I don’t normally do reading challenges. Not that I’m all superior to them or anything. I just hate taking on obligations I may not be able to meet. That, and, well yeah, I’ll read what I want when I want, thanks very much, is usually how I feel.
That said, this year’s challenge from Worlds Without End caught my eye on Sunday, and I decided to sign on. That challenge is to read 12 books by 12 women genre authors in 12 months. Looking over the list of possibilities, it reminded me that there is still so much to read, and I hadn’t read as many authors on the list as I wish I had.
Time to amend that.
Although for me, it’s going to be 12 books in 6 months, because of the whole just discovering this two days ago thing. Fortunately, I read fairly quickly.
The other aspect of this challenge is that I have to review all 12 of those books. Blog post material!
Here’s what I’m going to read (Note that I’ve not read any of these books before and I made it a point to choose authors I haven’t read before either, for the most part.):
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (One of two of these that I own, part of R’s massive collection of older sf.)
Sea Kings of Mars, Leigh Brackett. I decided to change the Brackett book I’d picked because it’s now almost November and Sea Kings of Mars is crazy long. Now I’m going to read…- The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett
- The Between, Tananarive Due
- Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin (Elgin I’ve read, but only one short story. Really looking forward to this and the rest of the trilogy it belongs to; that short story is one of my favorites, “Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me.”)
Outlander, Diana GabaldonThis one’s wicked long, too, so I changed it out for…- Downbelow Station, C.J. Cherryh (which is also long, but not quite as)
- Half World, Hiromi Goto
- Mindscape, Andrea Hairston
- Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
- The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin (Surprisingly, A Wizard of Earthsea is the only Le Guin book I’ve read, and that was 30 years ago. I love the film of The Lathe of Heaven PBS made, so this is another one I’m looking forward to.)
- Up the Walls of the World, Alice Bradley Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree, Jr.) (Another one from R’s collection. No, that’s not the only reason I hooked up with him. Jeez, people. [It was the record collection that did it, actually.])
- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente
I’m actually excited to read all of these, not just the ones I commented on. And the first one’s already done; just need to write the review. Oh, Victor.
What do you think of reading challenges in general and this one in particular? Are there books by the authors above you think are better? (I can change what I’m reading any time.)
M. Fenn 