006 Special Computer Methods: Understanding Artificial Intelligence

155 Differential & developmental psychology: Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
171 Systems & Doctrines: Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World

221 Old Testament: The Ancient Near East Volume 1: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures
230 Christian theology: Mere Christianity
236 Eschatology: The Great Divorce
248 Christian experience, practice, life: The Screwtape Letters
299 Other Religions: The Tao of Pooh

303 Social Processes: Fire and Ice by Michael Adams
305 Social Groups: Nickel and Dimed
321 Systems of Governments and States: Plato's Republic
323 Civil and Political Rights: Race Against Time (Massey Lectures)
330 Economics: Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller
332 Financial Economics: The Wealthy Barber
337 International Economics: Fences and Windows
362 Social Welfare Problems & Services: Born on a Blue Day
363 Other Social Problems & Services: Voices from Chernobyl
364 Criminology: Bringing Down the House
372 Elementary education: The Myth of Ability
378 Higher Education: My Freshman Year
381 Internal Commerce: New York's 50 Best Bookstores for Book Lovers
398 Folklore: The Arabian Nights, Vol. 1 (ed. Jack Zipes)

420 English & Old English: The Mother Tongue
423 English Dictionaries: The Professor and the Madman
428 Standard English Usage: Eats, Shoots and Leaves
470 Italic; Latin: Latin Language and Latin Culture by Joseph Farrell
480 Hellenic Languages; Classical Greek: Who Killed Homer?
487 Preclassical & Postclassical Greek: The Decipherment of Linear B
492 Afro-Asiatic languages; Semitic: Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon
493 Non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic Languages: The Linguist and the Emperor

509 Historical, areas, persons treatment: Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle
510 Mathematics: Episodes from the Early History of Mathematics
511 General Principles: Four Colors Suffice by Robin Wilson
513 Arithmetic: Flatland
523 Specific Celestial Bodies & Phenomena: The Copernican Revolution
526 Mathematical Geography: Longitude
530 Physics: About Time
576 Genetics and Evolution: The Genius Factory

621 Applied Physics: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

741 Drawing and Drawings: American Born Chinese

809 Literary History & Criticism: The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
813 Fiction: The Princess Bride
814 Essays: How to Be a Canadian
822 English Drama: Twelfth Night
823 English Fiction: Rebecca
833 German Fiction: The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka
842 French Drama: Les Femmes Savantes, Les Precieuses Ridicules
843 French Fiction: Le Petit Prince
853 Italian Fiction: Alexander: Child of a Dream
863 Spanish Fiction: Luminous Cities
880 Hellenic literatures; Classical Greek: Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture
891 East Indo-European & Celtic: Crime and Punishment
892 Afro-Asiatic literatures Semitic: Dancing Arabs
894 Ural-Altaic, Paleosiberian, Dravidian: The White Castle

901 Philosophy and Theory: Dark Age Ahead
916 Africa: The Caliph's House
930 History of the Ancient World: An Introduction to the Ancient World
933 History of Ancient World; Palestine: The Israelites: An Introduction
937 History of Ancient World; Italy and Adjacent Territories: Annals of Imperial Rome
938 History of ancient world; Greece: The Orientalizing Revolution
940 General History of Europe: Night
941 General History of Europe; British Isles: How the Irish Saved Civilization
951 General History of Asia; China & Adjacent Areas: Red China Blues
966 General history of Africa; West Africa & offshore islands: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
971 General History of North America; Canada: Losing Confidence
976 General history of North America; South central United States: The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous

Message edited by its author, Oct 23, 2009, 8:29pm.

Wow, this has made me realize how limited my reading is and how bad I am at finishing books. I have at least 25 books that fall under 938: History of Ancient World; Greece, and I haven't completed a single one.

Thanks for setting this up, Zoe! As you can tell, I'm totally hooked.

You're welcome! Credit should go to Morphidae for thinking of the idea, though. I thought it looked like fun because I love making lists of books and looking at other people's, especially when they're more interesting and obscure.

I just completed the first book that I read for the purposes of this challenge: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, for 230 Christian theology (and the touchstones even reloaded, so I could edit my original list!).

