Fairy Revel

Some time ago, I created a Livejournal community called 100 Project, an adaptation of the Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project blog for Livejournal users. Participants choose 100 books they think they ought to have read by now (classics, difficult books, or whatever) and read them all within five years. (Guidelines are here.)

I started with The Last Unicorn, then prompty chose The Iliad as my second book. Which wasn’t fun, and caused me to only get three books from the list read in my first year-and-a-half of participation. Ouch. Anyway, I noticed that whenever I would think about my list, I would mentally say, “Well, I don’t know what order these books were published in, and I did sort of want to read the very old ones in order…” A paltry excuse? Maybe. But I figured that if that was something keeping me from reading the books on this list, I’d be better off finally sitting down and putting them into chronological order.

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I’m taking part in Story a Day May!

I’m normally not a short story writer. In fact, I don’t even like reading them much, unless they’re by an author I love. Even then it’s sort of tough. Basically, by the time I warm up to the characters the story has ended. (I think this may have something to do with relationship styles; I can’t get close to characters immediately anymore than people. Anyhow . . . ) I do think short stories are an important part of a writer’s repertoire, however. So in the interest of developing my technique, I’m going to write a story a day for the entire month of May (“Stop this rhyming now, I mean it!”)

To participate, you don’t have to write every single day—but you need to have some kind of schedule. For instance, I don’t write on Sundays, and I’ll stick to that schedule through the month. The stories can be any length, but need to have a beginning, middle and end. So flash fiction and the like is okay.

I’m brainstorming story ideas today, and I’ll try to work out fully-developed idea sentences for each, but no more. I do better if I have some sort of plan.

The schedule for the The Golden Age of Detective Fiction Tour at The Classics Circuit is up! The tour will be stopping here on Saturday, June 5th, and I’ll be reviewing Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. I don’t normally post on Saturdays, but I missed sign-ups and they were nice enough to sneak me in.

Whose Body?, written in 1923, is the first mystery novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. I’ll be reading the copy I already have, but it appears Dover has released an inexpensive paperback. Here’s the back cover copy:

“There’s a dead body in his bathtub, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez spectacles. Enter Lord Peter Wimsey, the original gentleman sleuth, who debuted in this 1923 novel. Written by a master of the detective story, this atmospheric tale abounds in the cozy delights of an English murder mystery.

I hope everyone participating in the tour has a great time. May we all keep the plots of these stories mysterious in our reviews! ;)

Becky is hosting the Centuries Reading Challenge for 2010.

Centuries Reading Challenge
Host: Becky of Becky’s Book Reviews
Length: All of 2010 (finish at your own pace)
Required Books: 3 to 6

Your challenge is to read three (to six) books from at least three different centuries. The challenge is to read books written in different centuries, not just to read books set during different centuries. (If you choose to read more than three books, then you can double up on centuries. You can read as many as you like.)

The centuries do not need to be consecutive like the decades challenge.

Books can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, short stories, essays, plays, etc. Books do not have to be a required length. (Though I ask that poetry and short stories be within a larger collection. For example, a book of short stories as opposed to one solitary short story.)

I promised myself I would only participate in one challenge at a time this year, apart from my regular challenges I take every year. However, this one is a year-long challenge that fits very well into what I have planned for my reading anyway, so I thought I’d go ahead and give myself some much-needed encouragement to get those books read.

I’ve decided to read six books from six different centuries:

1. The Iliad of Homer. (8th c.)
2. The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes by Chrétien de Troyes. (12th c.)
3. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (15th c.)
4. The Cavalier Poets: An Anthology by Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace. (17th c.)
5. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (19th c.)
6. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. (21st c.)