At the beginning of the year, our three-year-old grandson and his mom were living with us. That encouraged me to sign up for a couple of challenges that I would not have otherwise considered: the Picture Book Reading Challenge and the 3660 Minute Challenge for which I must read 10 minutes each day to a child.

But Laura and Steven left suddenly mid-month as an urgent family matter called them back to Vancouver. That left me with only 130 minutes of reading time logged with Steven – and a keening for him in my heart.

So I decided to have a story-time with Steven by phone every day, rain or shine (a new term he learned reading Madeline). His mom puts the headphones on him and he lies on his bed or the floor while we talk – because it isn’t just about reading, is it? It’s about asking questions, learning new things, and finding out what your child is thinking. Our times have ranged from 10-20 minutes and most days he’s fully engaged even though he can’t see the pictures in the books.

I’m pleased with the ongoing contact I’m maintaining with my grandson and hope that soon he looks forward to Gram’s story-time every day.

Here’s what we read together in January before he left, with links to reviews for all:

1. Dog in Boots written by Greg Gormley and illustrated by Robert Angaramo

2. The Market Square Dog written by James Herriot and illustrated by Ruth Brown

3. Giraffe and Bird written and illustrated by Rebecca Bender

4. I Want My Hat Back written and illustrated by Jon Klassen

5. Coyote Sings to the Moon written Thomas King and illustrated by Johnny Wales

I told myself on December 31 that I had signed up for all the reading challenges that I was going to do…”no more,” I told myself. But challenges continued to trickle in in January and weaken my resolve and I saw a few that I could do without adding more than one or two titles to my burgeoning 2012 reading list.

The ‘challenge’ part is becoming keeping track of all—wait for it—63 challenges I’ve entered. Yup – that’s right-sixty-three. It’s hard to believe, I know, but there some that I really wanted to join but just couldn’t this year (for example: African, Middle East, Eastern European, Irish, Edgar Winners, Read the Bible…and so on)

Anyway, I promise that this is it. All the sign-up posts are up today and that’s it. From here on in, I read and review.

I hope you’ve had a great start on your reading year!

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t read and didn’t love it.

My brother was born when I was 13 months old and my mother read to me to keep me occupied while she nursed him. I was reading when I entered kindergarten just before my fifth birthday, and in first grade I was called out of class once a week to read a story to my brother’s kindergarten class. (He was not impressed since he was already a reader himself.)

Dave & I spent many summer afternoons in the children’s section in the basement of the old library in St. Thomas. We could take only four books at a time and so we were there several times a week, replenishing our stock of entertainment. Dave favored Freddy the Pig books, although I could never get into them. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder and Trixie Belden.

The Books That Made Me Love Reading Challenge, hosted by Emlyn Chand, allows me to re-read the books that made me fall in love with reading in the first place.

I’ll also reflect upon what made me love them the first time around and discuss how my impressions changed upon reading them again.

I haven’t determined yet which books I’ll read for this challenge (one per month is required), but I’m enjoying searching my memory and finding old friends.

January: These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Entering the Color Coded Reading Challenge, hosted by Bev over at My Reader’s Block required that I add a number of books to my already long reading list for 2012, but I just couldn’t resist. I love category challenges!

Here are my tentative choices:
1. A book with “Blue” in the title: Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
2. A book with “Red” in the title: Trixie Belden and the Red Trailer Mystery by Julie Campbell
3. A book with “Yellow” in the title: The Mystery Of The Yellow Room by Gaston LeRoux
4. A book with “Green” in the title: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewllyn
5. A book with “Brown” in the title: TBD – any suggestions?
6. A book with “Black” in the title: Crime at the Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
7. A book with “White” in the title: The Woman in White by Wilkie Colllins
8. A book with any other color in the title : These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
9. A book with a word that implies color: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

So, yes, I’ve already entered Library of Clean Reads’ Short Story Reading Challenge which requires me to read entire collections of short stories.

But the Short Story Reading Challenge hosted by Dead Book Darling asks me to read 12 individual short stories. This will allow me more latitude to find a variety of authors. I’m looking forward to this!

Over the past year, I’ve started following a number of bloggers who promote Australian literature. I must admit that my exposure to authors from down under has been somewhat (although not entirely) limited.

