Klowey's 2023 Challenge Buffet

[Klowey]

Second year tackling the Challenge Buffet. Last year's challenge buffet.

Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge

Challenge #2 - Second Place or Worse

Challenge #4 - Members Choice Challenge

✔ Challenge #5 - Short Story Challenge

Challenge 6 - Group Reads and/or Buddy Reads Challenge

✔ Challenge #7 - Expand Your Horizon With New Authors

Challenge #9 – Fiction/Non-Fiction

[Klowey]

Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge

1899 and earlier/Old School
1. The Gaucho Martín Fierro
2. In a Glass Darkly
3. Alice Through the Looking-Glass

1900-1999/New School
4. Murphy
✔5. The Man Without Qualities read 9/18/2023 ****
6. Watership Down

My Wild Card Six
7. Artificios
8. Watt
9. Mercier and Camier
10. The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant Garde, 1875-1905
11. Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre
12. The Master and Margarita

Alternates
✔A-1. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas read 4/3/2023 ****1/2
A-2. The Book of Imaginary Beings
A-3. Islands of Abandonment

[Klowey]

Challenge #2 - Second Place or Worse
Go back through the groups past polls and select Four (4) total books that are of interest to you but lost the poll and to date has never made it to our group bookshelf. Pick one book from New School, one from Old School, one from Short Story/Novella, and one from the Quarterly Long Read.

Most will agree that the books making it through our nominations process are quality reads. Reading the unsuccessful books can help broaden our personal shelves. Hopefully this challenge, through member reviews and thread comments, will bring us some knowledge on a wider selection of books and encourage members to read them. It could also lead to renomination and poll winning.

New School
Murphy, DEC 2020

Old School
The Gaucho Martín Fierro, JUNE 2020

Short Story/Novella
✔ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas JAN 2023 (read 4/3/2023 ****1/2)

Quarterly Long Read
✔ The Man Without Qualities JAN-APR 2021 9/18/2023 ****

[Klowey]

Challenge #4 - Members Choice Challenge
Choose one book per category/genre for a total of 12 books.

✔ 1. 19th Century
Bartleby the Scrivener 8/4/2023 *****

✔ 2. 20th Century
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler 5/3/2023 *****

✔ 3. Foreign Language
A book originally written in a language other than your own.
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination 1/15/2023 ****1/2

✔ 4. Current or Past Group Read
April 2016 - Short Story/Novella Read
The Metamorphosis 9/2/2023 *****

5. An Author Not Read Before
✔ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin 4/3/2023 *****

6. Diversity Classic -
A book from a religion, culture, country, or race different from yours.
✔ The Man Without Qualities, 9/18/2023 ****

✔ 7. Science Fiction/Fantasy
Brave New World 6/7/2023 **1/2

✔ 8. Action/Adventure
The Good Soldier Švejk 4/2/2023 *****

✔ 9. Childrens/Young Adult
The Mousehole Cat 4/12/2023 ****

10. Nonfiction - TBD
        • Explosive Acts: Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Felix Feneon, and the Art & Anarchy of the Fin de Siecle
        •On the Origin of Species
        •Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
        •The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant Garde, 1875-1905

✔ 11. Mystery/Thriller
The 39 Steps 1/27/2023 **1/2

✔ 12. Horror or Humor
The Summer People 4/4/2023 ****

[Klowey]

Challenge #5 - Short Story Challenge
Read 24 short stories. This equates to only two per month for the year. Read them all at once or spread them out, it's up to you.

✔ 1. Memories of the Future title story 3/22/2023 ****

Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination ****1/2
✔ 2. The Human Chair 1/1/2023 *****
✔ 3. The Psychological Test 1/4/2023 ****1/2
✔ 4. The Caterpillar 1/4/2023 ****1/2
✔ 5. The Cliff 1/6/2023 ***1/2
✔ 6. The Hell of Mirrors 1/6/2023 ***
✔ 7. The Twins 1/6/2023 ****
✔ 8. The Red Chamber 1/7/2023 ****
✔ 9. Two Crippled Men 1/8/2023 ***1/2
✔ 10. The Traveler with the Pasted Red Picture 1/15/2023 ***1/2

The Aleph and Other Stories
✔ 12. The Immortal 3/5/2022 *****
✔ 13. The Dead Man 3/6/2022 ***1/2
✔ 14. The Theologians 3/12/2022 ***1/2
✔ 15. Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden 3/14/2023 ****
✔ 16. A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz 3/14/2023 ****
✔ 17. Emma Zunz 3/15/2023 ****
✔ 18.The House of Asterion 3/8/2022 *****
✔ 19. The Other Death 3/17/2023 *****
✔ 20. Deutsches Requiem 8/17/2023 **1/2
✔ 21. Averroes' Search 8/18/2023 ***
✔ 22. The Zahir 4/24/2023 ****1/2
✔ 23. The Writing of the God 8/20/2023 ***
✔ 24. Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in his Labyrinth 9/20/2023 ****
✔ 25. The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths 9/20/2023 ****
✔ 26. The Wait 8/202/2023 *****
✔ 27. The Man on the Threshold ***
✔ 28. The Aleph ****1/2

