Rhea's same categories as last year

Plus a few more

Nonfic Categories
Art History
Previously Read: Easter Island, Earth Island, Inventing Easter Island, African Islam, Bamum: Visions of Africa, Muslims and New Media in West Africa, Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba

Philosophy
Previously Read: A History of Western Ethics, Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy

Chinese History
Previously Read: Early China: A Social and Cultural History, The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China, The Prehistory of China: An Archeological Exploration

Read. Think. Act.
Previously Read: Enemy of the People, 11 excavations of the Athenian Agora picture books

(Western Humanities: On hold)
Previously Read: Epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, Five Egyptian Goddesses: Their Possible Beginnings, Actions, and Relationships in the Third Millennium BCE

(East Asian History: On hold)
Previously Read: The Analects of Confucius, Understanding Vietnam, From the Soil

Mostly Fiction Categories
Books I Own
Previously Read: The Riddle-Master of Hed, The Gold Cell, Captivity, Njal's Saga, The Foreign Legion, All the King's Men, Iris of Creation, The Tenants of Moonbloom, Water, Seamless

World Literature
Previously Read: The Whistling Bird (Aruba 1/1), Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature (Dominican Republic 1/1), Crick, Crack, Monkey (Trinidad & Tobago 1/1), Ancestors (Barbados 1/1), Bougainvillea Ringplay(Bahamas 1/1), The Roar of Morning (Curacao 1/1), Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993 (Vietnam 1/12)

Classic SFF Fiction
Previously Read: The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian, Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, The Last Man, Tales and Stories

Modern SFF Fiction
Previously Read: Theory of Bastards, Time Was, Conservation of Shadows, Revenant Gun, Record of a Spaceborn Few, In Other Lands, Space Opera, Word Puppets, Moon of the Crusted Snow, Creatures of Will and Temper, Creatures of Want and Ruin, Blackfish City

"BBC believes You've Only Read" / "100 Must-Read African-American Books"
Previously Read: Crime and Punishment, Annie Allen, For Colored Girls, Maud Martha, Corregidora, The Wind in the Willows, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Women of Brewster Place, The Men of Brewster Place, The Autobiography of Nina Simone, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Series Catchup
Previously Read: Heir of Sea and Fire, The Door Before, Harpist in the Wind, Delirium's Mistress, Hexarchate Stories, Atlas Alone, The Voyage of the Basilisk, From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review, In the Labyrinth of Drakes, Within the Sanctuary of Wings, Venus Burning

(NYRB Classics: On hold)
Previously Read: A High Wind in Jamaica, Lolly Willowes, Jakob von Guten, The Pure and the Impure

(Virago Modern Classics: On hold)
Previously Read: Frost in May, Mr. Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart

Page Totals:

Fiction:
World Literature: 2022
BBC / African-American: 2514
Books I Own: 3007
Old SFF: 3043
Series: 3608
Modern SFF: 4091

Non-Fiction:
Read. Think. Act.: 532
Chinese History: 728
World Philosophy: 1255
World Art: 1474

Next up:

World Literature: Oral Literature of the Trio Indians of Suriname
BBC / African-American: La Fortune des Rougon
Read. Think. Act.: More picture books
Books I Own: Paradise Lost, Babbit, I Claudius, ?
Chinese History: Ancient China: A History
Virago Books: Letty Fox
Asian History: ?
NYRB Classics: ?
Series: Turning Darkness into Light
Western Humanities: Community and Identity in Ancient Egypt
World Philosophy: Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?
World Art: Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba
Old SFF: The Darker Sex: Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre by Victorian Women Writers
Modern SFF: The Quantum Magician

Read two short books I own, Water by Ashokamitran and Seamless by Linda Tomol Pennisi.

Neither of them are touchstoning properly. Water was extremely good, Seamless was okay poetry.

Edit: Also read the sequel to one on the 100 Must-Read African-American Books. The Men of Brewster Place.

Damn all the touchstones went off of my first post. -_- Linking all the proper books took like 15 minutes....