I was really surprised by how much I liked the book--I'm not a Christian, so I thought that the 200s would be incredibly difficult. But somehow I found it hard to put down and now want to read more books that Lewis wrote. And luckily, some of them fall into other 200 categories :). I guess I should have expected that Lewis would write good non-fiction too, but I'm still impressed that I could enjoy a book so much despite not believing a lot of what it says.

The Screwtape Letters of C. S. Lewis are fun to read, and I certainly enjoyed his space trilogy (Perelandra etc). Everyone knws about the Narnia stories.

G.K. Chesterton is another Christian I'll recommend for you, then. :) He's both intelligent and notably enjoyable, whimsical and yet brilliant (if once in a while a bit too facile).

Message edited by its author, Oct 24, 2007, 5:01am.

Yup, Narnia I've read :). The Screwtape Letters is definitely near the top of my TBR list, despite the fact that I don't own it and have plenty of TBR books that I do own. I also want to read the space trilogy now, except that it unfortunately falls under 823 so won't help with this challenge. Looking through the list of C.S. Lewis' books, I've decided I should read:

248 Christian experience, practice, life: The Screwtape Letters
236 Eschatology: The Great Divorce
231 God: The Problem of Pain
242 Devotional literature: A Grief Observed
370 Education: The Abolition of Man
809 Literary history & criticism: The Discarded Image

and probably more.

Thanks for the recommendation of Chesterton, Eurydice. Is there any particular book of his I should start with?

Looking through my library for intersting titles related to C S Lewis:

408 The Importance of Language by Max Black deals with Owen Barfield and J R R Tolkien (maybe also Chesterton). Barfield was an anthroposophist and linguist and part of the Inklings group.

283 Letters to an American Lady by C S Lewis

201 The World's last night and other essays also by Lewis.

These last two only as gap fillers.

Gap fillers are important too :). It unfortunately looks like The Importance of Language is out of print, but I'll watch for it at used bookstores.

Book #2 is complete: 332 Financial Economics: The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton. It was an easy read, and probably useful.

I picked up The Great Divorce and The Abolition of Man at a used bookstore a couple of days ago. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet, but I have to say that using them for this challenge feels almost like cheating, they're so short. "Almost" being the key word--I still intend to count them.

Well, I just finished The Great Divorce for 236 Eschatology (touchstones irritatingly won't reload right now, so I can't add it to my list). I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Mere Christianity: it was less accessible and less accepting of different viewpoints. I felt like rather than trying to convince me that he was right, Lewis was just telling me flat out that I was wrong. So the book left me with a feeling of annoyance more than anything else. On the bright side, it was short, though it still took me quite a long time to read considering its length.

I think I'll take a break from the Christianity categories for a while. At least I've made some progress.

(edit: Immediately after I posted this message, I tried editing my first post again and the touchstones did work. I still wish they had more consistency.)

Message edited by its author, Nov 2, 2007, 11:20am.

Zoe, I know you're taking a break but two non-Christian books that fall into the 200s you might want to check out:

215 Science and Religion - How We Believe: The search for God in an Age of Science by Michael Shermer
231 God - God: A Biography by Jack Miles

The first can be a little philosophical/technical but was a good read on the subject, though I got the idea that while Shermer was trying to be objective he really has an axe to grind with religion which bothered me a little, but might not you.

The second is basically a character study of God done by treating the biblical stories purely as literature - no doctrine or theology allowed. I thought it was quite well done.

Thanks, I'll definitely keep those two in mind. My break may end up being shorter than I thought :)

Zoe, I am not sure whether or not any of the books will fit classifications you need, but Chesterton is well worth reading. Some of the books are marked confusingly, but check out the reviews on Heretics, and you'll see what I mean. One user very rightly tagged him among 'authors I would marry in a heartbeat'!

I just started his St. Francis of Assisi. While Christian, I'm not Catholic, but it is a brilliant, thoughtful, fascinating book, as yet. He always challenges your thinking while proving fresh, unexpected, often amusing and wise. One need not agree to enjoy and appreciate him.

