Since I probably will have just enough time to pull this off, I thought that perhaps I would try something crazy in November while thousands of people try to write their 50,000 words for that novel writing month challenge. I am thinking of posting a review a day for November's 30 days for books read during the next month or so. Now there might be a day or two where I will be busy, but I could double up or just post-date the reviews so there would be one a day for books read during that time span (or from the last weekend of October through Thanksgiving weekend at least).
If I do pull this off, I could see reviews of books such as these, which I will like to have read in the next 2-5 weeks:
Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath: Stories
Kelly Barnhill, Iron Hearted Violet
Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes
Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow
Junot Díaz, This is How You Lose Her
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
Luís Filipe Silva (ed.), Os Anos de Ouro da Pulp Fiction Portuguesa
Will D. Campbell and Richard C. Goode (eds.), And the Criminals with Him: Essays in Honor of Will D. Campbell and All the Reconciled (non-fiction)
Stephen King, 11/22/1963
Adam Wilson, Flatscreen
Mo Yan, The Republic of Wine
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic (poetry)
Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down
Nick Mamatas, Bullettime
G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul
And a few others, perhaps more National Book Award nominees in Poetry, YA, and Non-Fiction, to round out the list. If I don't get to them before the end of this month, certainly the other Booker Prize finalists and whatever Erikson/Esslemont books I haven't yet reviewed (although I am probably going to review all five Erikson Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas in a single review).
Also, if there are any other bloggers reading this, think you might be willing to do something similar? Not necessarily 30 reviews over 30 days, but perhaps 30 blog posts highlighting books you've read/re-read recently, even if it's just a paragraph or two on them? Might be a way to jumpstart activity, if you need such. When I did something similar back in July 30 for Jorge Luis Borges (it actually spanned the last two days of June and into the first week of August), I had a personal best of 70 posts that month and perhaps my largest readership then (I still get a relatively large amount of traffic due to those posts every now and then).
If I do pull this off, I could see reviews of books such as these, which I will like to have read in the next 2-5 weeks:
Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath: Stories
Kelly Barnhill, Iron Hearted Violet
Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes
Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow
Junot Díaz, This is How You Lose Her
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
Luís Filipe Silva (ed.), Os Anos de Ouro da Pulp Fiction Portuguesa
Will D. Campbell and Richard C. Goode (eds.), And the Criminals with Him: Essays in Honor of Will D. Campbell and All the Reconciled (non-fiction)
Stephen King, 11/22/1963
Adam Wilson, Flatscreen
Mo Yan, The Republic of Wine
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic (poetry)
Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down
Nick Mamatas, Bullettime
G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul
And a few others, perhaps more National Book Award nominees in Poetry, YA, and Non-Fiction, to round out the list. If I don't get to them before the end of this month, certainly the other Booker Prize finalists and whatever Erikson/Esslemont books I haven't yet reviewed (although I am probably going to review all five Erikson Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas in a single review).
Also, if there are any other bloggers reading this, think you might be willing to do something similar? Not necessarily 30 reviews over 30 days, but perhaps 30 blog posts highlighting books you've read/re-read recently, even if it's just a paragraph or two on them? Might be a way to jumpstart activity, if you need such. When I did something similar back in July 30 for Jorge Luis Borges (it actually spanned the last two days of June and into the first week of August), I had a personal best of 70 posts that month and perhaps my largest readership then (I still get a relatively large amount of traffic due to those posts every now and then).
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18 comments:
I am so totally going to do this on that blog I don't have anymore. ;)
Or I could do it on my other blog, my blank slate blog, but then I would have to make it public and it would look like my quitting was just a ploy to make a new blog... even though only like two people would notice.
Give in to the dark side and embrace your Inner Blogger...or your Inner Canadian, if you must ;)
My inner Canadian died a long time ago. Heart attack. Poutine. It looks and sounds so horrible that it has to be delicious.
If you say so...I'll never try it, as I believe it has things I'm allergic to (besides scoring systems) ;)
I am not averse to eating unhealthy things, but I have my limits. I am not touching that stuff. The same goes with scoring systems.
Same here. Best to stick with healthier items, like eating/reading whatever the squirrels bring to me.
Hey, I'm doing the writer version(and likely gong to fail miserably again; the best I got was 12K halfway decent words on my Roman stuff in 2007 and 2008)), so it would be fun to see a variant of the Nano challenge.
It should be an interesting challenge. Added to that is the uncertainties of what days I'll be working (hoping to get a full-time teaching position soon), so I might have to write 2-3 reviews some nights and stockpile them just in case. Helps that I plan on covering most, if not all, of the National Book Award nominees by the mid-November ceremonies.
Well, I guess I will give it a chance after all.
It was meant to be. Just as the squirrels were meant to attack Canadians and inflict rabies upon them, so too are you to write reviews in your own time and way. Thus balance is not quite yet restored to the world.
If I do this, will we have a support group or what? I want a support group!
A Serbian squirrel has been dispatched to Bulgaria to umm..."support" you. Yes, that's it ;)
That better not be a lie, because you have not met a Bulgarian stray dog, I tell you that and I am the Master of Bulgarian Stray Dogs. :D
I have been assured that this particular Serbian squirrel is well-versed in the ways of Bulgarian Stray Dogs and that it will bark those dogs into submission, turning them into mindless, slavering dogbots that will then spread Squirrelism across the land.
Sci very much looks forward to this!
Well, in a sense, it's already begun, it seems. Might repost here some Gogol's Overcoat reviews that I wrote earlier this year later today/this week as well, so it might just be roughly 1-2 reviews/day until around Thanksgiving.
do it. stockpile reviews like a squirrel hoards nuts.
Interested in the Diaz, read his other two and enjoyed, though not enough to get excited about this. Though I just read he intends to write a big SF thing...
Well, I have 15 scheduled reposts starting Fridays and going on a W/F schedule through mid-December for Faulkner pieces I wrote at Gogol's Overcoat from January-April. But these reviews will be "fresh," and certainly will include the new Díaz, which is at least as good as his first two and perhaps a shade better.
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