To begin the year right, we have decided to participate actively in four Reading Challenges this 2011. Here are our list so far:
Murakami Reading Challenge as hosted in this site. I signed up here as Number 392 (Wow, they have THAT many participants). Truth be told, I signed up for Mary who just could not get enough of Murakami. We are striving for the Nakata level – reading 7+ books and linking our reviews to their site by the end of 2011.
South Asian Challenge 2011 as hosted by S. Krishna’s Books. Here, the rules are quite clear. The book must be by a South Asian author (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives) or about South Asia. Our Target Level would be that of the South Asian Adventurer – 7 books until the end of 2011.
POC (Persons of Color) Reading Challenge as hosted here. The challenge involves diversifying our reading and to read about books that have something to do about persons of color. We thought that this is something that overlaps with the South Asian Reading Challenge and we endeavor to enter Level 3 (Read 7-9 POC books) by end of the year.
And last but not least, we plan to participate in Paper Tigers’ Reading the World Challenge 2011 – they do not have their post up yet nor their sign-up site, but we are definitely all in.
In conjunction with all these lovely reading challenges, GatheringBooks would also be hosting two major reading challenges for the year 2011. With prizes! Yay. We are looking forward to letting you all know more about this in due course, and yes we are very excited about this. We also hope to do more blog tours (I really don’t know how this is done, but it sounds awesome) and having some guest bloggers on our site (that would be even more awesome).
One of our key goals when we set up our site is really to connect to fellow bibliophiles who share our love for the written word. This 2011, we would be more proactive in having that come about.
Gathering Books 
Myra – We will be posting details about our Reading the World Challenge soon. Thanks for giving the details on the other challenges. Consider me in too! Look forward to sharing books and titles with you! Corinne
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Great to hear that Corinne! Will send you a message again as soon as we have our very own Reading Challenge up. =)
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Thanks for joining the Murakami Challenge. I look forward to hearing about the Murakami books you read this year. The reason we have so many participants is because the publisher found out about it and mentioned it on their Facebook page. After that the sign-ups went crazy! I thought I’d be lucky to get 50 people to join. But it’s kind of exciting to see participants from all over the world! 🙂
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We’re very much excited to join the challenge. I, personally, love Murakami and hope to re-read his books and read his new book. Congratulations on having that many participants. 🙂
-Mary
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As Mary mentioned, we are happy to join. =) Looking forward to reading Murakami books as well. Congratulations on having so many participants!
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Hi, Myra and Mary.:) Love reading about the challenges you’re joining. I’m trying out for the Murakami one, too, though unofficially. And, I think, if I follow through with my plan, will read enough for the POC challenge. Will have to check my shelves again for the South Asian one, though. I know I have a couple of Indian authors I’ve yet to read, but none for the other nations. Which tells me that I should open my reading up some more.
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Hi Honey, we went all crazy when we discovered all the reading challenges at the beginning of the year. Soo nice. Fats even had the mistaken notion that they were all for January (not for the whole year) which drove her slightly nuts borrowing books from the library and ordering a few online as well. It came as a welcome relief for her to know that they were year-long. Hhahaa. =)
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