C.S. Lewis was spottier, in my opinion.

Heretics falls under 824 English essays, which I haven't actually completed yet, so I'll definitely add it to my TBR list. The reviews make it sound very promising.

St. Francis of Assisi is in the same category as Mere Christianity, but if I enjoy Heretics I may pick it up anyway. I can probably let myself read beyond this challenge occasionally ;)

I finally got through Luminous Cities, which the LoC catalogue lists in 864 Spanish Essays. Is it normal for short stories to be included in essay categories? I haven't read anything in 863 Spanish Fiction either, so this book has to count for something no mattter what. For now I'm going to go with what LoC says.

I just read The Myth of Ability in 372 Elementary Education. It's a pretty quick read if you're looking for something in that category. The first part is fascinating--he argues that all students are capable of succeeding in math if you just present the material in a way they can understand, and he has lots of evidence to back up his claim--but the second part, when he actually describes the teaching methods, is pretty dry (but still very readable).

809 Literary History and Criticism: The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. Let this be a lesson to me about paying attention to the Dewey Decimal classification when considering whether to read a book--I thought this was going to be more historical, since the back cover does claim that it's "an illuminating tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and... finally found", but it really is more literary criticism, and the history is pretty weak.

I'm also irritated that the default touchstone for The Buried Book without the subtitle is Some Buried Caesar. Maybe someday they'll try the novel method of matching the whole title, not just one word.

Note to self: add The Buried Book to list above when touchstones are in a better mood.

>19
Yikes. The Buried Book has been on my wishlist for quite a while now. Maybe I need to rethink that one if it's not strong on history.

These are the two specific historical complaints that I had (copied from my review). You can judge for yourself whether they're the kind of things that would bother you, or whether I'm just being overly picky:

From a historical viewpoint, I thought the author took a few too many liberties to create a vivid image of the past. At one point, he instructs the reader to "Imagine the king thinking things through after receiving this alarming letter, perhaps reclining at night on a lion-footed couch in his harem, having dismissed his wives so he could think in peace, torches flickering as he pondered the clay tablet in his hand, the broken halves of its clay casing littering the floor." It's only fifteen pages later that he reveals a critical detail: "the king faced one difficulty in studying these reports: he couldn't read. If he pondered Kudurru's alarming letter in his darkened palace at night, the tablet in his hand would have been frustratingly opaque to him." Without this much later clarification, the earlier passage is misleading at best. At worst, it's intentionally so; there's no real reason to think that the tablet itself would have been in the king's possession rather than that of his scribes, since the physical object was useless to him.

Another historical issue that I felt was treated unsatisfactorily was the king's decision about succession. Damrosch tells us that he "made a compromise decision" and that it "proved disastrous. {He} tried to... give the kingdom to his preferred son Ashurbanipal and yet pacify Shamash-shumu-ukin by making him a subsidiary king in Babylon. Sending him south would keep him away from his half brother and ease tensions between them, and giving Babylonia its own king might soften the resentment the southerns continued to feel". While Damrosch goes on to say that the decision was "problematic" and "unheard-of" and "must have seemed dubious", he never manages to show the reader what was so disastrous about it. He says that Ashurbanipal ruled without problem for sixteen years, after which his half-brother did rebel, but that Ashurbanipal "finally subdued Babylon" after about five years, went on in the next two years to destroy the other nation that had participated in the rebellion, and then continued to rule for many more years: his reign lasted forty years in all. That's not quite what I would consider a disaster. It was only after Ashurbanipal's death that the "seriously overextended" Assyrian empire collapsed, which suggests that it was the sheer size of the empire, rather than the specific succession decision, that was the problem. Even before Ashurbanipal's reign, after all, there was resentment in Babylonia.

I may be being too harsh on the book because since I'm not particularly interested in literary criticism, all my hopes were resting on the history. I wouldn't actively discourage you from reading it, but I certainly wouldn't encourage you to move it up the list either. It had actually been on my wishlist for quite a while too.

Edited to remove false touchstone. Braces now represent square brackets.

Message edited by its author, Apr 21, 2008, 6:22pm.

