I know I need to wind up the 2010 reading season, but it’s time to start some new reading challenges. Here’s the first one, which runs from now until the end of June:

Back to the Classics Challenge 2011

The goals to complete:

1. A Banned Book
2. A Book with a Wartime Setting (can be any war)
3. A Pulitzer Prize (Fiction) Winner or Runner Up
4. A Children’s/Young Adult Classic
5. 19th Century Classic
6. 20th Century Classic
7. A Book you think should be considered a 21st Century Classic
8. Re-Read a book from your High School/College Classes

Now to choose the books: I’ve been contemplating Wilkie Collins’ A Woman in White for a while, which would work for #5. For #3, I could go for Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (which I own) or perhaps The Shipping News (since I liked the movie). Maybe The Westing Game for #4?

Got any suggestions?

I was looking through some old posts I’d saved and came across this meme that Nan did way back in May:

Do you snack while reading?
Yes.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Tea, of course.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
My college books are all marked up, but I don’t tend to write in books these days. That may be a side effect of not having a pen in hand while reading. And I love to read other people’s notes in used/borrowed books.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat?
Yes to all of those, although I do try to keep dog-earing to a minimum. Bookmarks are rarely proper bookmarks and are usually receipts from wherever I’ve been recently. (This means I always leaf through books before returning to the library.) Usually I just remember the page number, though.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
Both, although fiction is definitely a higher percentage than non.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
Although I like to get to the end of a chapter (in the same way I like to get to the end of a needle when putting down my knitting), I can stop pretty much anywhere.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
Yes, if they piss me off enough, although usually I stop long before I reach that point.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Not usually, because I’m not usually reading next to a dictionary. I do try to recall it for the next time I am, however.

What are you currently reading?
Patrick Taylor’s An Irish Country Christmas, which was a recommendation from Nan.
And I just finished O Christmas Three: O. Henry, Tolstoy, and Dickens and A Child’s Christmas in Wales in the last 30 hours.

What is the last book you bought?
While I bought nearly everyone I know books for Christmas, I assume this question means for myself. That would be the copy of The Odyssey I picked up for myself back in the fall.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
All the time? I read at home, at cafes, on my commute, and while walking (which can really freak people out, by the way). My least favorite time to read is when I’m asleep.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Both are perfectly great in my opinion.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
No. I usually try to cater my suggestions to the person.

How do you organise your books?
By leaving them strewn about everywhere? Okay, that’s not entirely true. There are certain special books that have places of prominence on the top two shelves of the bookshelf by the couch: my collections of Louisa May Alcott, the Anne series, the Narnia books, Harry Potter, the Little House books; Horton Hears a Who; The Secret Garden; a (terrible, melodramatic) book that belonged to my dad’s mother; the Bible; the dictionary… Essentially those are my the house is on fire and you can only save a box of books books.

Lower on that bookshelf are my writing books.

A few other favorites (including The Bean Trees, A Wrinkle in Time, Ballet Shoes, and To Kill a Mockingbird) sit atop the bookshelf in my reading corner. That’s also the bookshelf where my knitting books live. And my anthologies from college. And many of my college books.

Language books live on the bookshelf by the door. There are also a number of other nonfiction books there.

Cookbooks are on the shelf of the butcher block, except for the ones that live on the bureau. And the two that are on the one by the door.

Rudi has a bookshelf next to his chair.

And otherwise books are piled everywhere, although if you give me a minute, I often have a pretty good idea which title can be found where.

Background noise or silence?
Background noise. If it’s a good enough story, I won’t hear it anyway.

And, yes, I did just resort to a meme on the fourth day of the year.

Miracle on 34th Street, by Valentine Davies

From the jacket: “A white-bearded gentleman who appears t the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade fills in for an unfit Santa Claus — and is asked to become the store’s resident Santa.”

My take: I went to the library seeking some Christmas reads and was disappointed by what I found in the adult section. Luckily, the hallway outside the children’s room offered a display of holiday books. Being a longtime fan on the movie, I snatched up this novella. Published concurrently with the movie’s release (both were based on a short story Davies wrote after getting out of the service following WWII), the book’s framework is familiar to almost everyone: When it turns out that our hero Kris Kringle’s MO is to send store patrons to whatever store best meets the needs of their children, he launches a campaign of goodwill that spreads across the city. At the same time, he decides to embark upon a more personal campaign — winning over the parade’s organizer, a single mother, and her young daughter.

As noted above, I found the story to be remarkably similar to its on-screen counterpart. Certain details were changed: At the start of the story, Kris is evicted from the old people’s home because of who he says he is. He also frequents the zoo, where he’s friendly with the reindeer. Alfred, the young man in the movie, doesn’t appear in these pages, while Mrs. Walker and Mr. Gaynor, her neighbor, get quite a bit of extra time devoted to their blossoming relationship.

It’s just different enough to keep you turning the pages. But it’s just similar enough to make you anticipate certain milestones and they occur more frequently than they did for me in The Wizard of Oz earlier this year. It’d be good as both a read-aloud book for young kids and a chapter-a-night Advent treat for the adults. As feel-good a classic as the movie.

Pages: 128

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex

From the jacket: “Doug Lee is undead quite by accident — attacked by a desperate vampire, he finds himself cursed with being fat and fifteen forever. When he has no luck finding some goth chick with a vampire fetish, he resorts to sucking the blood of cows under cover of the night. But it’s just not the same. Then he meets the new Indian exchange student and falls for her — hard. Yeah, he wants to bite her, but he also wants to prove himself to her. But like the laws of life, love, and high school, the laws of vampire existence are complicated — it’s not as easy as studying Dracula. Especially when the star of Vampire Hunters is hot on your trail in an attempt to boost ratings….”

