I didn’t join many challenges in 2008 (a sum total of one, in fact, other than my personal, ongoing challenge of reading all 100 books on the Image Journal list).

wsreader-challenge

I’m thinking the Book Nut‘s Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge is a good choice for me for 2009, though, and it will not be my only challenge for the new year. I think I can do it.

The rules seem pretty simple and straightforward, and the challenge requires merely a minimum of three books (that meet certain criteria), between January 1 and March 31, 2009.

Like the rules, I’m leaving this a little open-ended; I’ll certainly read the first two listed below, but I’m not sure what else will make the cut. It will probably depend on what’s at hand (or at library).

  • The Crazed by Ha Jin (in my TBR stack)
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (in my TBR stack)
  • 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
  • The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson?
  • Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson?
  • Birds of a Feather (Maisie Dobbs #2) by Jacqueline Winspear
  • Stealing Buddha’s Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen
  • If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
  • The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
  • Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
  • The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
  • A Concise Chinese-English​ Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

I realize that some of these may be stretching the rules a tiny bit, but at this point I’m not worried about it — my list is long, and the challenge only requires three books.

I found this challenge at A Striped Armchair; her selections for the challenge are much more thematic than mine appear.