Oh, and reading the Amazon reviews reminded me of another criticism from the first half of the book that I had forgotten: "its well-meaning political correctness: Damrosch can sometimes seem as condescending to the narrow-minded Victorians as they so often were to "Orientals."" (Washington Post)

Interesting things to think about...this was on my TBR list, too (though, admittedly, not very high up). I do dig literary criticisms, but I also thought this was more about this history of the epic, though not in the same way you did. I thought it was more about the archaeology and translation of it.

If you like literary criticism, you'll probably enjoy it. The first half is about archaeology, though not so much about translation, and even the archaeology sometimes reads like literary criticism. Damrosch likes to point out how the Victorian archaeologists often had "no sense of the irony of {their} own language", and a typical paragraph is as follows:

"As early as the preface of his book, Rassam {an archaeologist} makes his cultural agenda clear: '...to show how easy it is to get on with all the inhabitants of Biblical lands....' He returns to this theme in summing up his experiences at the book's end: (10 line quote, including "the Ottomans are good-natured, courteous, and obliging"). The body of Rassam's book actually describes as many obstructions as kindnesses from the Ottoman officials, who stymied him at several points much as they did George Smith. Yet Rassam's insistence on the officials' 'unremitting kindness' underscores his commitment to countering the common Victorian hostility toward the benighted denizens of the mysterious Orient."

880 Hellenic literatures; Classical Greek: Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture

It's sad that I haven't completed more books in the 880s. I've read plenty of stuff in the category, just not complete books. Blah.

916 Africa (Geography & Travel): The Caliph's House. I really enjoyed this one, about a man who decided to pack up and move to Morocco with his family.

938 History of ancient world; Greece: The Orientalizing Revolution. I own so many books in this category, it's about time I actually completed one!

509 Historical, areas, persons treatment: Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle

I found this a bit dry, especially the parts that covered areas I was already pretty familiar with, but it was still a worthwhile read.

I just read Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type in 155 Differential & developmental psychology. This was an important one for me, since it was my first in the 100s! Now I just need a 600 to have read one in each hundreds category. I recently bought a couple of Oliver Sacks books that fall under 616 Diseases, so I should be able to get there soon... if only I could find the time!

The most significant book I have in the 600 to 609 catgory is: Operating manual for Spaceship Earth by R Buckminster Fuller. It is actually 601.

Wow, that book has some impressively high ratings. Thanks for the suggestion!

Just now got your message on the 888 board about this challenge. It sounds kind of overwhelming! I'll be looking in to see how everyone's doing before I decide to jump in. It looks like you're making good progress!

Thanks! I don't know if I'd quite call it *good* progress, but progress anyway!

I just finished Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon for 492 Afro-Asiatic languages; Semitic. This is what I wanted when I read The Buried Book. Of course, it wasn't flawless; there was sometimes too much detail (precise dates, addresses, etc.), it dragged a bit toward the end, and Rawlinson seemed almost too perfect. Still, I found this book both more entertaining and more informative than The Buried Book. I really appreciated the fact that the author didn't feel the need to point out her moral superiority to the nineteenth-century British in every other sentence.

I'm going to try to check this book out of the library. (Empires of the Plain.

I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think.

171 Systems and Doctrines: Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World

I bought this book after hearing Marc Kielburger speak, and I enjoyed it. I felt like a had to be in a certain (positive) frame of mind to read it, so it took me a while to get through, but I'm glad I read in in the end. I particularly liked the stories about various people's personal experiences.

I'm surprised that I ended up reading two 100s this year without even trying.

Hi, Zoe,
I was wondering if you have a suggestion for me. I read a book this year called Momsense by Vicki Marsh Kent. This book is a collection of newspaper articles that she wrote about childrearing and family life -- about her family in particular. This was published as a fundraiser for homeless children. Well, after I read it, I passed it along and I do not have the DD#. I have tried to google her and the book but no luck. The title goes with a more recent different book. How could I find out where to place this book? Since I have read so few books, I do not want to leave this one out. Also, if a book is published without a DD#, do we just try to figure out where to put it? I also have a bibliography of books published a particular publisher, no DD#.

