Sanddancer's 1111 Challenge

Part of me hopes that I won't actually have time for so much reading in 2011 since I now do most of it on an awful long journey to a job I hate, which I hope will change next year. But for now, I'm aiming for 11 books in each category, but if things change, this may include 11 overlaps or reduced to a stepped challenge.

My categories are:

1. Books by Female Authors (because men tend to dominate my reading)
2. 1001 Books to Read Before You Die (still working on that list)
3. New to Me Authors
4. Global Reading
5. Non-Fiction
6. Book Club
7. Themed Titles - Divisions of Time - Time, Days, Months, Seasons, Years etc
8. Fact and Fiction - similar subjects looked at through non-fiction and fiction works
9. 20 under 40 - from the New Yorkers list in 2010 and the Telegraph's UK response
10. Favourite authors - because this is an easy one to do
11. Book within a Book - authors and books mentioned in other books

1. Books by Female Authors (because men tend to dominate my reading)

1. Seaside by Scarlett Thomas - read in January
2. Olive Readers by Christine Aziz - read in February
3. How I live now by Meg Rosoff - read in February
4. Where they were missed by Lucy Caldwell - read in March
5. Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen - read in March
6. Pop by Kitty Aldridge - readin March
7. The Believers by Zoe Heller - read in March
8. The Wilderness by Sarah Harvey - read in May
9. Irma Voth by Miriam Troews - read in May
10.
11.

2. 1001 Books to Read Before You Die (still working on that list)

1. Anagrams by Lorrie Moore - read in January
2. Chrome Yellow by Aldous Huxley - read in January
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - read in February
4. Moon Palace by Paul Auster - read in April
5. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - read in May
6. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
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8.
9.
10.
11.

3. New to Me Authors
1. The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block
2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach - read February
3. Zoology by Ben Dolnick - read in February
4. The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule - read February
5. God is Dead by Ron Currie Jr - readin February
6. Travel Writing by Peter Ferry
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

4. Global Reading - 11 different countries

1 The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah - Iran - read in January
2 Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner - Eritrea and Suden - read in April
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4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

5. Non-Fiction

1 Adventures on the High Teas by Stuart Maconie - read in February
2 Stalin ate my homework by Alexei Sayle - read in February
3 Letter from New York by Helene Hanff - read in February
4 Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - read in March
5 Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour of Europe by Kevin McCloud - read in April
6 Sixties Unplugged by Gerard DeGroot - read in April
7 Seventies: The Sights, Sounds and Ideas of a Brilliant Decade by Howard Sounes - read in April
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9
10
11

6. Book Club

1 Solar by Ian McEwan - read in January
2 Jeff in Venice by Geoff Dyer - read in January
3 Disgrace by J M Coetzee - read in February
4 In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut - read in February
5. The Quiet American by Graham Greene - read in March
6. Troubles by J G Farrell - read in May
7. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
8 Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut - re-read
9
10
11

7. Themed Titles - Divisions of Time
Books with the following in the title:
Time of day e.g. midnight, noon, morning etc, Day of week, Month, Season, Year
or any time related word such as "time", "year", "week", "day", "minute" etc

1. February by Lisa Moore Month - read in February
2. 1933 was a bad year by John Fante - Year - read in March
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Day of Week
Season
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler Time of Day

8. Fact and Fiction - subjects looked at through non-fiction and fiction works - the category will consist of 4 pairs of books plus one set of 3 books on a topic.
For example The Women by T C Boyle which is a work of fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright + a non-fiction book about Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

Other possible topics
Spain Civil War
Hollywood

1 I'm with the Band by Pamela Des Barres - fact - read in January
2 Groupie by Jennie Fabian and Johnny Bryne - fiction - read in January
3 The importance of music to girls by Lavinia Greenlaw - non-fiction - subject - music - read in February
4 I play drums in a band called Okay by Toby Litt - fiction- subject music - read in February
5 Cider with Roadies by Stuart Maconie - non-fiction - subject music - read in March
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7
8
9
10
11

The Women by T C Boyle
non-fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright
Sunnyside by Glen David Gold - about Hollywood and Charlie Chaplin
non-fiction about early Hollywood

9. 20 under 40 - from the New Yorkers list in 2010 and the Telegraph's UK response
New Yorker list here - http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/20-under-40/writers-q-and-a
Telegraph list here - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7835258/Are-these-Britains-best-20-nove...

1. Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen - read in January
2. Swamplandia by Karen Russell - read in March
3. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris - read in March
4. Anthropology: 101 True Lovel Stories by Dan Rhodes - read in March
5 Skippy Dies by Paul Murray - read in March
6 Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger - read in May
7
8
9
10
11

Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss

10. Favourite authors - because this is an easy one to do

1. Going Out by Scarlett Thomas - read in January
2. Invisible by Paul Auster - read in January
3. The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber - read in February
4. Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas - read in April
5. Leviathan by Paul Auster - read in May
6. The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe - read in May
7. Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham - read in May
8
9
10

11. Book with a Book - books or authors mentioned in other books. This was inspired by reading The Brooklyn Follies which references quite a lot of literature so the first authors and books listed below are mentioned in there, but I'll add to it when I come across others.

1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - mentioned in The History of Love - read in January
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Possiblities

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe - Brooklyn Follies and In Your Face
Franz Kafka - in Brooklyn Follies
Zane Grey - in Brooklyn Follies
Italo Svevo - in Brooklyn Follies
Henry David Thoreau - in Brooklyn Follies
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in Brooklyn Follies
The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz - mentioned in The History of Love
Douglas Adams mentioned in Solar

I'm especially interested in:

8. Fact and Fiction - similar subjects looked at through non-fiction and fiction works - very interesting approach
9. 20 under 40 - from the New Yorkers list in 2010 and the Telegraph's UK response - always looking for new intriguing authors, although I'm happy to let others read them first and report in ....

I can understand being drawn to your Fact or Fiction category. I'm reading about the Ciivil War and its Leaders this year and have read non-fiction and fiction. It's interesting to compare the two.

I've been thinking about the Fact or Fiction category for a while. I'm think it might be quite difficult, but then this is supposed to be a challenge. Apart from the example I've given, I don't think I will be able to fill out the category much in advance, but move titles there if I find I'm sufficiently interested in their subject to find other books on that topic. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

@15 -- It seems like there would be a lot of great "fact or fiction" options with historical people and events. For example, you could read a novel set in Tudor England and a biography about Henry VIII.

I like the 20 Under 40 category. I read the New Yorker with the first eight and added a few books to my wishlist as a result. The collected stories should come out soon in book form...

The time category should be fun!

Christina - there probably lots of options, but finding ones I have enough interest in will be the challenge - I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction in its purest sense.

RidgewayGirl - I'm already reading some titles from the list for my mini challenge now and the ones that have been short story collections have really restored my interest in that form.

Joining in the chorus who really likes your Fact and Fiction idea. Frequently, when I'm reading about something interesting in a novel or non-fiction, I like to read the reverse. Whenever I'm reading historical fiction like Wolf Hall, I like to fact check against non-fictional sources. For a pending trip to Spain, I planning to read fiction and non-fiction (particularly focusing on Medieval Spain).

Goddesspt2 - Spain is a good suggestion for me too. I'm particularly interested in the Civil War and know there are plenty of non-fiction titles I can read on that and I can always re-read some fiction about it if I don't find anything new.

Interesting. I've done some fact and fiction reading but never thought to make it a category. I shall have to steal it now that you've invented it. The F&F reading I can remember is focused more on individuals than subjects. Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. I did do F&F on the Franklin expedition and if I read something like Black Hills then I'd have F&F on Little Big Horn. Kewl Kategory, this F&F.

Cool categories! I see you're planning to read The Corrections. Good luck with it, I seem to be in the minority here in that I hated it - one of only two books I could not finish in the last decade. But a lot of people think it's brilliant, so let us know what you think :-) Starring you!

Hello,
i also tried in the 1010 challenge to read more books by female authors, but not that successfull (like the rest of my challenge). I will follow your categories to pick up interesting reads. I did like M.J. Hyland's This is How and Mari Strachan's The earth hums in B-flat, so hope that some other fine books are to be discovered in your challenge.
A happy booky new year to you.
Lunar18

I've amended my categories slightly since I first posted them. I've dropped the Orange Prize category as I was doing that in my last mini challenge and struggled with it even then and have gone with the easier option of "New to Me" Authors. I have also decided on my 11th topic - Book within a Book which is any work of fiction mentioned within another. I was enthused by this idea after reading two books that made lots of literary references, although I anticipate this one being the category I'll find it hardest to read.