To stretch myself this year, I’ve decided to join this Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge, created by Elizabeth at The Devoted Eclectic. I’m just going in ‘casual’ this year at the ‘Stella’ level of 3 books and I’m going to ‘dabble’ in more than one genre. Here’s my tentative reading list (although the first two are pretty firmly set because they are next in the pile on my bedside bookcase):

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Searching for the Secret River by Kate Grenville
Bite Your Tongue by Francesca Rendle-Short’

Do you have any other suggestions for me?

What books were published the year you were born, or the birth year of someone special to you? The Birth Year Reading Challenge encourages you to find out, and then read some of them.

I really couldn’t get excited about anything published in my birth year, so I decided to do an Honors Challenge and read books published in 1973 – the year my beautiful baby girl came into the world. (Love you, Jen!)

A Prairie Boy’s Winter by William Kurelek
The Temptations Of Big Bear by Rudy Wiebe
Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie

The BYRC is hosted by the Hotchpot Cafe.

Emmanuelle at Words and Peace is hosting the Books Published in the First Years of My Life Challenge.

What is this challenge-that’s-a mouthful all about?
Easy: pick up and read a book that was published in the first years of my life; 1 book per year.

I originally thought I would complete this challenge (at the Toddler level) by reading adult books, but the challenge logo puts me in mind of snuggling up with a book as a child – and so I think I’m going to read some of the books I might have read then. Here’s my list:

1954 – Horton Hears A Who! by Dr. Suess
1955 – Eloise by Kay Thompson
1956 – Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

Kristen at Strawberry Splash Reviews is hosting another A – Z Reading Challenge. I say ‘another’ because I’ve already joined one of these.

Kristen, however, has a ‘double whammy‘ category that takes this ‘eh’ to ‘zed’ experience to another level: not only must I read books with titles that start with the letters of the alphabet, but also I need to read books by authors whose last name start with A to Z. FUN!

Cassandra over at Wickedly Delicious Tales is hosting the 2012 Amazon Best Books of 2011 Reading Challenge.

Since four of the books on my 2012 reading list are Amazon editors’ picks for last year, I’m going to enter this at the Novice level which requires me to choose another, for a total of five books.

Here’s the Amazon list.

Here’s my choices for this challenge:
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
TBD – any suggestions?

In completing the second annual Criminal Plots Reading Challenge, I’ll be reading six books between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2012. One book should be read that fits into each of the following categories:

1. Novel with a weapon in the title: Sign of the Broken Sword by G.K. Chesterton

2. Book published at least 10 years ago: Crime at the Black Dudley by Margery Allingham

3. Book written by an author from the state/province/etc. where I live: Murder: a Crafty Business by Lila Phillips of Truro, Nova Scotia

4. Book written by an author using a pen name: Death on the Oxford Road by E.C.R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett)

5. Crime novel whose protagonist is the opposite gender of the author: Cape Cod Tavern Mystery (handyman Asey Mayo) by Phoebe A. Taylor

6. A stand-alone novel written by an author who writes at least one series: Murder at Hazelmoor by Agatha Christie

The Challenge: Read any non-fiction book, adult or young adult. That’s it. I can choose anything. Poetry? Yes. Memoirs? Yes. History? Yes. Travel? Yes. You get the idea? Absolutely anything that is classified as non-fiction counts for this challenge.

So – I’m going in at the Master level which requires me to read 16 – 20 non-fiction books this year.

The Dewey Decimal System Reading Challenge is hosted by Jen over at The Introverted Reader.

1. Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 by Sally M. Walker

This Books In Translation Challenge, hosted by The Introverted Reader, is pretty self-explanatory. The goal is to read translations of books.

Any genre and any age range qualifies. Crossovers with other challenges are fine. Any format that I choose is also acceptable.

Since I’m already committed to reading Montaigne’s essays this year, this seems like a good fit. And who knows what else I might run across that’s been translated?

Kailana at The Written Word and Lu at Regular Rumination have started a monthly poetry blog-along. I haven’t posted my sign-up yet, so I’m combining this month’s post with that.

On the last Tuesday of every month, I’m going to join in and blog (very) informally about some of the poetry that I’ve read over the past month.

For January, I thought I’d share some of Shakespeare’s thoughts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In Act III, scene ii, Hermia has awakened to find her love, Lysander, gone without explanation. She accuses Demetrius, his rival, of harming him:

Out, dog! Out, cur! Thou driv’st me past the bounds
Of maiden’s patience. Has thou slain him then?
Henceforth be never numb’red among men.
O, once tell true: tell true, even for my sake
Durst thou have looked upon him being awake!
And hast thou killed him sleeping? O brave touch!
Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?