Thanks in advance for any help that you can give me. :)
--BJ

Eee, I don't know what to do when Google fails. Searching for that book, though, it looks like the author may be Vicki Marsh Kabat rather than Kent--at least, it would be a pretty strange coincidence if two separate people with such similar names wrote books called Momsense. That doesn't help with the DD#, though.

I know there are people on this site who could tell you how to classify it yourself, but unfortunately I'm not one of them :(. Maybe try the librarians group?

>39
There's a library in Waco, Texas using the DD# 306.874 for that book. Found it searching Worldcat.

Message edited by its author, Dec 23, 2008, 8:51am.

I'm not really familiar with WorldCat--how did you find the DD#? I looked at the WorldCat listing for the book, but didn't see it there. Did you then go to the library's own catalogue? Or (equally likely) am I just blind?

I went to the library's catalog. That particular library doesn't make its MARC display available, but I did double check that 306 was an appropriate DD category.

Zoe and Fleela!!
Thank you so much!! How could I get the name of the author wrong? Yikes. Now that I see it, I do recognize it. Thanks for the DD#, too. Y'all are too wonderful. :)
--BJ

248 Christian experience, practice, life: The Screwtape Letters. I'm always drawn to C.S. Lewis because his books are both famous and short, and because I've enjoyed some of his work. I didn't really enjoy this one, though. At least I'm still making some progress in the 200s.

576 Genetics and Evolution: The Genius Factory, a non-fiction account of one man's attempt to improve the world by starting a sperm bank whose donors were all Nobel prize winners. It looks like this book is split about 50/50 between this category and 362 Social Welfare Problems & Services, but I'm counting it here since I've already read a book in the other category. A lot of the book does deal just with children and mothers searching for donor fathers, but that's the part that I was less interested in anyway.

Apparently New York's 50 Best Bookstores for Book Lovers falls under 381: Internal Commerce. This feels a bit like cheating because the book is so short and not particularly edifying, but hey, it's a book.

Message edited by its author, Mar 9, 2009, 10:14pm.

#47 Not cheating in my book. That isn't the classification I would have expected - I was thinking of something tied in to the "book" aspect, not the "store" aspect, but I guess it makes sense.

I was just going to ask if you had a recap someplace, but then found it in post #1. Impressive!

*slinks off with arms curled protectively, soothingly, around her entire Dewey reading list of 20 books*

Hey, you're progressing faster than I am! I just recorded everything I can remember reading in my life.

Still, an impressive feat. I wish I could remember that many different books! (Maybe I should have said "another impressive feat"). How many does it add up to?

46: How did you like The Genius Factory? I thought it was fascinating, partly because it's interesting to read about weird things people do and partly because the sperm bank clearly didn't work out the way the founder wanted (which seemed like a really good thing).

I agree, the whole concept was fascinating. I especially liked the parts about the ideas behind the sperm bank; I always enjoy reading about the various debates about intelligence (both The Mismeasure of Man and The Bell Curve are on my TBR list). Once it turned out that it hadn't really worked out, though, I found it less interesting--general human-interest stories aren't really my thing, so the stories of children searching for their parents weren't as exciting for me. I did love the story of Joy and Donor White, though.

I just realized I forgot to list my last book here: Race Against Time (Massey Lectures) in 323 Civil and Political Rights. Copying my review from my other threads....

This is a powerful account of how the world is failing to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals, which aimed to reduce poverty, hunger, AIDS, etc. by a certain amount by 2015. This book really made me want to do something about it, which I think is the ultimate sign of success. I'd recommend this book to anyone.

I have to admit that the fourth chapter dragged a bit--Lewis didn't really convince me that complete equality for women was as important as preventing starvation and death by disease, though he claimed repeatedly that without equality it wouldn't be possible to achieve the rest of the goals--but overall, the book was very readable and the message was certainly worth it.

Apparently, despite being Canadian, I hadn't yet read any books in 971: General History of North America; Canada. That's now been rectified with Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy by Elizabeth May. As the title suggests, it's more about politics than history. May is the leader of the Canadian Green Party.

I think this was a worthwhile read, though it didn't really tell me much that I didn't already know. May raises a lot of important issues and revived the anger that I feel at our whole political system, but she was a bit disappointing when it came to saying what individuals could actually do about it. Basically, she told us what reforms were needed in the system, but she didn't have much to offer about how we could bring about those reforms.

Still, the book was very readable, and I like to read first-hand politicians' ideas about politics.

It's also short, so it would be an easy one for anyone else looking to fill this category.

I just read Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time in 526: Mathematical Geography. I had actually started this book in April, after reading another book by the same author, but put it down because I didn't find the introduction particularly gripping. I picked it up again because I've recently taken up geocaching, and thought it would be interesting to find out about the history of determining where we are on the earth. And I did find that it got a lot more interesting once it really got going.

As the subtitle suggests, this is the story of the man, John Harrison, who came up with a workable method for finding longitude while at sea. He did this by means of a clock, while many other people favoured an astronomical solution, and there's some interesting description of the conflict between the two groups, which was probably increased by the fact that there was a huge monetary prize associated with finding a solution. I enjoyed reading about the eighteenth-century scientific community.

I would have enjoyed reading a bit more about the actual science, too. This is a pretty light and quick read--actually a bit too light for my liking. Sobel mentions various improvements that increased the accuracy of clocks, but I felt like most of the descriptions of the inner workings of clocks were a bit too vague to really give me an understanding of what goes on in there. For example, we learn that "the grasshopper escapement--the part that counted the heartbeats of the clock's pacemaker--took its name from the motion of its crisscrossed components. These kicked like the hind legs of a leaping insect, quietly and without the friction that had bedeviled existing escapement designs." This is all that's said about it, so it wasn't at all clear to me how exactly an escapement worked, and I would have liked to know.

Still, this was a fairly informative book, and probably worth reading, even if it's not anything outstanding. A lot of people will probably be grateful for the fact that Sobel doesn't go into more scientific detail.

That one is on my tbr list as well, actually. That and Galileo's Daughter, which is also by the same author.

I have Galileo's Daughter on my TBR list as well :)

For 330 Economics, I just finished Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization. This was definitely an interesting read, and I found it very accessible. Rubin manages to maintain a conversational tone without sounding condescending. I appreciated the fact that while some parts of the book were disturbing (like the description of how the car companies deliberately destroyed public transit), there's a lot of optimism here too. There are aspects of Rubin's predicted future that certainly seem like an improvement over the present, like an end to long commutes and a transition to locally-produced food. I would actually have liked to see more of his longer-term vision of the future world; while the economics of why our world will get smaller are certainly worth understanding, I think I'm even more interested in the "what next?" aspect. After finding out the economic facts from Rubin, I'm hoping that he or someone else will write a more speculative book that goes into even more depth about the implications for our everyday lives.

58>

After finding out the economic facts from Rubin, I'm hoping that he or someone else will write a more speculative book that goes into even more depth about the implications for our everyday lives.

You might want to request $20 Per Gallon from the current batch of ER books, then, if you haven't already.

Thanks for the suggestion! That's exactly what I was looking for; I'll probably end up reading it even if I don't get it from ER. I had mostly given up looking at the ER listings because of the limited Canadian offerings, but maybe I should start paying more attention.

Two more:

The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina in 976: General history of North America; South central United States. This is a very interesting account of some of the people who stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina and how they managed to survive, both during and after the storm. Many of the stories are amazing, or amazingly sad, or both. My only complaint is that there were sometimes too many descriptions of boats for my liking and comprehension (which reminds me of why I'm not devoting much energy to the LC Classification Challenge!)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier in 966 General history of Africa; West Africa & offshore islands. I just finished this book within the hour and need a bit of time to let it sink in. It's not at all the kind of thing I usually read--too depressing, especially at first when he was just roaming around the country trying to survive. I actually liked it more once he became a soldier, which is probably the wrong attitude to have. Anyway, I think this was a worthwhile read; it made me want to find out more about what went on in Sierra Leone. Despite the fact that this is a memoir and the author was young at the time, I would have liked to know more about the politics behind everything. Pretty much all we learn is that the rebels, while supposedly fighting for freedom, murdered civilians in horrible ways, and it made me wonder how a situation like that could come to be.

