I've made my reading goal for 2012. It is basically to read 50 books, but I will be counting by page numbers instead of books read. I've averaged it out to 260 pages per book, which times 50 equal 13,000 pages as my goal for the year.

As far as a counter, I will still be counting by books to keep things simple as I'd rather count to 50 than to 13,000, though in a quirk I won't be counting actual specific books read but rather how many "260 pages" I've read. So if I read a 520 page book, by the time I get to page 260 I will have read one "book" and by the time I get to the end I will have read two "books".

Any extra pages left over I will add to the next book until I hit 260 again. And this way I can also count short stories easily and any pages I read of unfinished books.

I will not worry about any difference between types of pages. I will go by what the ebook or paper book tells me.

This year I'm also making a 2012 TBR list. First, on the list will be every selection from the general book club and the literary book club for 2012. This should make about 24 books. If a selection is made that I've already read, then I won't read it, but otherwise I plan to try to read every book selected for both of the clubs.

That leaves 26 more books. I will pick 13 now and leave 13 open to my whims during the year. Of the 13 I'm picking now, some are books I've started but not finished yet, some are books from my general TBR list, and some are part of my goal to read the complete works of Lewis Carroll.

So my 50 for 2012 are:

• 23 to-be-determined book club books
• Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (January general book club pick already determined)
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Middlemarch by George Eliot (halfway through already)
• A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (halfway through already)
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (halfway through already)
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
• The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Annotated Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner
• Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll
• Sylvie and Bruno Concluded by Lewis Carroll
• Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll
• A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll
• The Game of Logic by Lewis Carroll
• Iliad by Homer (first whim and sooner than expected/reading group project; see a few posts down)
• 12 more to-be-determined books open to my whims

For me, this will be a challenging list to complete and I look forward to, well, the challenge! :book2:

My goal will be to read 100 books in 2012 the same as in 2011. The first 1/2 of the year (before my life got 'interesting' and I spent more time supporting hubby in hospital & rehab than reading) proved that I can easily read 100 books a year if life is somewhat predictable. Keeping my goal at 100 will allow me to re-read the Outlander and maybe even the Earth Children series' without worrying about 'falling behind' in my book count.

I think someone came up with 'average # of pages per book' and used that to average out the longer books with the shorter ones. Does anyone remember tha formula? I might just use it instead of actual book count this year. Either way I'll let Goodreads do the counting for me. :)

2012 Illiad Group Read (starting 9th January)
 

No Iliad? :sad:

D'oh! I forgot about the Iliad when making the list. OK, well now I know one of my whims!

I'm with you. I work for a newspaper and every year they sell the books sent for review to raise money for charity. It's awesome. I uaually get several hundered dollars worth of brand new books for about $30-40. I got several books early this month which I am saving for 2012, including the new Stephen King, the new Jayne Krentz and the complete Christmas stories of Charles Dickens (alas I got it to late to read for MBR December book club). I also ordered the new Sony Reader wi-fi and it should come tomorrow. I'm really excited. So between DTB and E-books I'm looking forward to starting on my 100 books for 2012.

Happy New Reading Year everybody! :celebrate:

Is that still starting on January 9th? How are you setting it up?

I don't suppose I can persuade you to postpone The Iliad and instead begin with The Epic of Gilgamesh. I'd forgotten about Gilgamesh, which pre-dates Homer by a couple thousand years.

There are recent translations that are putatively superior to what was available 30 years ago. They've improved both accuracy and "readability".

Still starting January 9th. I plan to start a thread next Monday, January 2nd, laying out the parameters so people can get started. Hope that works for you.

:thumbsup: Just wanted to know what to expect. I'm looking forward to it. I will be very proud of myself if I get through the whole thing.

And of course you'll want to follow it up with The Odyssey, before you tackle Ulysses. :p

I think we've got to forge ahead with The Iliad as planned, but I wouldn't be averse to reading Gilgamesh, which would be entirely new to me, later on.

That's why we're going to take it in easy stages, I hope with lots of discussion. I'm looking forward to it, too. :)

OT: Sorry for the sequential posts; multi-quote isn't working for me right now.

This sounds exciting. I've read parts of the Iliad but never read the entire thing so would like to join you. Besides it fits my goal to read 100 never before read books. Happy New Year.

Any real interest in tackling the Odyssey as well?

That is a very cool spreadsheet. I really like the chart. I was following the 2011 challenge and was also using Google Docs to keep track of my reading. Then in mid-April I got lazy and stopped updating the list. :(


Issybird, what version of the Iliad will you be reading?

Thank you! I spent a little more time on it than I probably should have, but I also learned a lot about google docs doing it. It is actually what kept me on track, as you can see in the early part of the year, I didn't keep very good track, it wasn't till I got this going that I did keep track.

Wecome aboard, tponzo!

After we read the Iliad, we can see if there's any interest. I think the Odyssey is a more fun read. And then we can forge on to the Aeneid! :D

I had thought I'd read the Lattimore translation, but then I decided on the Fagles (which I ordered in DTB). If I stumble across my Lattimore copy (I think there's one around here somewhere, left over from my college days) in the next few days, I'll read a few pages of each and then decide. I know several will be reading one of the public domain translations available here at MR. It will be interesting to see how the texts differ and to get a sense of readability.

Oh, certainly after the Iliad. I won't even pretend that I can handle both of those at the same time.

I would like to have Black Rain, and hopefully Storm Front both finished in time to start The Iliad. If Black Rain goes well (and quickly) I might be able to fit Fool Moon in as well, since both Dresden books will be rereads.

