JP's 2024 Challenge Buffet

[JP]

I'm eager to return to the table in 2024. I hope to take a deeper dive into some of the authors/time periods that piqued my interest in 2023.

Completed Challenges
Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge - 5/13/24
Challenge #2 - Second Place or Worse - 4/22/24
Challenge #3a - Decade Challenge - 8/6/24
Challenge #3b - Century Challenge - 8/8/24
Challenge #3c - Millennium Challenge - 6/26/24
Challenge #4 - Members Choice Challenge - 4/25/24
Challenge #5 - Short Story Challenge - 3/28/24>
Challenge #6 - Group Reads and/or Buddy Reads Challenge - 7/16/24
Challenge #7 - Expand Your Horizon With New Authors - 1/30/24
Challenge #8 –Most Popular Goodreads Books Listed by Year - 5/29/24
Challenge #9 – Fiction/Non-Fiction - 6/26/24
Challenge #10 - The Half a Millennium Challenge with a Sour Lemon Twist of Difficult - 4/18/24
Challenge #11 - Old and New Linked Categories - 4/25/24
Challenge #12 - Series Books – Start, Continue, Complete - 4/29/24
Challenge #13 - Travel the World One Continent at a Time - 4/17/24
Challenge #14 - Rereading - Some do. Some don't - 3/27/24
Challenge #15 - A-Z Title Challenge - 8/12/24
Challenge #16 - A-Z Author Challenge - 8/4/24

[JP]

✔️Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge

Completed: 12/12 - 5/13/24

1899 and earlier/Old School
✔️1. Homer: The Odyssey (-701)
✔️2. Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️3. Unknown, tr. Sayers: The Song of Roland (1115)

1900-1999/New School
✔️4. Wodehouse: Summer Moonshine (1937)
✔️5. Williams: The Night of the Iguana (1961)
✔️6. Leiber: Swords and Deviltry (1970)

My Wild Card Six
7. Asprin: Another Fine Myth (1978)
✔️8. Duras: The Lover (1984)
✔️9. Sextus Empiricus: How to Keep an Open Mind: An Ancient Guide to Thinking Like a Skeptic (200)
✔️10. Riggs: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)
✔️11. Ballard: Crash (1973)
✔️12. Scalzi: Starter Villain (2023)

Alternates
✔️A-1. Montaigne: The Complete Essays (1580)
A-2. Stanbridge: My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is (2022)
A-3. Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1962)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #2 - Second Place or Worse

Completed: 4/4 - 4/22/24

New School
✔️Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908) - November 2023

Old School
✔️Shakespeare: King Lear (1605) - April 2024

Short Story/Novella
✔️Morrison: Recitatif (1983) - August 2023

Quarterly Long Read
✔️Montaigne: The Complete Essays (1580) - 1st Quarter 2023

[JP]

✔️Challenge #3 - Decade/Century/Millennium Challenge

✔️Decade Challenge
Completed: 10/10 - 8/6/24

✔️1855 - Whitman: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
✔️1856 - Flaubert: Madame Bovary: Provincial Lives
✔️1857 - Melville: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
✔️1858 - Longfellow: The Courtship Of Miles Standish
✔️1859 - Darwin: On the Origin of Species
✔️1860 - Spofford: Circumstance
✔️1861 - Harwood: Horror - A True Tale
✔️1862 - Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
✔️1863 - Verne: Five Weeks in a Balloon
✔️1864 - Tennyson: Enoch Arden

✔️Century Challenge
Completed: 10/10 - 8/8/24

1840 - 1849 Brontë: Wuthering Heights
(1847)
✔️1850 - 1859 Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️1860 - 1869 Alcott: Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power (1866)
✔️1870 - 1879 Dostoevsky: A Gentle Creature and Other Stories (1876)
✔️1880 - 1889 Tennyson: Idylls of the King (1885)
✔️1890 - 1899 Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
✔️1900 - 1909 Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
✔️1910 - 1919 Wodehouse: Something Fresh (1915)
✔️1920 - 1929 Yumeno: The Spirit Drum (1924)
✔️1930 - 1939 Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)
✔️1940 - 1949 Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)


✔️Millennium Challenge
This year, I'm using this challenge to take a deep dive into Arthurian tales.
Completed: 10/10 - 6/26/24