Message edited by its author, Oct 16, 2009, 2:08pm.

I was thinking that I was almost done with the 900 divisions--only 98x (South America), 99x (Australia, Arctic, or extraterrestrial worlds)... and 92x, which is an optional location for biographies. Optional? Has anyone read any books in these categories?

62>

I've read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China for 92x (920, to be exact). (AIUI 920 and 929 are still used, but 921-928 are no longer used.) And I have books TBR for 982 and 999. I'm still looking for something in the 96x division, hopefully something a little less depressing than your option.

>62:
The only 98x I've read is an archaeology book that probably wouldn't be of interest, but for 99x I've read Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore and Greg Dening's Mr. Bligh's Bad Language, both of which are quite readable, although the former can be a bit grim and the latter is rather irritatingly postmodern at times.

It turned out I had read a 921 for college, Ernie Pyle's War. It was a biography of a WWII war correspondent and not something I would have read on my own. I managed to finish it, which is saying something when it comes to college reading, but I can't remember it well enough to recommend it.

I do however have a promising book lined up for 920 (which seems to still be in use). It's Foreskin's Lament, a promising memoir about growing up in a disfunctional ultra-Jewish family. I've been hearing clips of it on This American Life and what I've heard is something of a tragic comedy.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Foreskin's Lament sounded familiar, and when I was trying to figure out why, I realized my aunt had catalogued it. I think she may have recommended it before.

I just had a very pleasant surprise--I had somehow overlooked the fact that The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope falls under 621 Applied Physics. I read this book last week, and loved it--and now there's the added bonus that I've finally read a book from each of the ten classes!

there's the added bonus that I've finally read a book from each of the ten classes!

Congrats! Hooray for milestones!

yay! and that looks like a really fantastic story - the guy was interviewed on The Daily Show and it just sounded amazing. how was the book?

Thanks!

I really liked the book. There was one point where I sort of felt like it had lost its focus, but overall I was very satisfied. A lot of the book is focused on his life before the windmill, but I didn't think that was a problem.

Congratulations on the milestone! (they seem to be few and far between on this challenge, don't they?)

Cool. I'm looking forward to it - I happened to just receive it as an early birthday present!

they seem to be few and far between on this challenge, don't they?

I know, this challenge is just too hard! ;). I think I've only read 9 challenge books this year. Or maybe we just need more members....

>71 That's convenient! I hope you like it too.

#72 Not hard, just long. I'm loving this challenge.

72>

Part of the problem with milestones, at least for me, is that the divisions get fine-grained enough that almost all of the classes have one that's just really tough (and the same applies for sections within divisions). I'm getting a fair number of sections; I just can't seem to string them together into a milestone.

>73 Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm loving it too!

>74 That's true. There have been a few occasions when I thought I was close, and then just didn't have any luck with the remaining couple of categories.

Of course, I also haven't really been working toward milestones; I still have enough categories to go that I'm mostly just picking up any books outside of my normal reading and hoping that they fit somewhere.

I'm totally working towards milestones, well personal milestones. I'm trying to even out the reading I do across classes so that I don't get stuck with all of the dog sections at the end. I'd just give up if suddenly I finished everything but the 000's and 400's.

I was initially trying to even out my reading, but I think my tastes are going to continue changing over the course of my life, so I might as well try to read what I want when I want to. Also, I've just had enough of the 200s for now.

The thing is, one of the classes I thought was going to be a thorn in my side turned out to be pretty exciting. After reading that Bertrand Russell book I've been chomping at the bit to read philosophy. I think it appeals to my argumentative nature since I usually disagree with about half of the content of each philosophy book I've picked up. Except Russell. He's my darling. And he's written books in at least three more classes. It's like he was trying to match Asimov in diversity of writing but got distracted by the bomb and stopped.

I've actually been pretty lucky finding books in the dog classes so far, but it will probably get harder.