Jim53's attempt at 11 in 11

I'm getting into this primarily to participate in the group reads, so I guess that will be my first category. I find I enjoy reading less if I feel pressure to complete more, so I'm not committing to a certain number in each category. In fact, I think I'll see how many books I can fit into multiple categories. Can I make up 11 categories into which I could fit a single book?

Here are my initial categories. I might add or change one depending on what comes up during the year.

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads
2. Re-reads of books I've read only once
3. Science fiction. I used to read a lot of it but have gotten out of touch with the field and have been hearing about various great things I've missed.
4. Fantasy. See #3.
5. Mysteries: no problem filling this one up, since I'm in a mystery reading group at my public library
6. Books about writing. Is this the year I'll get serious about it?
7. Short stories and novellas. I tend to prefer longer fiction, but I want to deepen my appreciation of shorter forms.
8. Poetry. For a change of pace, to cleanse my palate between novels, and who knows, I might decide I like it.
9. Technical topics. Might include mostly articles rather than books. Keep myself current on career-relevant topics such as cloud computing.
10. Classics. Books I was supposed to read in school, or have been meaning to get around to, or didn't read well enough to retain.
11. Sequels. I have read the first volume in several series of mysteries and other fiction. Follow up on some that I enjoyed.

13. A la Diane Setterfield, the mysterious last category, whose identity will be revealed toward the end of the year ;-)

Hi Jim and welcome to the challenge. No pressure here, just read and enjoy. Looking forward to sharing some Group Reads with you this year.

Thanks, DQ. I'm looking forward to it too.

I've already changed my list of categories. I realized that I didn't have one for books I've been meaning to read for a while, so I'm adding that and combining F&SF into one. Also starting to identify candidates for some categories. Recommendations are welcome!!

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads

candidates: Bleak House, The Thirteenth Tale, GGK

2. Re-reads of books I've read only once

candidates: The Thirteenth Tale, The Sorcerer's House, Last Light of the Sun,

3. Fantasy and science fiction. I used to read a lot of these but have gotten out of touch with the field and have been hearing about various great things I've missed.

candidates: Grass, River of Gods, The Wreck of the River of Stars,

4. Stuff I've just been meaning to read.
candidates: The Given Day, A Soldier of the Great War, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,

5. Mysteries: no problem filling this one up, since I'm in a mystery reading group at my public library.

candidates: waiting for list; also The Various Haunts of Men, The Becket Factor

6. Books about writing. Is this the year I'll get serious about it?

candidates: The First Five Pages, Bird by Bird,

7. Short stories and novellas. I tend to prefer longer fiction, but I want to deepen my appreciation of shorter forms.

candidates: Forlesen, TC Boyle,

8. Poetry. For a change of pace, to cleanse my palate between novels, and who knows, I might decide I like it.

candidates:

9. Technical topics. Might include mostly articles rather than books. Keep myself current on career-relevant topics such as cloud computing.

candidates:

10. Classics. Books I was supposed to read in school, or have been meaning to get around to, or didn't read well enough to retain.

candidates: Bleak House, War and Peace, Anna Karenina

11. Sequels. I have read the first volume in several series of mysteries and other fiction. Follow up on some that I enjoyed.

candidates: Rebus, new Julia Spencer-Fleming if it ever comes out, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels,

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads

and

2. Re-reads of books I've read only once

Finished my re-read of The Thirteenth Tale. We had a meetup scheduled to discuss it tonight but the weather has put it off. Can't wait for the group discussion next month!

My copy of Naked Heat finally came through! I started at #23 on the list. I think I'll zip through that before tackling something better.

I found your new categories quite fun! Good for you. I think I'll lurk a bit and see how you do. BTW, are you skipping posting in the 75 books thread in favor of this, or will you be doing both?

Thanks for stopping by, Maggie. I haven't gotten involved with the 75 books thread. One a week is generally my pace, and with books like Bleak House, I probably won't even manage that! Of course, some of these easy ones will take far less and balance it out.

7. Short stories and novellas. I tend to prefer longer fiction, but I want to deepen my appreciation of shorter forms.

The Avon Book of 22 Stories of LOVE and ADVENTURE: yuck. I had heard Maugham wrote some wonderful short stories, but if so they must be in other books. These average six or seven pages (not in itself a problem) and offer cute vignettes or simple solutions to made-up problems. Not a good start on my short-story reading. One star.

9. Technical topics. Might include mostly articles rather than books. Keep myself current on career-relevant topics such as cloud computing.