Some funny things happening with touchstones today.

Good luck with your challenge.

Good luck with your 2020 reading!

Ty guys. Think I'll just leave the touchstones off. It was looking kinda busy.

Finished another of 100 Must-Read African-American Books.

I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone with Stephen Cleary.

I have a tough time with autobiographies - I don't remember much of my life and I'm suspicious about anyone else remembering much of theirs. An autobiography also seems primed for self delusion. Also primes you to judge the author in a way I think a biography does not.

Despite being a superstar and supremely confident in her abilities, Nina Simone frames her life as a sequence of missed opportunities, failed dreams, and broken relationships. She definitely faced an immense amount of unjust adversity but there's a string of excuses for her own bad behavior where regret might be more appropriate. Could be that I am suspicious of the autobiography format.

And finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven which is on the "BBC believes You've Only Read" list.

Very strongly disliked it and feel like I need a shower or some kind of cleansing now. Nose is still wrinkled in disgust. Hoping the library will have a nice anthology of Vietnamese literary fiction or something.

Edit:
100 Must-Read African-American Books: 28/100
BBC Believes You've Only Read: 66/100

Looks like you are enjoying a nice start to your 2020 reading!

I am. Despite the curmudgeonly attitude I secretly enjoy a good hate read lol. Gets the emotion up. Having a good year so far.

Library's collection of Vietnamese fiction was very scanty and mostly Vietnamese dictionaries. Did get a nice poetry anthology though.

Finished Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993.

(World Literature, Vietnam 1/12)

Lots of distressing poems, particularly the ones by Nguyen Duy.

Finished Five Egyptian Goddesses: Their Possible Beginnings, Actions, and Relationships in the Third Millennium BCE by Susan Tower Hollis.

(Western Humanities)

Rather interesting and seems to be extremely well researched so I can't give it less than the highest rating, but I'm not the target audience. Most of the space seems to be given to the author's and others new ideas and hypotheses, and discussions on how to gleam information from the limited evidence. Old information seems to be glossed over. This makes it confusing at times and rather list-like. Think you need a solid understanding of Egyptology to appreciate this one.

I pair older highly recommended nonfic with modern nonfic on the same topic. This one's paired with The Culture of Ancient Egypt by John A. Wilson. Not a fan of the Wilson book (it was boring) and appreciate Susan Tower Hollis's willingness to admit where evidence is sketchy and an idea is a hypothesis only.

Major takeaways from this book are that the ancient Egyptian religion is not a collection of just-so stories and set deities - it evolved dramatically over time, the popularity of different deities changed and they took on new roles and interpretations. In many cases trying to apply ideas from an newer period to an older period is inappropriate.

Another major takeaway is that a lot of what we know about the ancient Egyptian religion is from mortuary rituals. If a deity just so happened to not be involved in this - even a major deity - they are likely to be less understood. This connects to a point from John A. Wilson's book - the common assumption that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death is because we have so many artifacts from their mortuary rituals. The ancient Egyptians loved life.

Also another one of the Excavations of the Athenian Agora picture books.

https://www.librarything.com/series/Excavations+of+the+Athenian+Agora+picture+bo...

One of these is on the Read. Think. Act. list. These are available for free on the publisher's website (legal). Nice for if you want a short breather work after something difficult or just want to stare at some pretty photos. (Also really good for completing book number reading challenges since they're such quick reads lol.)

http://www.agathe.gr/publications/picture_books.html

>14 Settings: Oh, thanks for that link. Fascinating books!

I enjoyed reading through your comments - and that you "secretly enjoy a good hate read"! Love how you put that.

>16 LisaMorr:

Thank you very much for the support. :D

Too many categories and getting overwhelming - going to put Virago, NYRB Classics, Western Humanities, and Asian History are on pause.

Also amassed too many library books and going to return a bunch unread even though I want to read them.

Ideally, I would like to get down to less than 5 library books. Issue is it's so easy to assume I'll read them like a maniac when I won't.

