This was a lot more attractive to me than the Dewey challenge (the Dewey system seems a bit obsessive about infinite subdivisions of Christianity and of European history taking up huge swaths of classification space).

AC (Collections. Series. Collected works) The John McPhee Reader
AM (Museums; Collectors and collecting) Treasures of the British Museum

BF (Psychology) A Natural History of the Senses

CB (History of Civilization) The Discoverers
CT (Biography) A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius

D (General History) The Cartoon History of the Modern World
DA (History of Great Britain - History of Ireland) The Isles
DS (History of Asia) Wild Swans
DT (History of Africa) A History of Ancient Egypt
DU (History of Oceania) In A Sunburned Country

E (History of America) 1491

F (Americas Local History) The Pine Barrens

G (Geography (General); Atlases; Maps) Sailing Alone Around The World
GN (Anthropology) The Third Chimpanzee
GT (Manners and Customs) Jeans: A Cultural History (Unread, but on the pile)
GV (Recreation; Leisure) When Women Played Hardball

HD (Industries) Nickel and Dimed (from the library, so not in my catalog)
HE (Transportation and Communication) The Victorian Internet
HG (Finance) Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People
HM (Sociology) Guns, Germs, and Steel
HQ (Family; Marriage; Women; Sexuality) Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers

JA (Political Science, General) Don't Think of an Elephant
JK (Political institutions and public administration - United States) Thieves in High Places

LD (Individual Institutions - United States) The Road from Coorain (not where I would have put this!)

ML (Literature on Music) Between Midnight and Day

NC (Drawing, Design, Illustration) The Indelible Alison Bechdel
ND (Painting) Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings

P (Linguistics) The Language Instinct
PA (Greek Language and Literature) The Iliad
PE (English Language) Made in America
PG (Slavic (etc.) Languages) The Cyberiad
PN (General Literature) Fantasia Mathematica
PQ (French, Spanish (etc.) Literature) 100 Years of Solitude
PR (English Literature) Beowulf
PS (American Literature) The Martian Chronicles
PT (German (etc.) Literature) Momo
PZ (Fiction, Juvenile belles lettres) The Science Fiction Hall of Fame

Q (General Science) The Demon-Haunted World
QA (Math) Data Reduction and Error Analysis
QB (Astronomy) Galactic Astronomy
QC (Physics) A First Course in General Relativity
QD (Chemistry) The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas's Horse (couldn't finish this, but got halfway through)
QE (Geology) Annals of the Former World
QH (Natural History - Biology) Return to Wild America
QK (Botany) A Pocket Guide to Hawaii's Trees and Shrubs
QL (Zoology) Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion
QP (Physiology) How the Mind Works

RC (Internal Medicine) The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
RE (Opthamology) The Island of the Colorblind

SB (Plant Culture) Chiles to Chocolate: Foods the Americas Gave the World
SH (Aquaculture, Fishing, Angling) Beautiful Swimmers
SK (Hunting Sports) Aldo Leopold's Southwest (another odd placement)

T (General Technology) Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel
TD (Environmental Technology) The Control of Nature
TK (Electrical Engineering, Electronics) Where Wizards Stay Up Late
TL (Motor Vehicles, Aeronautics, Astronautics) Promised the Moon
TR (Photography) Orbit
TT (Handicrafts) The Yarn Harlot
TX (Home Economics) Hot Salty Sour Sweet

VK (Navigation, Merchant Marine) Seaworthy

Z (Books and Writing) The Code Book

Also, as reference books or textbooks but not read all the way through, I have

TS (Manufactures) Modern Optical Engineering
VM (Shipbuilding, Marine Engineering) The Ashley Book of Knots

Message edited by its author, Jun 2, 2008, 8:32pm.

Two that I missed (one because I don't own it, one because I read it in a differently-categorized omnibus:

HV (Social pathology; Social and public welfare; Criminology) Seeing Voices

JC (Political Theory) The Prince

Shamelessly stealing from nperrin for a goal:

If I have 0-1 subcategories to a letter group my goal will be 2 subcategories. (B,K,L,M,U,V,Z)

If I have 2-4, my goal will be 5. (A,C,G,J,N,R,S)

If I have 5 or more, my goal will be 10 (assuming the total is more than 10!) (D,H,T)

If I have 10 or more, my goal will be to finish off the category (P,Q)

The unsubdivided D and E are already done.