My take: I do not, as a rule, read vampire novels. I am not drawn to the Transylvanian bloodsuckers nor to their sparkly, modern counterparts. That said, when I saw two reviews of this book describing it as hilarious and laugh-out-loud funny, I thought I’d give it a chance.

The premise of the book and the character set up is great. A pudgy, self-doubting Comic Con attendee is accidentally turned into a vampire one summer evening. He and his computer programming best friend, Jay, set out to figure out what of the vampire traits he suffers from besides a desire for blood and a sensitivity to light. When he goes back to school in the fall, he meets and falls for the new exchange student from India, a girl who is hiding from her new schoolmates that she suffers from the Google (a mysterious disease that includes an addiction to the internet, an obsession with updating your online profiles, and the eventual dehumanizing of all those with whom you have contact).

Unfortunately, it seemed to me that the author got confused about where he was taking the story. The last chapter so confused me that I read it a second time the next morning, convinced I must have missed the real ending to the novel. Maybe the vampire thing is symbolic of something else, I thought. It’d be a reasonable guess since that’s often the case. But then I don’t know what to do with the reality tv show host, desperate to keep Vampire Hunters on the air, who is hunting Doug down

Even now, more than a week after finishing the book, I find myself sputtering with frustration about the way this story ends. I usually put down and return to the library books that I’m clearly not going to enjoy. Life is too short, after all, to fit in all the good books I want to read, let alone the ones I don’t. But, then, what to do with the novel that you realize you’re not going to like the ending two pages from the conclusion?

I liked the premise and the set-up, but just couldn’t stomach the eventual execution. Too bad!

Pages: 324

How exciting! I finish a book and decide to share my thoughts with you within less than a week! Shocking!

Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern

From the jacket: [Okay, I’m revising the book blurb because otherwise it gives away the whole novel] “… Best friends since childhood, [Rosie and Alex] separate as teenagers when Alex and his family relocate from Dublin to Boston. … Rosie and Alex stay friends, and though years pass and weddings, funerals, and baptisms take place, the two remain firmly attached via e-mails and letters…”

My take: Steph sent me this novel last December as part of the 2009 Book Bloggers Holiday Swap. I started it right away and immediately was pulled into the story. An epistolary novel, Love, Rosie gives us a glimpse into the relationship of Rosie and Alex, who met as children and stayed best friends through their whole lives, despite a trans-Atlantic move for Alex as a teenager. Their correspondence (with each other and with relatives, other friends, and significant acquaintances) matures from misspelled notes to letters, emails, and IMs sharing their biggest challenges and deepest thoughts.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Each of them has a secret they’re keeping from the other.

And it’s the combination of those secrets and the eavesdropping intimacy of Rosie and Alex’s correspondence that made me put this book down in fuming frustration precisely halfway through last winter.

When I was telling Grey Kitten about this novel over the weekend, I shared that the friends who know me in real life would find it hilarious that I put it down because I couldn’t stand one more minute of the main characters’ inability to enact positive changes on their own lives, that their choosing to remain stuck in their ruts had just driven me crazy. Sound familiar much?

I’m so glad I picked it back up last week, though. Both Rosie and Alex are characters that you care about, a sense heightened by knowing them only through their letters. You want them both to be happy and you appreciate that theirs is a long-term friendship that has weathered many storms, albeit sometimes just barely. Reading their notes reminded me of those I’ve shared with Karen and Grey Kitten over the years and our own ups and downs. It made me appreciate all the good times we’ve had and how they’re both always there for me, regardless of the stupid mistakes I make (sometimes repeatedly). Our friendships can now be discussed in multiples of decades and, like Rosie’s and Alex’s, make life so much richer.

So, if you have a friendship like that, I’d recommend reading Love, Rosie. You’ll be glad that you did.

Pages: 447

The second part of this week’s Weekly Geeks meme, asks participants to give their readers some book recommendations.

Since I asked you for your holiday book suggestions yesterday, I thought I’d share five of mine today, with a focus on those that will appeal to the child in all of us:

As many of yesterday’s commenters noted, Let It Snow!, which is a trio of interconnected stories/novellas by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, is a great modern book for fans of well-written young adult fiction. The overarching premise: A blizzard strikes the mid-Atlantic on Christmas Eve, stranding a train heading to Florida just outside Gracetown, Virginia. Included on the train are a horde of high school cheerleaders headed to a competition and two other solitary teenagers, Jeb and Jubilee. Independently, they all head to the Waffle House they can see from the train window through the night’s snow. The stories are what happens next on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. (My review is here.)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson is older than I am, but it still resonates. Told from the perspective of a young girl whose mother is suddenly recruited to direct the church Nativity play, this is the story of the Herdman family, six mean, tough, bullying siblings growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. The Herdmans learn of the pageant and decide they want to be involved. And by involved they mean take over the lead roles. But because no one has ever told them the story of the first Christmas, the Herdmans interpret it on their own terms.

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg is a beautiful picture book that tells how a young boy beginning to doubt the true spirit of Christmas catches a ride on a magical Christmas train heading to the North Pole.

The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins is a melodramatic children’s book about young Carol Bird, who is born on Christmas day. Beloved by all around her, she is especially idolized by her young, poor neighbors, the Ruggles children. Bed-ridden and ailing, the beatific Carol asks her parents to bow to her whim of throwing a Christmas party for the local kids. This one always makes me weep and I can’t see how it wouldn’t have a similar effect on anyone whose heart is not made of icicles.

Babar and Father Christmas by Jean de Brunhoff follows the world’s favorite elephant king as he attempts to locate St. Nick and bring him to Celesteville after his children learn he traditionally brings presents on Christmas Eve.