"The Web is reborn: HTML 5" in Technology Review (MIT), December 2010. Brief but interesting view of the history of Web languages, culminating in the creation of HTML 5. Not a lot of detail, but a nice overview of its history and purpose, with mildly titillating looks at a couple of key figures. Now to find something with the next level of detail...

Naked Heat was fun. I'm a big fan of the TV show, and it's entertaining to see how the characters are based on the ones on the show. Also funny how they do thank-yous and dedications to the show characters. Not sure a reader who hasn't seen the show would enjoy the tongue-in-cheek references. That one goes under categories 1 (group reads) and 5 (mysteries).

After finishing Naked Heat I returned to Bleak House. I'm on page 500 out of 800 and enjoying it most of the time. I'm trying to figure out which characters are there just for thematic vignettes and which will be involved more as the story goes along. It's been feeling like a bit of a slog lately so I'm taking another break from it to read Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, which I saw praised by some of my favorites. I haven't been reading much F&SF recently, and this one is off to a great start. It will fall into category 3. Hmmm... I have to figure out a good way to keep updating the lists. Off to look at how some other folks are doing it!

Jim, you probably don't want to use my method: I sign in once or twice a day, read as many threads as I can sit still for, and then post on mine if there is news. This site really, really can eat time and being retired, and generally a sofa potato, makes it easier.

3. Fantasy and science fiction. I used to read a lot of these but have gotten out of touch with the field and have been hearing about various great things I've missed.

Finished A Princess of Roumania and enjoyed it quite a bit. I didn't realize that it was the first of three, or that it was really a YA book, but those didn't kep me from liking it. I like Park's style and his characters.

Back to Bleak House for a while, to see if I can finish it in time to participate in the group read.

Summary for end of January:

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads: 2

The Thirteenth Tale, Naked Heat

2. Re-reads of books I've read only once: 0

3. Fantasy and science fiction.: 1

A Princess of Roumania

4. Stuff I've just been meaning to read: 0

5. Mysteries: 0

6. Books about writing: 0

7. Short stories and novellas: 1

The Avon Book of 22 Stories of LOVE and ADVENTURE

8. Poetry: 0

9. Technical topics: 2 articles

10. Classics: 0.5

Been working my way through Bleak House

11. Sequels: 0

Here is the whole list in catalog format.

You're off to a good start!

I see The Various Haunts of Men is a candidate for your mystery category. I'm planning to read that one, too, some time this year. I've heard good things about that series, and I've liked the stand-alone novels I've read by Susan Hill.

8. Poetry. For a change of pace, to cleanse my palate between novels, and who knows, I might decide I like it.

I've been working my way through Robert Bly's collected poems. Picked this as my first foray into poetry for the year in memory of the meaning I found in Iron John back in the day. He does a nice job with crisp visual images in several of the poems, but so far the musical aspect escapes me for the most part.

9. Technical topics. Might include mostly articles rather than books. Keep myself current on career-relevant topics such as cloud computing.

"Power Happy: How the Smart Grid will change the way we use, produce, and think about energy." E, the Environmental Magazine, August 2010. Interesting summary of some of the issues involved in enhancing the intelligence of the power system, so that it can take various actions to improve efficiency and avoid wasting power. If the grid "knows" about electronic activities inside our homes, what happens to privacy?

Decided to pitch the "technical topics" category and replace it with something I've been trying to do anyway, which is to read some of the large pile of books I've picked up at the spring and fall bag sales at my public library. Many, many candidates. I've managed to read a few of these acquisitions, but not to keep up with the pace at which they keep appearing.

The first book in this new category is Laura Lippman's Charm City. A fun mystery with an appealing protagonist. I enjoyed several local references, including Mt. St. Joe's high school and Roy Rogers restaurants (my first employer many years ago).

@13, Because of previous review's and comments on LT, I've got the first of the Tess Monaghan series on my wishlist. It's good to see that it continues to provide enough charm to carry on with.

Hallelujah! Finally finished Bleak House, which had seemed as if it might last as long as Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, the ongoing court case that provides some of the context for other events in the novel. The last couple of hundred pages hung together well and moved quickly (by comparison, at least), as the various threads came together to provide resolution to most of the many stories he had started. Kind of like a venerable soap opera staging an extravagant last show that wraps up all the cliffhangers they spewed at us for many years.

