

Maggie Reads is hosting the second annual Southern Reading Challenge. I intended to sign up for it last year and failed miserably, so I want to make up for it this year. The challenge is to read three Southern works between now and August 15.

My selections will be (with the option of switching out books):

• Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The second challenge is the Non-Fiction Five Challenge, which runs through September.

Again, with the option of subbing in other selections, I’m hoping to read:

• The 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming by Matthys Levy
• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Conveniently, I owe a blog review on the advance reader copy of the Levy book, so that should get read shortly, and I’m supposed to be reading Walden with Karen as we speak, so this should spur me to alleviate the guilt I feel every time I see my copy of it sitting on my desk.