I can just feel the pain, anger and contempt in Hermia’s words!

My favorite lines from this play, though, are Helena’s in Act 1, scene i:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

The Classics Reading Challenge hosted by November’s Autumn is the one I’m calling “Classics with a Twist” – the twist being that on the fourth of each month, Katherine posts a prompt to act as a basis for my discussion of the classic I’m currently reading.

I’m nearing the end of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Stowe. Stowe was born in 1811 in Connecticut USA. She lived for a time in Cincinnati Ohio where she met her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe who was a professor at the Lane Theological Seminary there. The Stowes later moved to coastal Maine.

Both Stowes were deeply religious and fierce critics of slavery. It’s no surprise that they supported the Underground Railroad and offered their home as a stop on it.

Her writing is typical of the 19th century writers I have read: great descriptive detail and slow plot advancement. I understand that readers expected in the 1800s to be entertained at length by a single book that could be savored slowly. In my 21st century life, I often read through books just so that I can get to the next one, so I admit that I have been at times frustrated by Stowe’s writing.

I think that Stowe’s novel, published in installments in The National Era in 1851 & 1852, and in book form in March of 1852, was met with the same sort of attitudes that fomented the American Civil War: strident voices both for and against slavery. Anecdotal history says when Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he greeted her by saying, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

I know that by now, most of you think I’m insane because, after all, I have joined fifty-two (52!) reading challenges for next year. (Here’s the list). Maybe I am a little touched in the head, but I told you I was a challenge addict.

But I do have a plan: a master reading list for next year that right now stands at 106 books and fulfills my entire reading obligation except for the picture books. (I figure I can fit them in somewhere.) Since I read 121 books in 2011 and am aiming for 150 this year, I figure that’s doable.

My only problem will be resisting all the new goodies I see this year until I’ve completed my challenges at the end of the year.

So, how about you? Do you have a reading list for 2012 or are reading catch as catch can – which I think I’d like to try in 2013!

The Global Reading Challenge (GRC) challenges me to expand my reading boundaries, go where I haven’t been before, move a little outside my comfort zone. I may read any genre so long as the books are fiction.

I’m entering The Easy Challenge in which I must read one novel from each of these continents :
• Africa
• Asia
• Australasia/Oceania
• Europe
• North America (my own continent, so I’m challenged to try to find a country, state or author that is new to me): The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield (Arkansas, USA)
• South America (may include Central America)
• The Seventh Continent (here can choose either Antarctica or my own ´seventh´ setting, eg the sea, the space, history, the future – whatever).

Although 2012 is the year I concentrate on books I already own and put a moratorium of book-buying, I know I won’t be able to resist entering contests for interesting-looking books I see on blogs. And if my record continues, sometimes, just sometimes, I’ll win them!

Teddy Rose, who blogs over at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time is hosting the perfect challenge for me to work my way through these wins. I’m entering the Books Won 2012 Reading Challenge at the Bronze level, pledging to read (and review!) four – six books I’ve won.

1. Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwarz

2. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

This year Jillian at a Room of One’s Own has started reading some books that she didn’t finish because she got side-tracked. Now with 2011 coming to a close, she’s scrambling to read these half-started mighty tomes, or else feeling guilty and low because she didn’t finish what she started, by the end of the year.

But Jillian has declared that shame or guilt doesn’t belong in the world of literature!! So she’s hosting the Books I Started But Didn’t Finish Reading Challenge.

I didn’t get distracted and forget about books, but I did abandon a few. One of those, I was convinced to try again – but I haven’t yet. So I’m going to enter Jillian’s challenge and finish the The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton.

Darlene. who blogs over at Darlene’s Book Nook, loves audio books – they’re the perfect way for her to fit reading in with her active ‘mom’ lifestyle. In 2012 she wants to listen to some longer books, but couldn’t find a “big book” challenge that allowed her audio books. So she designed The Mammoth Book 2012 Reading Challenge.

This challenge allows books of all formats, including audio books and ebooks. The regular-bound format equivalent of any title must be a minimum of 450 pages.

Since I’m participating already in the Chunkster Reading Challenge, I thought this would be a good fit for me. I’m entering at Level 2, committing to read four mammoth-sized books.

1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe