I’m super excited about the third challenge I’m joining this year because one of my resolutions for next year is to read more essays. So when I saw that Carrie at Books and Movies was hosting the Essay Reading Challenge, I knew I had to join in. The challenge runs from January 1 to December 31, 2009, and Carrie asks that we pick whether we want to read 10, 20 or 30 essays. I figure I’ll read at least 30!The books I want to read are:
- For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth about their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance edited by Victoria Zackheim (27 essays)
- Her Fork in the Road: Women Celebrate Food and Travel edited by Lisa Bach (33 essays)
- The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays by Caroline Knapp (63 essays)
- Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding (15 essays)
- Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver (23 essays)
- Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard (14 essays)
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Books read and reviewed for this challenge:
This list will be updated throughout the year.
1. Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding
I was thrilled to find this reading challenge too. I still have to round up some books for it and write my post. I have read Teaching a Stone to Talk and it was wonderful, so since it's been a few years I'm going to read it again. Thanks for the reminder. Happy reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sandra. I really love personal essays but don't read them often enough. I'm just not sure if we're expected to review each essay individually or not for this challenge. (If so, that makes for rather a lot of reviews for me to do!) I'm glad to hear you enjoyed Teaching a Stone to Talk. That was one of those books that I looked for everywhere (I wanted to find a second-hand copy at the time) and then when I finally found it, I didn't get around to reading it!
ReplyDeleteDo you know Nancy Mairs? She's a fantastic essay writer; her essays are very personal and very frank. Unfortunately, I've read everything of hers that I own and I'm trying not to include books in my challenges that I would have to buy...
You have a great list ahead! I posted your challenge post in my sidebar.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to review every essay - it's completely up to you. If you want to review them as books, that would be cool, too.
Thanks, Carrie! I think I'll probably review them as books. I'll see, though, I also kinda like the idea of reading a couple of essays every week. (Although I guess if I'm going to read 175 essays in a year, I'll have to read more like three or four every week!)
ReplyDeleteThe Merry Recluse is a wonderful collection...Caroline Knapp is one of my favorite writers. The Kingsolver collection is also very good (you can tell, I love reading essays :)
ReplyDeleteBecca, thanks for the thumbs up for The Merry Recluse! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. I'd never heard of Caroline Knapp before, but the book looked interesting and I love reading essays written by women. Any others you could recommend?
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