Ok, time for my first update because I've read quite a few books now.

1001 Books to Read Before You Die
(overlaps with New to Me Authors and Female Authors)
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
A strangely structured book in five parts, like four short stories and one novella, but all featuring characters with the same names, although details of their lives and relationships are different in each. The dialogue was filled with mishearings and deliberately wrong phrases, but not much in the way of anagrams. The book's humour was my sort of humour though and it's unusual structure added to the interest, but already it seems a little dated and I'm not sure it will really stand the test of time and warrant keeping its place on the 1001 List.

Global Reading
The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah - Iran
The book follows the fortunes of the inhabitants of the house attached to the mosque in an Iranian town, as the country goes through difficult times. It begins in the 1950s under the Shah's liberal, but American influenced rule, to the revolution and then under Ayatollah Khomeini. I learnt a lot more about Iran's history and Persian traditions from this book, but preferred the parts that focused on the fictional characters, as the bits reporting political events were written rather flatly - too much tell, not enough show.

Hello,
a good start i would say. Kader Abdolah is very well known here, he lives in The Netherlands now and so his writing is in Dutch and he is quite popular, or rather was, in talkshows on political as well as religious and litterature topics.
But his self esteem is so high, and the respect he wants from the people around him as well, that he offended more then once his audience.
I guess that being a refugee is hard but keeping up a high profile makes it hard as well for your environment.
Looking out to learn on your other books you've read.
Lunar18

I was lucky enough to get an early copy of The House of the Mosque last year. I found some parts to be slower than others, but enjoyed both in their own ways. I also learned a lot about the history of the era through this book. What caught my attention was just how similar both ends of the spectrum were (liberal vs. conservative?) in punishing those who did not follow the new rules. ie. During the more liberal times secret police were sent to mosques to spy and make sure nobody was saying anything about the government, trying to arrest women for dressing traditionally, etc. That was not something I had expected going into this book.

Here's wishing you a job you love with a short commute, which will leave you spare time to read books in a comfy, sunny spot.

I love your categories, and especially the fact or fiction one. It seems a bit daunting to fill that out at first, but really it shouldn't be that hard. Say you read a book like Copper Sun which is a book about a girl who is captured and sold as a slave. Then you could pair it with a journal or slave narrative, something by Frederick Douglass etc. You could start by picking some books that you want to fit into your challenge. Then follow the zeitgeist tags. It actually seems like a great way to fit stray books into your challenge, and then broaden your knowledge. My categories are full this year, but I might swipe that one from you next year.

Thanks for the comments. I'm still behind in my update posts, so have quite a few more to add here. I'm doing it by category rather than order I read them in.

20 under 40
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Leo, a psychiatrist, is convinced that the woman living in his home is not his wife, although she looks like her and knows a lot about their life together. But certain little details, like her returning home with a dog, make him certain that she is an imposter. One of his patients, Harvey, has also gone missing. Harvey believed himself to be a secret agent for an organisation that maintains the unpredictability of weather, and Leo begins to suspect that this may be connected to what has happened to his wife.

I was immediately hooked by this intriguing situation and although the book contained plenty of "big ideas" about reality, identity and weather, I read through it quickly because I wanted to know more. Slight spoiler alert - this isn't the sort of book that neatly explains and resolves everything - I think I understood what had happened by the end, but it could be open to interpretation and all a bit odd. However, that wasn't really an issue for me as I enjoyed the journey. Leo was a sympathetic narrator and I found the writing style incredibly engaging and humorous in an odd way. This is Galchen’s debut novel and on this evidence, I definitely think she is an author to be excited about for the future.

