My Year of Reading Dangerously, 2009

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!

November and December 2008

Did you read any "dangerous" short stories in November? How about The Grapes of Wrath for December? Share a link to your review in the comments section!

Watch for more information on the Year of Reading Dangerously, 2009! Coming soon!

September and October

Use this space to post links to your September and October books: The Secret Lives of People in Love and The Human Stain. If you'd like, you can also post general discussion in the comment section. Thanks for playing these months!

Maus I and II

Proper discussion questions for August's books, Maus I and II, will begin to appear below this post around August 20th. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in August.

Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of Maus I and II the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Proper discussion questions for July's book, The Chocolate War, will begin to appear below this post around July 20th. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in July.

Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of The Chocolate War in the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Proper discussion questions for June's book, Lolita, will begin to appear below this post around June 20th. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in May.

Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of Lolita in the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

May: Other Voices, Other Rooms

Proper discussion questions for May's book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, will begin to appear below this post around May 20th. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in May.

Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of Other Voices, Other Rooms in the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

April: Transformations, by Anne Sexton

Proper discussion questions for April's book, Transformations, will begin to appear below this post soon. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in April.

Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of Tranformations in the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

Discussion 1 - "The Gold Key" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

1. Does anyone remember--and this is partially a selfish question--if "The Gold Key" corresponds to a particular Grimm fairy tale or if she's purely using this as a way to set up the speaker, etc? I think I found a story titled "The Gold Key" once, but I don't have my complete Grimm with me in North Carolina.

2. How would you describe the tone Sexton establishes from the beginning of this collection? Is it pretty consistent throughout or do you see subtle changes?

3. Talk about some of the imagery Sexton uses, in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" particularly. What did you think of lines like "cheeks as fragile as cigarette papers" and "rolling her china blue doll eyes open and shut?"

4. Why do you think she chose to retell "Snow White?" What does this poem accomplish as a literary work? Do you find it particularly innovative as far as retellings go?

Anne Sexton Biography

Click HERE to read about Anne Sexton's life.

March Winner!

The winner of a Book Lover's Magnetic Poetry collection, bookplates, and a bookmark:

Cathy from Butterflies Used to Be Caterpillars!

Congratulations, and thank you for discussing Cat's Eye with us!

March: Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood

Proper discussion questions for March's book, Cat's Eye, will begin to appear below this post soon. Feel free to link your reviews via Mr. Linky below or link to any other "Dangerous" titles you review in March.


Have fun!

Feel free to discuss general points of Cat's Eye in the comments section of this post, post questions you're interested in getting opinions on, or just talk amongst yourselves.

Cat's Eye Discussion Questions, Round 2

4. Discuss the impact of the type of parenting received by Elaine, Cordelia, and their third friend, Grace. At one point Elaine's mother tells her that she does not have to be with the girls that are tormenting her. Is her mother in any way responsible for what happened to Elaine?

5. Early in the novel, Elaine is warned by her first new friend, Carol, not to go down into the ravine: "There might be men there." Discuss the significance of this warning, taking into account the later incident between the girls at the ravine. What does this say about our ability to apprehend danger? If you're read other Atwood novels, in what way does she explore the nature of evil and its relationship to gender?

6. Why do you think Elaine became an artist? What is the significance that she did so? Do artists use life experiences in ways nonartists do not?

Cat's Eye, First Round of Questions

1. What does Margaret Atwood's novel Cat's Eye say about the nature of childhood and the development of adolescent friendships? Is there a gender influenced difference in cruelty between boys as opposed to cruelty as expressed by girls?

2. In the opening line of the novel, the narrator, artist Elaine Risley, who returns to the city of her birth for a retrospective of her painting, observes: "Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space . . . if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once." How do you interpret this statement?

3. Elaine is haunted by Cordelia, her "best friend" and the tormentor of her childhood. All predators must have a motive. What benefit did Cordelia receive out of tormenting Elaine? What weakness in Elaine made her particularly vulnerable to Cordelia? Why did she continue to play such importance in Elaine's adult life?

February Prizes!

SO sorry I'm late posting this month's prizes. For those of you who read my blog you know that I'm teaching college, and mid-term was a killer this time around. Without further ado, the prizes for February are:

"Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women," Harriet Jacobs wrote in 1861. At that time she was an escaped slave living in the north, but the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 meant that she could not longer consider being in the northern states a guarantee of freedom or safety. Her book is an eloquent recital of the suffering that is slavery. Families broken apart; promises of freedom made but never kept; whippings, beatings, and burnings; masters selling their own children - all are recounted with precise detail and a blazing indignation.

A 101-year-old retired laborer who enrolled in a literacy class near his Dallas, Tex., home at the age of 98, George Dawson now reads and writes on a third-grade level. From Dawson's eloquent words, co-writer Glaubman, a Seattle elementary school teacher, has fashioned two engrossing stories. First is the inspiring saga of how someone who was the grandson of a slave managed to navigate the brutally segregated small Texas town of Marshall, where Dawson was born, without losing his integrity or enjoyment of life.

That's right...two great books--one of my favorites and one of Heather's--going out to two lucky Year of Reading Dangerously Participants. And the winners are!

Incidents: Lisa
Life is So Good: Kim L.

Ladies, if you would, please send your contact info to estellabooks(at)gmail(dot)com.

If you've already read the book you were chosen for just let me know and I'd be happy to substitute another book, Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson.