Trish of A Joyful Heart has thrown down the gauntlet to all fellow bibliophiles: How many books can you read between now and the beginning of Spring, March 20?
And, there's a $25 Amazon gift certificate to be awarded at random to a registered challenger! Head on over to her site to read the rules and register.
This is timely for me, because one of my Christmas presents from my beloved was a $200 Barnes and Noble gift card. Talk about speakin' my love language! After about a week and a half of pulling out the card just to caress it, kiss it and rub it against my cheek Chuck finally said, "Spend the thing already!"
So, I did. Mostly. I left just under $50 on the card to save for later.
Not all on my list are from my two-day B&N bender, and many of these I've started, but here are the books in, on and around my nightstand:
Fiction and Literature:
The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Trial, Kafka
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Collection of five Charles Dickens novels
Possession, A. S. Byatt
The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton (A gift from my boys.)
Non-Fiction: Writing
The Fiction Editor, The Novel, and The Novelist, Thomas McCormack
Easts, Shoots & Leaves, Lynn Truss
Chapter after Chapter, Heather Sellers
Page after Page, Heather Sellers
The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, Meg Leder, Jack Heffron, and the editors of Writer's Digest
The Writers Way, Sara Maitland
Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
Non-Fiction: Religion
Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis: The Pilgrim's Regress, Christian Reflections and God in the Dock
Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from it's Cultural Captivity, Nancy Pearcey
How Now Shall We Live? Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey
The One Year Life Verse Devotional, anthology compiled by Jay K. Payleitner (I got a signed copy from one of the contributors, Jinny Henson)
Non-Fiction: History
The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Histories, Herodotus
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
Non-Fiction: Other
The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer (from which my literature list was largely derived)
The Mislabeled Child, Brick Eide, M.D., M.A., and Fernette Eide, M.D. (on loan from Sprittibee )
The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches: A practical (and fun) Guide to Enjoying Life More by Spending Less, Jeff Yeager (A buddy on the Writer's Digest forum and guest on NBC's Today Show!)