Adding a new post so I don't break the touchstones:

GC (Oceanography) Waves and Beaches

GT: The Omnivore's Dilemma (highly recommended, and I've met my goal for G!) Next to go will be Q, since I know what I want to read for both remaining categories (and have one on my TBR shelf).

Message edited by its author, Apr 11, 2008, 2:58pm.

QR: The Outer Reaches of Life

Disappointing and somewhat repetitive -- it probably worked better in the original context as a series of articles.

Still dreading B. That's an awful lot of Christianity.

:) At least it's not Dewey...THAT's an awful lot of Christianity. There's actually some pretty good stuff in the later Bs that aren't "churchy"-The Jesus Machine, Misquoting Jesus-stuff like that.

kaelirenee, that's a lot of why I chose LC over Dewey, actually. :)

RJ: Devil in the Details

The recent revamp of the works system has broken all my old touchstones; I'll see if I can fix them.

What'd you think of Devil in the Details? It looks interesting.

S: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

BL: Ramayana (and now I've met my admittedly modest goal for B!)

I've also downgraded my goal for P to 15 (meaning I need 5 more).

Needed for my goal:

3 for A
3 for C
5 for D -- I have one on my TBR shelf
3 for H
2 for J
1 for K
1 for L
1 for M
1 for N
5 for P
1 for Q -- I have it picked out and am waiting for the paperback
2 for R
1 for S -- I have two possibilities picked out
2 for T -- I have one on my TBR shelf
2 for U
2 for V
1 for Z

Looks like I need to do some serious looking for D and P.

Oops, I forgot to update when I finished DP: Driving over Lemons. Picked it up due to a mention here, but found it disconnected and disappointing.

TN: Salt

AE: The Know-It-All

DC: A Year in Provence
RG: The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians (not all in one go, but I've read it all by this point, I think, and if I haven't I will soon)

Are congratulations in order?

Not yet, it's still very early. But thank you!

GR: The Book of Imaginary Beings
LC: Three Cups of Tea
PJ: The Arabian Nights

Met my goal for L. I've got books for unread categories in Q and S on their way to me now -- but unfortunately after that I'm getting low on possibilities.

QM: Your Inner Fish - highly recommended for this category!

Catching up on what's left to meet my goal, and where they can come from:

A: One TBR. To meet my goal I need one more, from AG,AI,AP,AS,AY.

C: Three, from C,CC,CD,CE,CJ,CN,CR,CS. Is it just me or is this a really tough category, once you get past CB and CT?

D: Three, from DB,DD,DE,DF,DG,DH,DJ,DJK,DL,DQ,DR,DX. I have a possible for DF but I don't count something as TBR until I actually have a copy in hand.

H: Three, from H,HA,HB,HC,HF,HJ,HN,HS,HT. (Why are social science statistics books singled out here when all other stats books are in QA?)

J: Two, from J,JF,JJ,JL,JN,JQ,JS,JV,JX,JZ. This one might not happen.

K: One, from anything but KF.

M: One, from M or MT. Does M proper actually have books in it, or is it just for sheet music?

N: One, from NB,NE,NK,NX.

P: Four, from PB,PC,PD,PF,PH,PK,PL,PM. Two possibilities, for PB and PL.

R: One, from R,RA,RB,RD,RK,RL,RM,RS,RT,RV,RX,RZ. I have a possibility from RB.

S: One TBR.

T: One, from TA,TC,TE,TF,TG,TH,TJ,TP,TS. I have a few possibles.

U: Two, from anything -- I don't have anything here, and I probably won't.

V: One, from anything other than VK.

Z: One, from ZA.

For CR (Heraldry), I have The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ. I see that there are other Knights Templar related works in that category.

The best I could do for M was a guitar tablature book that had small snippets of song and band info interspersed throughout.

Message edited by its author, Mar 18, 2009, 12:59pm.

I don't know about M, but I have a book on my list for MT: What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland. I haven't read it yet.

