Welcome to the 2009 edition of the My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge! We had a great time in 2008, and I hope many of you will join us for the next installment.
We're making the challenge EVEN EASIER this year! I know, we didn't think it was possible either! Instead of hosting a list of "dangerous reads" this year is all about you.
Your job: Read 12 books you deem "dangerous." between January 1st and December 31st 2009. They may be banned or challenged books, new-to-you genres, books that seem to inhabit a permanent space on your stacks, or authors you're afraid of. The possibilities are endless! If it's dangerous to you, it's challenge-worthy to us!
Instead of breaking the year down into monthly Mr. Linky's, we'll be hosting one ongoing Linky this year. We'll post updates and notices to participants in sticky posts at the top of the blog, but your reading will be the centerpiece of this site. Whenever you finish a dangerous book, come leave the link to your review so other participants can ogle your accomplishments.
In the meantime, if you're interested in joining us, leave a comment on this post, so we can start building a list of participants on our sidebar. And while you're here, take a gander at our "recommended" list for 2009. These are books we love or want to read for ourselves!
Recommended, 2009
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin (feminist)
- A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstoncraft (feminist)
- A Passage to India by EM Forester (classic)
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (classic)
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (contemporary/literary)
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (dystopia)
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (sci-fi, among other things)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (classic, african-american)
- On the Blue Shore of Silence by Pablo Neruda (poetry)
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (southern lit)
- Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi (graphic novel/memoir)
- Night, Dawn, and Day by Elie Wiesel (holocaust)
- Inferno, by Dante (classic/poetry)
- Beasts, by Joyce Carol Oates (contemporary/novella)
- My New York Diary, by Julie Doucet (graphic novel)
- Man in the Dark, by Paul Auster (contemporary/literary fiction)
- Hotel World, by Ali Smith (contemporary/stream of consciousness)
- Lysistrata, by Aristophanes (classic/Greek)
- American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang (graphic novel/race and ethnicity)
- Living Dead Girl, by Elizabeth Scott (young adult)
- The End of America, by Naomi Wolf (politics)
- The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot (poetry)
- O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather (classic)
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs (classic/slavery)
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers (classic)
- Contact, by Carl Sagan (contemporary/sci-fi)
You can link to your blog post about the challenge here!
