The 50 Book Challenge 2009

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mtoolan
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Post by mtoolan » 29 Dec 2009 09:47

1. Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krupp
2. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
3. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
4. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
5. Rebel Giants by David R. Contosta
6. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
8. Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster
9. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare
10. A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
11. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
12. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
13. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
14. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
15. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
16. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
17. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
18. Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
19. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
21. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
22. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
23. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
24. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
25. Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard
26. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
27. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
28. Sula by Toni Morrison
29. The Sea Wolf by Jack London
30. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
31. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Yeah, congrats man! I'm pretty happy with making thirty on my first attempt, and so far reading 50 books in 2010 is my only new years resolution for next year. My bookshelf is overflowing and I have barnes and noble gift cards from christmas. Not to mention the library book sale coming up where I can buy all the books I want at 50 cents a piece. Good luck to everyone for next year.
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daLai
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Post by daLai » 30 Dec 2009 02:38

Thanks guys :)

I don't think I'm going to make 50 books next year, but I will go on reading a lot of books. There's a pile of books on my windowsill, which I'm going to read in course of the next year. I'm trying to add some non-fiction to my next year's list.
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Post by boyle » 30 Dec 2009 18:39

didn't quite make it there, but I came close. I think I will get to 50 next year

1. Occy- Mark Occhilupo & Tim Baker- 309 pgs
2. On The Road- Jack Kerouac- 291pgs
3. Five Months In A Leaky Boat- Ben Kozel- 419pgs
4. Love In The Time of Cholera- Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 348pgs
5. Going Solo- Roald Dahl- 210pgs
6. The Riders- Tim Winton- 377pgs
7. Bad Boys- Roy Masters- 320pgs
8. Dopeland- John Birmingham- 258pgs
9. Sleeping Around: A Couchsurfing Tour Of The Globe- Brian Thacker- 379pgs
10. How To Beat The Australians- Richard Beard- 236pgs
11. How To Drink Absolutely Everything- Ben Canaider- 239pgs
12. Down Under- Bill Bryson- 427pgs
13. High Fidelity- Nick Hornby- 245pgs
14. Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World- 380pgs
15. It’s Only A Game: A Life In Sport: John O’Neill- 386pgs
16. Neither Here Nor There- Bill Bryson- 256pgs
17: Inside George Orwell- Gordon Bowker- 434pgs
18: A Long Way Down- Nick Hornby- 257pgs
19. A Clergyman’s Daughter- George Orwell- 263pgs
20. American Hardcore: A Tribal History- Steven Blush- 302pgs
21. Tolkien: A Biography- Michael White- 250pgs
22. Into Thick Air- Jim Belusha- 316pgs
23. The Surgeon of Crowthorne- Simon Winchester- 207pgs
24. Of Mice And Men- John Steinbeck- 120pgs
25. Notes From A Small Island- Bill Bryson- 379pgs
26. The Autobiography- Eric Clapton- 364pgs
27. Stephen Clarke- A Year In The Merde- 383pgs
28. No Logo- Naomi Klein- 458pgs
29. Betrayed By F. Scott Fitzgerald- Ron Carlson- 220pgs
30. The Firm- John Grisham- 421pgs
31. Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia- Susanna Fullerton- 369pgs
32. All Ages: Reflections on Straight Edge- Beth Lahickey- 223pgs
33. They Came To Murramarang- Bruce Hamon- 132pgs
34. The Great Railway Bazaar- Paul Theroux- 379pgs
35. The Moon & Sixpence- W Somerset Maugham - 217pgs
36. Fever Pitch- Nick Hornby- 239pgs
37. Hells Angels- Hunter S Thompson- 273pgs
38. The Runaway Jury- John Grisham- 484pgs
39. One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich- Aleksandr Solzhenistyn- 143pgs
40. Bert Brown of Papua- Garry Saunders- 205pgs
41. Tim Winton- Breath- 265pgs

The last book is by an Australian author Tim Winton, I have read a few of hos other books. He always has this vivid descriptions, especially writing about places he knows incredibly well, in this case Western Australia. This book follows a boys life through surfing and then follows him growing up, and generally breaking down. It's a really good book.

I already have a good pile stocked up for 2010, I think I will be able to do the 50 in this coming year. I would actually like to do 52, one for every week. Last year I only got 25 or so, so this is a significant improvement.

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Post by bigdirtyfoot » 31 Dec 2009 18:32

1. God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens, 307 pg.
2. Great American Hypocrites, Glenn Greenwald, 290 pg.
3. The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi, 322 pg.
4. Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age, editors Daniel Pinchbeck and Ken Jordan, 351 pg.
5. Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence, Mitch Earleywine, 328 pg.
6. Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins, 337 pg.
7. Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick, 352 pg.
8. PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, 978 pg.
9. Desolation Angels, Jack Kerouac, 409 pg.
10. The Wheel of time, Carlos Castaneda, 209 pg.
11. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck, 411 pg.
12. Wizard's First Rule, Terry Goodkind, 820 pg.
13. Buddhism: Plain and Simple, Steve Hagen, 159 pg.
14. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, 798 pg.
15. DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman, 358 pg.
16. No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy, 309 pg.
17. Choke, Chuck Palahniuk, 293 pg.
18. Kingdom of Fear, Hunter S. Thompson, 351. pg.
19. The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, 326 pg.
20. True Hallucinations, Terence McKenna, 237 pg.
21. Pawn of Prophecy, David Eddings, 290 pg.
22. I Was Carlos Castaneda, Martin Goodman, 220 pg.
23. All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy, 302 pg.
24. Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk, 404 pg.
25. How to Break a Terrorist, Matthew Alexander, 288 pg.
26. The Genesis Generation, Lorenzo Hagerty
27. Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Rupert Sheldrake, 352 pg.
28. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 246 pg.
29. The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy, 426 pg.
30. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World, Paul Stamets, 343 pg.
31. Beyond the Basin, Alexander Beiner, 358 pg.
32. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, 470 pg.
33. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 289 pg.
34. The Road, Cormac McCarthy, 287 pg.
35. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, Richard Evans Schultes, 208 pg.
36. Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins, 342 pg.
37. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, 320 pg.
38. Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey, Rak Razam, 436 pg.
39. The Call of the Wild, Jack London, 192 pg.
40. The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching, Terence and Dennis McKenna, 229 pg.

I'm really glad to see all the people who participated in the challenge this year. Hopefully we'll get even more next year! Alas, I did not finish my goal, but at least I met the same amount of books I read last year.

Aya is a great account of 21st-century shamanism in South America, written by experiential journalist Rak Razam. You can read my review for it here.

The Call of the Wild was a classic written by Jack London and published in 1903. I thought it was pretty good, especially for a book about a dog! You can read my review for it here.

The Invisible Landscape, a collaborative work by brothers Terence and Dennis McKenna, is an extremely thorough exploration of a variety of topics, including shamans, schizophrenia, holographic thought, the experiment at La Chorrera, the I Ching, the Timewave hypothesis and the prediction of the eschaton - the end of the world-as-we-know-it that is expected to take place on December 21, 2012. I thought it was really good, but it was way too over-my-head and I didn't get as much out of it as I would've liked. You can read my review for it here.

I can't wait for next year - I hope I can actually read all 50 books instead of falling short again. Thanks everyone for participating! And thanks to Jeremy O'Wheel for the inspiration to do this for my second year. 2010-bound we are!
David Wilder

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Jeremy
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Post by Jeremy » 31 Dec 2009 22:22

Yeah cheers mate. I got 29, which is ok I guess, slightly better than last year, but I still want to get to 50 as well. This year I think we did better as a group though - and one person did get to 50, so big props to Simon K. :D

I guess whoever finishes a book this year first should start this year's topic. It probably won't be me, but don't rule me out :P

Let me encourage everybody else to participate as well. It's not a competition, you can set your own target if you don't want 50. You can start any time, it doesn't have to be at the start of the year. It's just a challenge to encourage you to read more.

Happy New Year :D

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Post by LauriA » 04 Jan 2010 15:14

During the year 2009 I read these books approximately in this order:

1. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien, 310 pages
2. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck, about 120 pages
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, 359 pages
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 285 pages
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 242
6. Ruttokellot by Ilkka Remes, 488 pages
7. The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo, 167 pages
8. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway, about 200 pages
9. Jäätynyt Enkeli by Reijo Mäki, 312 pages
10. Apprendre à vivre: Traité de philosophie à l’usage des jeunes générations (in finnish: Opi Elämään: Filosofinen käsikirja) about 360 pages

So I got 10 books last year. I might have read some other short books that I can't remember now. I also started some books but turned them down because they weren't interesting/entertaining enough. My goal is to get 20 this year.
Lauri Airinen

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