Also did a pretty quick read of The Pearl, which falls into category #9, Books from library sales, as well as #10, classics, and maybe even #7, short stories and novellas. I really liked the lyrical, fable-like tone of the early chapters, especially his use of different songs to reflect what Kino was experiencing. He didn't completely maintain the tone through the action of the second half of the book, but he did wrap things up pretty nicely. And I enjoyed reading a book that was almost 700 pages shorter than the previous one.

Congrats on finishing Bleak House. I think I'm at the same place I was last week, but I am determined to get it finished. Right now I am seriously distracted by Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Charm City is a great read. The whole series is fun to read, but I had to stop myself from reading them all at once.

I can certainly understand being distracted by JSF. She's one of my favorites. Nothing like a butt-kicking female priest! I see her new one, which was originally supposed to come out in 2010, is finally available on ER. I'm excited about the possibility of picking that one up soon.

We'll be reading an Elizabeth Peters for my mystery group at the library next month, so I pulled out one of her other ones that I had picked up at a library book sale. Night Train to Memphis was my first of her books, thus the first of her Vicky Bliss series that I've read. I might have "gotten" more out of some references to earlier books in the series if I had read them; she encounters several characters whom she had met in previous volumes. Several of the characters are a lot of fun, and there's some clever misdirection, so I enjoyed the book pretty well. It fits categories 5 and 9. Today I've started Dreamtigers by JL Borges

In addition to Dreamtigers, I've been reading a collection of short mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers called Hangman's Holiday and posted a review, the first one for this book. The short form and the mystery are an odd combination: the reader doesn't have much opportunity to work on the mystery along with the protagonist, but must simply appreciate the protagonist's cleverness and ingenuity. The characters make this particular collection fun.

That's a good observation about short stories and mysteries. I've never really thought about why I prefer novels to short stories, but I think that's probably why. Mystery is my favorite genre, and a big part of the attraction for me is the mental challenge of spotting clues, piecing them together, and figuring out the mystery along with the fictional detective.

I have a collection of mystery short stories that was edited by Anne Perry that I'm hoping to read next month. It's a collection that caught my attention because they are supposed to be inspired by the Bible.

Thanks for stopping by, you two!

Thornton, I'll be interested to hear about that collection you mentioned.

I've had a tough couple of weeks and haven't been keeping up with posting about my reading. I'll get my end-of-February summary up Real Soon Now.

Summary for end of February:

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads: 3

The Thirteenth Tale, Naked Heat, Bleak House

2. Re-reads of books I've read only once: 0

3. Fantasy and science fiction.: 1

A Princess of Roumania

4. Stuff I've just been meaning to read: 0

5. Mysteries: 4

Charm City, Night Train to Memphis, Crocodile on the Sandbank, The King of Lies

6. Books about writing: 0

7. Short stories and novellas: 2

The Avon Book of 22 Stories of LOVE and ADVENTURE, Hangman's Holiday

8. Poetry: 2

Robert Bly's Collected Poems, Dreamtigers

9. Books from library book sales

So far they all fit into other categories.

10. Classics: 2

Bleak House, The Pearl

11. Sequels: 0

Here is the whole list in catalog format.

Knocked off Dear American Airlines for my meetup group. I didn't have much to add to the reviews that are already out there. It's a clever attempt at wrapping a brief memoir of a screwed-up life inside an angry letter to the airline that has stranded him as he tries to go to his estranged daughter's wedding. The linking between his own story and that of the protagonist in the book he is translating made me think a little, but wasn't wonderfully done. The book was quite short at 180 pages and a bit different form other things I've been reading. I guess it goes into the "stuff I've just been meaning to read" category, since I don't have a category for epistolary rants. I'll be interested to see what my meetup buds have to say about it.

Finished Last Light of the Sun for the Guy Kay month group read. I had read it when it was new but didn't remember it much at all. Comments are in my review and the Guy Kay thread. I had read it once before, so it goes in categories 1, 2, and 3. Now doing a quick re-read of Julia Spencer-Fleming's All Mortal Flesh to get ready for her One Was a Soldier, which I just received from the ER program. Also coming up soon are Peter May's Extraordinary People for my library mystery group and Jane Green's The Beach House for my meetup group.

I've been very disappointed by my last couple of trips to the used bookstores around here: they're accepting a lot fewer books in trade, and they seem to have a lot less turnover of their inventory than at previous times, and I haven't found many of the admittedly obscure items on my wish list. So I'm taking a good look at bookmooch as a way to dispose of books and find new ones. I'm reading through the newbie threads in the LT bookmoochers group, but I also welcome comments here from anyone about your experiences with BM or other similar programs.