SD: The Wild Trees. That's my goal for S.

After debating with myself I've decided it's not my fault that the system is outdated in some areas, and am counting Welcome: A Unitarian Universalist Primer for BX, where the LC puts it, rather than considering as a BL as it should be.

I also noticed that I'd never bothered to enter or count M. C. Escher: 29 Master Prints (NE), which means I've met my goal for N without even realizing it.

Message edited by its author, May 22, 2009, 2:03pm.

I finally have another one:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds for AZ. I've been reading this, off and on, for months; as a dense 700+ page book, with no real connection between chapters other than "here's some other bizarre thing people believed or did", it's very easy to dip into like that. For normal people (as opposed to us wackos doing the challenge), I'd recommend just reading the first three chapters, on financial bubbles, and then stopping.

PM: Bastard Tongues by Derek Bickerton

This was a very interesting book about creoles -- it's structured sort of as an academic memoir, so it's very much about one man's work and theories, but he's good about presenting them as his ideas (though obviously he thinks they're correct) rather than unquestioned truth. Really interesting, and in a really tough category.

RB: Riddled With Life by Marlene Zuk

Met my goal of 5 categories for R!

This was a recommendation from someone in this group, though I'm afraid I no longer remember who. Whoever it was, thank you; this was a very interesting read.

Catching up again on what I have left toward my initial goal:

A: One, from AG,AI,AP,AS,AY.

C: One TBR; need two more, from C,CD,CE,CJ,CN,CR,CS.

D: Three, from DB,DD,DE,DF,DG,DH,DJ,DJK,DL,DQ,DR,DX. I have a couple possibilities.

H: Three, from H,HA,HB,HC,HF,HJ,HN,HS,HT. I have a couple possibilities.

J: Two, from J,JF,JJ,JL,JN,JQ,JS,JV,JX,JZ. This one might not happen.

K: One, from anything but KF.

M: One, from M or MT.

P: Three, from PB,PC,PD,PF,PH,PK,PL. I have a couple possibilities.

T: One TBR; need one more, from TA,TC,TE,TF,TG,TJ,TP,TS. I have a few possibles.

U: Two, from anything. This one might not happen either.

V: One TBR.

Z: One, from ZA.

VM: Survival of the Bark Canoe

That's my admittedly modest goal for V met, and without reading any militarily-oriented books! Fortunately anything boat-related is classified here, so I got to read this very interesting little book by John McPhee -- who I'm convinced can make anything interesting.

Ooh, that looks like a great choice for VM. I read a John McPhee for UA-Armies--La Place de la Concorde Suisse, which is military-oriented but not in the usual way.

Thanks carlym, I'd been considering that -- glad to hear you found it interesting! I'll have to see if the library has a copy.

GE: Seven Wonders: Everyday Things...

I really need to get going on D and P; I have a couple possibilities for both but nothing TBR.

HN: Skipping Towards Gomorrah

Forgettable fluff, but entertaining enough as airplane reading. Some sections were much more interesting than others, and I think this may have worked better if it had been a series of magazine articles than all in one go.

BQ: Peace Is Every Step

Actually I finished this one a week or so ago and forgot to update. Read at the urging of a friend and actually enjoyed it.

TP: Travels with Barley

Who knew books about beer (or wine, for that matter) get classified as "chemical technology"?

CC: Time Detectives

It's been a while, so time for another catchup post on what's left for my goal:

A: One, from AG,AI,AP,AS,AY.
C: Two, from C,CD,CE,CJ,CN,CR,CS.
D: Three, from DB,DD,DE,DF,DG,DH,DJ,DJK,DL,DQ,DR,DX. I have a couple possibilities.
H: One TBR; need one more, from H,HA,HB,HC,HJ,HS,HT.
J: Two, from J,JF,JJ,JL,JN,JQ,JS,JV,JX,JZ. This one might not happen.
K: One, from anything but KF.
M: One, from M or MT.
P: Three, from PB,PC,PD,PF,PH,PK,PL. I have a couple possibilities.
T: One TBR.
U: Two, from anything. This one might not happen either.
Z: One, from ZA.