Individual Short Stories
✔ 29. The 39 Steps 1/27/2023 **1/2
✔ 30. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 4/3/2023 *****
✔ 31. The Summer People 4/4/2023 ****
✔ 32. The Color Out of Space 4/5/2023 ***
✔ 33. A Voice in the Night 4/16/2023 ***
✔ 34. The Mousehole Cat 4/12/2023 ****
✔ 35. After Twenty Years 8/9/2023 ****
✔ 36. The Door in the Wall 10/31/2023 ***1/2

Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature
✔ 37. House Taken Over 9/2/2023 ***1/2
✔ 38. How Love Came to Professor Guildea 9/16/2023 ***1/2
✔ 39. Climax for a ghost story 9/18/2023 ****
✔ 40. The Mysteries of the Joy Rio 9/30/2023 *
✔ 41. Venetian Masks 10/13/2023 ***
✔ 42. The Wish House and Other Stories (title story) 10/13/2023 ***
✔ 43. The Playground 10/29/2023 ***
✔ 44. [Importance|193372290] by Manuel Mujica Lainez 10/30/2023 ***1/2
✔ 45. Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties by Max Beerbohm 11/14/2023 ****1/2
✔ 46. A Visitor from Down Under by L.P. Hartley 11/20/2023 **1/2
✔ 47. Laura by Saki 11/20/2023 ***
✔ 48. An Injustice Revealed 11/27/2023 ***
✔ 49. A Little Place off the Edgware Road by Graham Greene 12/4/2023 *1/2
✔ 50. From "A School Story" by M.R. James Dec 2023 **1/2
✔ 51. The Signalman by Charles Dickens 12/27/2023 ****1/2

[Klowey]

Challenge 6 - Group Reads and/or Buddy Reads Challenge
The challenge is to read 12 total books from this year's group poll winners or Buddy Reads, in any combination. Your reads can be from the upcoming 53 poll winners, or from the 2023 Buddy Reads thread. Between New School, Old School, Short Story/Novella, Revisit the Shelf, Quarterly Long Read, and Buddy Reads there should be plenty of choices.

✔ 1. Revisit The Shelf for February 2023
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler 5/3/2023 *****

✔ 2. Buddy Read January to April 2023
The Man Without Qualities 9/18/2023 ****

✔ 3. Short Stories for February 2023
The 39 Steps 1/27/2023 **1/2

✔ 4. Buddy Read March 2023
The Aleph and Other Stories 10/5/2023 *****

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

[Klowey]

Challenge #7 - Expand Your Horizon With New Authors
Seek out at least six (6) authors that you have never previously read, from any genre or era you want.

Completed:
✔ 1. Edogawa Rampo
✔ 2. John Buchan
✔ 3. Antonia Barber
✔ 4. Ursula K. Le Guin
✔ 5. Shirley Jackson
✔ 6. William Hope Hodgson
✔ 7. Aldous Huxley
✔ 8. Robert Musil
✔ 9. Julio Cortázar
✔ 10. Robert Smythe Hichens
✔ 11. Tennessee Williams
✔ 12. Adolfo Bioy Casares
✔ 13. Rudyard Kipling
✔ 14. Ray Bradbury
✔ 15. Manuel Mujica Lainez

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Nice plan and excellent selections. One that stands out is an old favorite, Watership Down, I read it back in 1976 or 77 can’t remember exactly. I always think of it fondly, maybe someday I’ll reread it. Enjoy your challenge.

[Klowey]

Challenge #9 – Fiction/Non-Fiction

Select five different subjects of interest to you and read a fiction book and a non-fiction book about that subject. Total number of books for this challenge is ten.

Dangerous Ideas
✔ Fiction: Brave New World 6/7/2023 **1/2
Non-Fiction: On the Origin of Species

Books & Reading
✔ Fiction: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler 5/3/2023 ****1/2
Non-Fiction: The History Of World Literature

Fin-de-Siecle Culture
✔ Fiction: The Man Without Qualities: Volume I 9/18/2023 ****
Non-Fiction: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture

Russian Social Commentary
✔ Fiction: Memories of the Future 3/22/2023 ****
Non-Fiction: The Conquest of Bread

Twentieth-Century Social Commentary
Fiction: 1984
Non-Fiction: TBD
Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life

Alternate
Abandoned, Strange, or Forbidden Landscapes/Places
Fiction: Roadside Picnic
Non-Fiction: Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies

Samuel Beckett
Fiction by Beckett: Murphy
Non-Fiction about Beckett: Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett