999 Challenge Complete - Part I

Last weekend, while sitting and reading through the Thankfully Reading Weekend, I passed a huge milestone by completing my 2nd 999 challenge of the year.  Started as a Challenge Group on LibraryThing, that means 9 books in each of 9 categories read during the year 09.  I did this twice.  Admittedly, I had to fudge a couple of categories to make things fit, but forcing myself to read outside my normal comfort range, and to read (or listen to) 162 books for this was quite a feat.

I have taken this past week to do a wrapup and look at some interesting stats:
Of those 162 books

• 79 came from the public library (49%)
  
• 50 came from my own TBR piles (31%)
  
• 33 were ARCs or LT Early Review books (20%)

• 103 were print (64%)
• 59 were audio (36%)

Here's the breakdown by categories: (If I reviewed them, my review is in the LT page.)

The First Challenge

1. Fiction -

1. Pawing through the Past- Rita Mae Brown
2. Comforts of a Muddy Saturday - Alexander McCall Smith
3. 16 Lighhouse Road - Debbie Macomber
4. Sarah - Marek Halter
5. Heart and Soul - Maeve Binchy
6. Shape of water - Andrea Camillieri
7. The Red Tent - Anita Diamont
8. Suffer the Little Children -Donna Leon
9. Blood from a Stone - Donna Leon

2. Books about books, libraries, or language 

1. Free for all: oddballs, geeks and gangstas in the public library - Dan Borchert
2. Ex Libris Confessions of a Common Reader -Anne Fadiman
3. Sixpence House - Paul Collins
4. So Many Books, So Little Time - Sara Nelson
5. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
6. The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel
7. Dewey - Vicki Myron
8. The YellowLighted Bookshop - Lewis Buzbee
9. Soldier's Heart - Elizabeth Samet

3. Things Portuguese

1. Letters of a Portuguese Nun - Myriam Cry
2. Sonnets from the Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
3. The Coffee Trader - David Liss
4. Our Lady of the Artichokes - Katherine Vaz
5. Portuguese Irregular Verbs - Alexander McCall Smith
6. Food of Portugal - Jean Anderson
7. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
8. Portugal - Carlos Vitorino da Silva Barros
9. Saudade - Katherine Vaz

4. Theology and Spirituality turned out to be my Lenten read

1. The Prince Mammoth Pumpkin - James Adams
2. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
3. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith  - Kathleen Norris
4. Misquoting Jesus - Bart Ehrman
5. Year of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacob
6. Christ the Lord:The Road to Cana - Anne Rice
7. Dating Jesus - Susan Campbell
8. Being Catholic Now  -Kerry Kennedy
9. The Shack Wm. P. Young

5. Politics, History and Biographies

1. The Dark Side: the inside story of how the war on Terror turned into a War on American Ideals -  Jane Mayer
2.The Nine - Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - Jeffrey Toobin
3.Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the cults of Catholic Europe - Thomas Cahill
4.Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay - Nancy Mitford
5.America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders- Kenneth C. Davis
6. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time - Dava Sobel
7. Great Souls: Six who changed the Century - David Aikman
8. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House - Jon Meacham
9. Dear Fatty - Dawn French

6. Award Winners these could be either the author (for this or another work) or the work itself; might be a Pulitzer, Booker, National or other award.

1. Ship Fever - Andrea Barrett
2. The Blackford Oakes Reader - William F. Buckley
3. Here Lies the Librarian - Richard Peck
4. Night - Elie Wiesel
5. Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin
6. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo
7. The Spellman Files - Lisa Lutz
8. Hard Row - Margaret Maron 
9. A Taste for Death - P.D. James

7. Poetry, Letters and Short Stories

1. The Gift of story, A Wise Tale about What is Enough - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
2. Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn
3. A Few Quick Ones - P.G. Wodehouse
4. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
5. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri "Inferno" 
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button & other stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald.
7. Ants on the Melon - Virginia Hamilton Adair
8. Morning Poems - Robert Bly
9. Short And Tall Tales: Moose County Legends - Lillian Braun

8. Books from somebody else's lists

1. The Little World of Don Camillo - Giovannino Guareschi
2. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Stout  Maine Reads online book group

3. One Man's Meat - E.B. White Maine Reads
4. Any Bitter Thing - Monica Wood  Maine Reads
5. The Girl who loved Tom Gordon - Stephen King Maine Reads
6  Corduroy Mansions - Alexander McCall Smith
7. On What Grounds - Cleo Coyle
8. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
9. Lobster Chronicles - Linda Greenlaw Maine Reads

9. No place else to put them!

1. Shakespeare:The World as Stage - Bill Bryson
2. Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar - Thomas Cathcart
3. Best Seller! Jane Daniel
4. Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World - Eruc Weiner
5. Stupid American History: Tales of Stupidity,Strangeness and Mythconceptions - Leland Gregory
6. Bad Blood - Linda Fairstein
7. The New 50 Simple Things Kids can Do to Save the Earth by the Earthworks Group
8. Delectable Mountains - Earlene Fowler
9. Summer in Tuscany - Elizabeth Adler

The Second 999 and New Challenges

Since this post is getting pretty long, and I've tons of books to read, I'm going to do a second post for the 2nd challenge sometime later this week. After that I'll be choosing my Best of the Year list to publish on New Year's Eve.  In the meantime, I have to decide on and get organized for what (if any) challenges I'm going to do in 2010.  In the meantime READ ON.................