Don't send too many books out on bookmooch at once! My account was frozen when I joined in September because I sent out something like 11 books (and received something like 4)... and it hasn't been unlocked yet, which means I'm about $40 in the hole. Which would be fine, especially since my books went to people who wanted them, if only my attempts to get noticed by the admins and have this resolved over the past 6 months had worked. Which they haven't.

I know a lot of people, including a lot of people I respect very much, who love BM, but I've had better luck with paperbackswap.com, even though I don't like my lack of control over particular book condition there. So, my advice to you is to definitely go slowly with bookmooch at the beginning; you want to avoid tripping up any automated flags for scammer behavior, just in case you get frozen for eternity (and if you do get frozen, you don't want to have invested too much).

I've just started my book for the Guy Gavriel Kay group read (A Song for Arbonne) -- I suspect that everyone else is going to be finished long before I am! Ah well....

Thanks for your input, pammab! It's very valuable to one who tends to jump in headfirst with both feet. I'll try to proceed with some care.

I hope you'll enjoy Arbonne. It was the first of his more-history-than-fantasy books that I read, and after Tigana and Fionavar, which have more of the usual fantasy elements, it was an adjustment. I think he does a great job with the interrelationships of the characters in this one.

Interesting. A Song for Arbonne feels very fantasy to me so far, but that must just be the setting -- you're right that I haven't seen any of the usual trappings of fantasy yet in it. I looked for Tigana but my library for whatever reason didn't have a copy.... Alas! :( I'm enjoying it so far, though, and I'm glad you enjoyed as well.

@25 -- I'm a paperbackswap.com member, and it's treated me very well thus far. It's true that there are no guarantees as to book quality, but I've never had a problem either receiving books or getting credit for the books I've sent.

Thanks, Christina. I'm looking at both and might eventually belong to both, as several people seem to do.

Summary for the end of March: it's been a tough month for reading. Lots going on with work and families, plus some of my LT time got taken up with joining BookMooch.

Summary for end of March, with touchstones for new books:

1. Books included in "11 in 11" group reads: 4

The Thirteenth Tale, Naked Heat, Bleak House, The Last Light of the Sun

2. Re-reads of books I've read only once: 0

3. Fantasy and science fiction.: 2

A Princess of Roumania
Dragonsinger (one of those books I reread on occasion when I need something familiar and not challenging)

4. Stuff I've just been meaning to read: 1

The Beach House (read for my meetup group)

5. Mysteries: 5

Charm City, Night Train to Memphis, Crocodile on the Sandbank, The King of Lies, Simon Said,

6. Books about writing: 0

Read some of The First Five Pages this month, but not enough yet to claim it.

7. Short stories and novellas: 2

The Avon Book of 22 Stories of LOVE and ADVENTURE, Hangman's Holiday

8. Poetry: 2

Robert Bly's Collected Poems, Dreamtigers

9. Books from library book sales

So far they all fit into other categories.

10. Classics: 2

Bleak House, The Pearl

11. Sequels: 0

Bookmooch has worked very well for me! Especially if you are looking for the more obscure books or books from other countries. Paperbackswap has more of the bestsellers/newer books.

A couple of additions to report:

I finished my Early Reviewers copy of Julia Spencer-Fleming's One Was a Soldier. This is one of my very favorite mystery series. This installment has some of the virtues that all the books share: the deepening relationship between the primary characters, the well drawn locale, and so on, but it had some significant problems, which I tried to note in my review without spoiling the story. I thought the author set up a wonderful opportunity for one character to truly face some demons, but let her wriggle out of having to do it. The final scene infuriated me the first time I read it. On the other hand, there are some truly transcendent moments. I'm very interested in hearing what others thought about this one.

I also re-read Bob Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle. I pulled it out of a box in the garage while sorting out books to offer on BookMooch. The world he sets up is pretty interesting, and while I noticed the flaws in the writing more than I did when I read it many years ago, I still found it enjoyable.

Last night I finished Mollie Hardwick's Malice Domestic. I mooched it recently because I had read and enjoyed the sequel, Parson's Pleasure. I liked the breezy tone that Hardwick maintained quite well in PP. She doesn't manage the same in MD; she seems to be searching for the appropriate style for her story, and perhaps a less bit sure about her characters. I've got one more of these to go and will tackle it in the not too futant disture.

Just started Paul Park's Soldiers of Paradise and so far I'm very impressed by the indirect way he tells us about things. This looks like a good one.