Also tend to check out dense ones that I want to read but need to be in a concentrating sort of mood to do so.

Bunch of the remaining books I'll have checked out are for my World Literature category.

An Introduction to Estonian Literature, Women Writers of Traditional China, Lionheart Gal, and Oral Literature of the Trio Indians of Surinam.

If I read those I'll be down to a manageable list.

Have issues balancing time commitments and remembering how long it takes to read stuff. A 200 page dense nonfiction book might be a 12+ hour time investment. Very unlike a popcorn fiction novel even though it seems so short. -_-

>18 Settings: I do the same thing with library books. The library will order a bunch of interesting-sounding books at the same time, I'll put holds on them, and then six months later they all arrive at once. Bonus points if more than three arrive on the same day and they're all big fat history books.

>20 rabbitprincess: Me too! I do all my library stuff online and they have this moving bar on the home page of books that are new to the library. And of course, they all look like books I want to read! So I am always getting too many books.

Lol I promptly stopped using this - maybe 2021 will go better. Made a fresh thread there with updated categories but gonna post to this one as not to irritate people.

Currently reading:
Fiction:
1 (World Literature): Sources of Chinese Tradition, Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry, and Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology
2 (New Books): Nobody and The Doll
6 (BBC Thinks You've Read...): Jude the Obscure
7 (Books I Own): Gulliver's Travels, Jude the Obscure, Don Quixote, and Foucault's Pendulum

Nonfiction:
1 (History): A Big History of Globalization: The Emergence of a Global World System

Language Learning
1 (Chinese) 1/2 王子 2
2 (Spanish) La muerte como efecto secundario

Plan for tonight: Read 25 more pages of Chinese Tradition
Plan for tomorrow: Finish Chinese Tradition, Nobody, and The Doll. Read some of both the language learning books.

Read 40 pages of Sources of Chinese Tradition, now off to bed.

Finished Sources of Chinese Tradition (volume one). Woo.

1 (World Literature) +1

Finished Nobody, a poetry collection. Also read some of La muerte como efecto secundario

2 (New Books) +1

Finished The Doll. Short psuedo-autobiographical work of the sort that might appeal to fans of the author. Haven't read anything else by them and am now pretty unlikely to.

2 (New Books) +1

Plan for today:
Read Part III of Gulliver's Travels, 10 chapters of Don Quixote, Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry, and 3 chapters of the Globalization book

Finished Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry.

1 (World Literature) +1

Plan for tomorrow:
Read 20 chapters of Don Quixote, finish Gulliver's Travels, read 3 chapters of the Globalization book.

Restructuring what I'm current reading:

Fiction:
1 (World Literature): Sources of Chinese Tradition (volume 2), Nart Sagas
2 (New Books): Perestroika in Paris
4 (Translated Fiction): The Expedition to the Baobab Tree
6 (BBC Thinks You've Read...)/(Bloom's Canon) and 7 (Books I Own): Gulliver's Travels, Jude the Obscure, Don Quixote, The Poems of Hesiod and Foucault's Pendulum

Nonfiction:
1 (History): A Big History of Globalization: The Emergence of a Global World System Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern

Language Learning
1 (Chinese) 1/2 王子 2
2 (Spanish) La muerte como efecto secundario

Plan for today:
Finish the essays after Gulliver's Travels, read up to chapter 40 in Don Quixote, read up to chapter 10 in the Globalization book, read a few chapters of Perestroika in Paris

Finished reading Gulliver's Travels, the 1961 Norton Critical Edition edited by Robert A. Greenberg.

Not terrible but did not love it. I do not like Gulliver and I wish there was more adventure and less satire about England's political situation. Also wish the essays at the back had covered a broader range of topics (such as explaining England's political events so I could appreciate the satire more fully) instead of focusing on broad interpretations of the Houyhnhnms chapter.