Female Authors
Seaside by Scarlett Thomas
I could have included this under the 20 under 40 category or Favourite Authors but I’m putting it under the Female Authors category for now to spread the books through the categories a bit and because I think Scarlett Thomas was probably included in the Telegraphs 20 under 40 list on account of her more “serious” novels rather than her crime fiction. This is the third (and so far, final) in the Lily Pascale mystery series. Here the previously amateur and reluctant sleuth, Lily is officially hired as a private investigator for the first time. A young woman is found dead, apparently a suicide, but is a twin and no one is exactly sure which twin she is. The suicide note is signed Laura, but the twin still alive claims to be Laura too. Mixed in with this, Lily meets yet another mysterious gorgeous man, who immediately falls in love with her. I liked the mystery part of the book, with its references to film noir and anything to do with twins always intrigues me (I'm not a twin myself but have sisters who are twins), but as with other books in the series, the romantic sub-plot irritated me.

Book Club
Solar by Ian McEwan
The first choice for my book club was a lighter read than the usual choices so it won’t be too taxing to read over the holidays. Solar is about a Noble Prize winning scientist who hasn’t done much of note since his twenties but is the figurehead of a prestigious centre trying to find alternative energy solutions. His private life is shambles – his fifth marriage is crumbling because he is incapable of being faithful. The book starts in 2000, then it moves to 2003, 2005 and finally 2009, and it makes for an interesting structure to just see a character for a few days in their life in a year, then revisit them later and see how a situation has worked out.

Since Saturday, I’ve given Ian McEwan a wide berth, but I didn’t mind this one and it provided some good topics for discussion at the book club meeting. It is completely different from anything else he has written as it is pretty much a comic novel. This is intriguing as he professes to hate comic novels, so we had some debate about his motivation for this. The cynical part of me wondered if he was just trying to prove that anything with his name attached to it would sell or that he was trying to show other writers who normally specialise in this genre how easy it is to do. But perhaps a fairer assessment is because he wanted to write about global warming without writing a preachy novel.

More updates to follow...

My first pair in the Fact and Fiction category, which seems to have interested a few people.

I’m with the band by Pamela Des Barres
A memoir by the infamous groupies, who hung out with the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison and Gram Parsons. It starts in the early 1960s when Pamela first became interested in boys and became obsessed with the Beatles. Then she discovers the Rolling Stones, and through a friend, meets Captain Beefheart, which opens her up to the hippie scene. She starts hanging out on Sunset Strip, meeting bands and falling in love with musicians.

Her story has sex, drugs and rock n roll in equal measures, but it still have a certain innocence about it. Although her ambition was to marry a musician, it was because of a genuine passion for music and love of creative people, rather than being money-motivated. These early "groupies" (a term she dislikes because it has become a negative) believed themselves to be muses and an integral part of the music scene, with the fact that she remains friends with so many of the people mentioned, seeming to confirm this.

Pamela is a charming narrator, with a great line in self-deprecating wit. She manages to capture the spirit of the time and the innocence of her youth, assisted by extracts from the journals she religiously kept during this period.

Groupie by Jenny Fabian and Johnny Byrne
Groupie is a fictionalised version of the 1960s exploits of Jenny Fabian, written with assistance from Johnny Byrne. The narrator is 19 year old Katie, who first has a dalliance with Ben, the enigmatic lead singer with an underground psychedelic group, who about to become massively famous – a very thinly disguised Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. She is then determined to only date band members, and ha s couple of liaisons with others, although for much of the book she is involved in a humiliating relationship with a band manager. She takes a lot of drugs and gets busted by the police a couple of time, perhaps the most interesting scenes in the book. Unfortunately Groupie suffers in comparison with I’m with the Band. Katie/Jenny has none of Pamela Des Barres wit or charm, and although she spouts a similar line about really being into the music, her actions don’t really support this and she seems incredibly shallow. Because I knew it had some basis in truth, I was distracted by trying to figure out who the characters were supposed to be.

In this pair, the Fact book is definitely the winner and if I hadn’t been doing this category, I would probably have given up on Groupie without finishing it.

Last one for now.

Favourites
Going Out by Scarlett Thomas

I decided to put this book in the Favourites category although it would fit elsewhere too, but considering it is the 6th book of hers I’ve read and the second this month, it would indicate that Scarlett Thomas has become a favourite author. And it turned out that I really liked this one. The main characters are Luke, a 25 year old who is allergic to sunlight so has never been outside of his house, and his best friend and neighbour, Julie, who is wracked with fears and hang-ups about all sorts of things. It is 2000 and Luke has decided that he will find a cure before 2001, so when he contacted by a healer called Wei, he is determined to travel from his home in Essex to Wales to meet the healer.