Count me in as interested in the Iliad/Odyssey read-along. I bought this translation last year but I have yet to tackle it. I always figured I would need some hand-holding to get through it, so a read-along would be great :)

I also have an "omnibus" version with both, but I, for the life of me, can not remember where I got it.

Edit: The Iliad, however, is the Alexander Pope translation.

I squeaked in with 102 books for 2011 by reading some of the shortest books on my to-read list in the last week just so I could reach my goal of 100 books. According to Goodreads I read a total of 29,380 pages though, so at about 300 pages a book, I guess that averages out to a fairly respectable number. I could have read much more if I hadn't just stopped reading for about 3 months for some unknown reason about the middle of the year. Out of 102, 89 of the books I read in 2011 were on my kindle.

For 2012, I'm setting a few goals for myself.
1) Read a minimum of 100 books.

Out of those 100+ books..

2) Participate in Goodreads' Lifetime reading challenge - read atleast 1 book published in each year since I was born. This means I will read at least 1 book published in every year since 1976 to present.

3) Read my way through the 3 bags of paperbacks sitting in the garage and donate them back to the thrift store I got them from the in the first place. And resolve NOT to succumb to their $1/bag of books sale again at least not until those books are gone. (When I purchased the books they ALL fit in a single bag, I had to separate them into 3 bags to be able to carry them without ripping the bag.

While the following are not strictly reading challenges, they are book related, so I'm adding them here.

4) Organize the boxes of books I have in the garage and clear out my bookshelves, getting rid of books I have no desire to read again, as well as ancient computer manuals (Photoshop 3.0 anyone?) Sort my bookshelves to put like books together so I can actually find a book when I'm looking for it. (craft, design, fiber arts, cookbooks, etc)

5) Load my 10 GB or so of ebooks I have into Calibre, weed out the duds and organize the remainder into some sort of meaningful order so I can actually see what I own and find things to read from there instead of going in search of something new each time I'm looking for a book.

And just for fun:
6) Learn how to put together an ebook and start working on a cookbook that contains my own and my mom's favorite recipes.

Don't forget to set out your goals and track progress over in the List Thread.

Regarding the Iliad:

I started reading the Leaf, Lang and Meyers translation of 1891, the one available as an epub at MR, and found it a difficult read. I also obtained the free translation by Alexander Pope from Kobo and found it somewhat better. I think I may stick with this one or perhaps I will obtain a copy of the Samuel Butler as well before coming coming to a decision.

:thanks: I wouldn't want people to look for alternate translations here, if they need to go to PG or other sites.

I decided that it was worth it to me to get a modern version, to make this as easy as possible. I looked at e-options, but they were hard to identify. The Fagles edition seems to be available for Kindle, but it's not cheap. I ended up ordering a DTB from Amazon for a nominal sum, but I must admit that the resulting tome is potentially herniating.

I've decided to kick off my 50 books in 2012 challenge with The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I've been meaning to read this one for a while and now seemed like a good time. I've also decided to read some Clive Cussler this year.

Those participating in the read The Iliad challenge may find this National Public Radio broadcast today of interest. You will have to check your local public radio station schedule to see if and when this will be broadcast. I can tell you that after about 3:00 p.m. CST today the program audio will be available as streaming download. Don't know if the download is available outside of the US?

Homer’s Iliad Retold

Love and war with Achilles, Hector, and Helen of Troy in a hot new telling of Homer’s epic “The Iliad.”

Terrific, thank you!

Well, I've started into my reading list with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. The first section of Faulkner was tough.

I've started off the new year with two books from my TBR -- The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, and one that is both on my TBR and also qualifies as a "classic" -- Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey. So we're doing well on the challenge sub-goals. Of course, it's always easy at this end of the challenge. :)

I'm starting off with Pride and Prejudice. It's a continuation of my reading of the classics.

Finished Crime and Punishment yesterday, so that was my first finished book of 2012. Started Something Rotten, the fourth Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde, as a light read to get me started in 2012.

Just a note to say that I have at last decided on my 2012 challenge list, and have updated here to reflect this.

The GoodReads 2012 challenge is up for any who want to take advantage of it. It's x number of books in 2012. X being your choice and it helps keep track for you.

http://www.goodreads.com/challenges/...ding-challenge

Thanks. I've just joined.

Well, I dropped one off my TBR already, but then I just got one new three book compilation of Charlie Salter books from the BC Library so I think that's a net loss. :( These will be a re-read, since I've read pretty much all of Eric Wright's books over the years, but it's been years and years since I read these and I'd like to read them again.

I started reading Swamplandia by Karen Russell, as it looked like a nice read and it happened to be available for borrowing in my library. I've added that to my post in the list thread. So far it looks interesting. I have a bunch of mobileread, project gutenberg, and smashwords books to keep my to-read list happy between library loans, too.

We might have been sipping the same pot of tea when we generated our lists. Updike, Auster. Best of luck clearing your requireds.

Not doing well with the not-buying portion of my challenge. :( I'm reading what I should be, but the TBR is growing, not shrinking. Now I'm not TOO upset at books from the Library contributing, but my favourite authors should NOT have a sale! That's just not fair.

My favourite authors never go on sale. This is both a blessing and a curse.

My TBR pile has grown a lot the last month. Fortunately, all of it has been accumulations for my reading challenges this year. So while, it says I've got five months of reading accumlated it's (crosses fingers) all going to disappear as long as I stay on track with what I said I was going to read.

You too.