6 (Bloom's Canon) & 7 (Books I own) +1

Plan for today:
Finish the Globalization book, read 5 chapters of Don Quixote, read 5 chapters of Perestroika in Paris, read 1 chapter of Sources of Chinese Tradition, 5 Nart Sagas

Finished

1 (History) A Big History of Globalization: The Emergence of a Global World System by Julia Zinkina etc.

Alright. Bit too easy to skim.

New End of the Year Goal: Read the massive anthology books I checked out of the library and then don't read. All of them are 1 (World Literature).

Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology (355p)
Sources of Indian Traditions (961p)
Ancient Indian Literature: An Anthology (616p + 929p + 580p)
The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk & Popular Literature (640p)
The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (1335p)
Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (928p)
The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (585p)

Not possible for me to finish but if I were to I'd have to read roughly 300 pages of anthology a day. :\

Doing a random number roll to see if I'm reading Puerto Rican (1), Indian (2), Chinese (3), or Brazilian (4) stuff.... and I got 1. Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings it is.

Finished Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology.

Now have to read roughly 350 pages of anthology a day if I want to finish, haha.

Random number roll gave 4, so reading The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics next.

>35 Settings: I sort of like the randomness of the die roll.

>37 Tess_W:

I like making up the games more actually following through, haha.

Unlikely to actually read The Brazil Reader :P

Same opinion on both of these. Extremely dark, brutal topics and nice use of language - but ultimately ineffective. Could be my mood.

2.2 (New Books: NYPL's New Ebooks) Hard Damage - Aria Aber
4.1 (Translated Fiction: PW Translation Database) The Expedition to the Baobab Tree - Wilma Stockenstrom

Currently reading:

1 (World Literature): Lali: A Pacific Anthology, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Omeros, The Brazil Reader, Sources of Indian Tradition, Volume One, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Nart Sagas, Tales of the Narts

2 (New Books): Perestroika in Paris, The Office of Historical Corrections, The Sun Collective, From the Wreck

3 (SFF): The Herland Trilogy

4 (Translated Fiction): Sunflower

6 (BBC Thinks You've Read...) and/or (Bloom's Canon) and 7 (Books I Own): Jude the Obscure, Don Quixote, The Poems of Hesiod, Foucault's Pendulum, Sarum, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Bird's Nest

Nonfiction: Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern

And others I'm forgetting at the moment. :|

Want to read Sunflower and Perestroika in Paris today.

2 (New Books)

Finished Perestroika in Paris. A horse escapes her stall and lives on the streets and parks of Paris. Makes friends with a dog, a raven, two ducks, some people, ectetera. It was whimsical without being twee, shallow, or writing down to its audience. Unfortunately, though, I wasn't very interested in it. Would probably have found it more interesting if I was a fan of dogs or horses.

2 (New Books)

Finished The Office of Historical Corrections - incredible writing.

1 (World Literature)

Finished The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Eh. Books I finish after I've read something particularly incredible tend to fail to impress me. An unbiased reviewer I'm definitely not. (The incredible books are the first part of Don Quixote, The Office of Historical Corrections, Nepali Visions, Nepali Dreams, and The Store of the Stone by Cao Xueqin, the last of which was so incredible the effect might go on for several more years)

2 (New Ebooks)

Light for the World to See

Visual poetry on BLM.

2 (New Books)

Weather: A Novel and Rest and Be Thankful. Getting those 2020 short books read.

Weather is one of the more notable 2020 books there's not a 6 month waiting list for at my library (they have 106 ebook copies). Almost like a string of anecdotes strong together (and separated by full line spaces) - I quite liked it. I seem to have missed its point - environmentalism and climate change (?) - entirely though.

Hold came through on Rest and Be Thankful. About an overworked nurse working with dying children. I'm not sure if it was good or misery porn yet. It was a bit much.

6 (Bloom's Canon)

The Poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works of Days, and Shield of Herakles. The Barry B. Powell translation.

This has historical interest but judged as English poetry I don't like it. It doesn't sing and many lines are bad sounding. The introductions, with their focus on summarizing the poems, don't add much.

7 (Books I Own)

Finished The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson. Rather confounding, haha.