Luke does eventually embark on his journey, but not until around page 250. Up until then, we are introduced to an assortment of characters and given an insight into Luke and Julie’s everyday lives. All of Scarlett Thomas’ usual obsessions are in here – new age beliefs, mathematical theories, story telling and at times I did wonder if she was cramming too much in, but in the end I really enjoyed the story and liked the characters. In particular, the parts about Luke’s life were quite touching and I really felt for him – most of what he knows of the real world comes from books or television shows, which is, at times, amusing, but also manages to be moving too.

I have just two more of Scarlett Thomas' books left to read and expect I'll read another one at some point this year for this category.

Hello,
read your comments with interest. On Ian McEwan, i'm not sure what you mean with "i've given him a wide berth". Could you comment on that ?
thanks
Lunar18

Oh yes, I suppose that might not be a known expression to a non-native speaker! It just means to avoid someone.

Sanddancer,

One topic that I'd be interested in if I were doing your F&F category is the Romanovs and their murders(?) - there are so many books about Anastasia's possible survival - to me that is a great Fact or Fiction.

Cyderry - that does sound like an interesting topic - I might look into what books are available on that myself.

34-35> I'm sure there are tons of interesting Fact & Fiction possibilities with Rasputin too. Ick!

I've only read The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas which I was fond of. I like thought experiments taken to their limits. I'll have to try something else by her one of these days.

Atmospheric Disturbances sounded really good to me in your first paragraph... and then you go and say it doesn't neatly resolve anything! Sold.

Update to the end of January - my reading slowed down as I kept starting books I couldn't finish and my head was so full of work stuff, that I found I couldn't concentrate on reading so much.

1001 Books to Read Before You Die

Chrome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
I only read Brave New World two years ago and loved it. This was pretty different - a satire of society with a group of artists, writers and scientists gathering at a country house. Much of the social satire was lost with the passage of time, but there were still a few moments that remained funny. Perhaps most interesting was a character who was predicting a future where machines did everything and no human contact was required - ideas that the author obviously scorned and an echo of what he would write later in Brave New World.

Favourite Authors
Invisible by Paul Auster
I love Paul Auster and thankfully he has plenty of books for me to work my way through. This is pretty familiar territory - obsessions with identity and writers. The story was very obsorbing, although slightly frustrating as not being entirely satisfactorily resolved. It isn't my favourite of his books, but the competition is quite tough and even so it still one of the best books I've read recently.

Book within a Book
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
This was mentioned in The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, although it also in the 1001 books list. Sweet novella about a man who meets a boy from space, who is travelling around the galaxy. Lovely, bt surprisingly sad, so much so that I think it might be better for adults than children.

New to Me Authors
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block
I took a chance on buying this, but am so glad that I did. Based partly on the author's own family history, it is about a teenage boy trying to cope with his mother's diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimers. Interwoven with his story, is the story of Abel, a hunchback who falls in love with his twin brother's wife, and the folktale-like stories about a mythical place called Isadora.

I wondered if it would be too depressing, but although it was very sad, the wonderful writing, brilliant characters and how the three different threads worked together, kept it from getting too bogged down in the tragedy of Alzheimers. There is also quite a bit of information about the nature of the illness itself, but even this is skillfully incorporated into the book so it never becomes too dry a read.

This is the author's first book, but I shall definitely look about for future books by him.

Book Club
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Another "meh" book choice from my book club. The first part involves the cynical journalist Jeff covering the Biennial in Venice, where he becomes obsessed with a woman he meets there. In the second part, he goes to Varanasi in India on a travel assignment, but ends up staying there, pretty much dropping out of society. The first part was about a superficial lifestyle, but was easy reading. I was less keen on the second, arguably "deeper" part, but overall the whole thing is probably some investigation of the "plight" of the western male and his uncertainty of his place in the world. I don't particularly care about Jeff's crisis and I'm pretty sure similar subjects have been written about better than this. My book club meets on Monday to discuss this - I'm not entirely sure there is enough in here to sustain any kind of discussion.