✔️11th Century - Anselm of Canterbury: Three Philosophical Dialogues: On Truth/On Freedom of Choice/On the Fall of the Devil (1086)
✔️12th Century - Unknown, tr. Sayers: The Song of Roland (1115)
[Geoffrey of Monmouth: [book:The History of the Kings of Britain|129521] (1136)]
✔️13th Century - Anonymous: The Death of King Arthur (1237)
✔️14th Century - Unknown, tr. Merwin: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1350)
✔️15th Century - Malory: Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript (1485)
✔️16th Century - Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (1597)
✔️17th Century - Locke: Second Treatise of Government (1689)
✔️18th Century - Kant: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
✔️19th Century - Dostoevsky: A Gentle Creature and Other Stories (1876)
Bonus: ✔️Tennyson: Idylls of the King (1885)
✔️20th Century - White: The Once and Future King (1958)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #4 - Members Choice Challenge

Completed: 12/12 - 4/25/24

✔️1. 19th Century Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️2. 20th Century Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)
✔️3. 21st Century Richardson: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023)
✔️4. A book originally written in a language other than your own Unknown, tr. Sayers: The Song of Roland (1115)
✔️5. An Author never read before Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
✔️6. Diversity Classic Morrison: Recitatif (1983)
✔️7. Science Fiction/Fantasy Pratchett: Hogfather (1996)
✔️8. Action/Adventure Cervantes: Don Quixote (1605)
✔️9. Childrens/Young Adult White: The Once and Future King (1958)
✔️10. Nonfiction Memoir/Biography Montaigne: The Complete Essays (1580)
✔️11. Mystery/Thriller Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
✔️12. Horror or Humor Wodehouse: Summer Moonshine (1937)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #5 - Short Story Challenge
Like last year, I plan to make this a mix of short fiction, plays, and essays under 120 pages.

Completed: 27/24 - 3/28/24

Short Fiction
✔️1. Alcott: Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power (1866)
✔️2. Morrison: Recitatif (1983)

Dostoevsky: A Gentle Creature and Other Stories
✔️3. White Nights (1848)
✔️4. A Gentle Creature (1876)
✔️5. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)

✔️6. Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
✔️7. Yumeno: The Spirit Drum (1924)
✔️8. Tennyson: Enoch Arden (1864)

Melville: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
✔️9. Billy Budd, Sailor (1924)

Swift: A Modest Proposal & Other Stories (1729)
✔️10. "The Battle of the Books"
✔️11. "An Argument against Abolishing Christianity"
✔️12. "A Modest Proposal"
✔️13. "A True and Faithful Narrative"
✔️14. "A Meditation upon a Broomstick"

✔️15. Chekhov: The Beauties (1888)

Wodehouse: Very Good, Jeeves! (1930)
✔️16. "Jeeves and the Impending Doom"
✔️17. "The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy"
✔️18. "Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit"
✔️19. "Jeeves and the Song of Songs"
✔️20. "Episode of the Dog McIntosh"
✔️21. "The Spot of Art"
✔️22. "Jeeves and the Kid Clementina"
✔️23. "The Love that Purifies"
✔️24. "Jeeves and the Old School Chum"
✔️25. "Indian Summer of an Uncle"
✔️26. "The Ordeal of Young Tuppy"

✔️27. London: To Build a Fire (1902)

Plays
Aristophanes: Lysistrata and Other Plays (-423)
✔️1. The Acharnians
✔️2. The Clouds
✔️3. Lysistrata

✔️4. O'Casey: Juno And the Paycock (1924)
5.
6.
7.
8.


Essays
Plato: The Last Days Of Socrates: Phaedo (-401)
✔️1. Plato: Apology
✔️2. Plato: Euthyphro
✔️3. Plato: Crito
✔️4. Plato: Phaedo


Kant: Perpetual Peace: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1795)
✔️5. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
✔️6. Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch
✔️7. A Renewed Attempt to Answer the Question: Is the Human Race Continually Improving?
✔️8. Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History

[JP]

✔️Challenge #6 - Group Reads and/or Buddy Reads Challenge

Completed: 12/12 - 7/16/24

✔️1. Alcott: Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power (1866) - January Short Story
✔️2. Dostoevsky: "A Gentle Creature" (1876) from A Gentle Creature and Other Stories - February Short Story
✔️3. Cervantes: Don Quixote - February-March Revisit the Shelf
✔️4. Walpole: The Castle of Otranto - February Old School
✔️5. Chekhov: The Beauties (1888) - March Short Story
✔️6. Gaiman: Neverwhere (1996) - March New School
✔️7. Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - April Revisit the Shelf
✔️8. London: To Build a Fire (1902) - April Short Story
✔️9. Borges: The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) - May Short Story
✔️10. Gogol: The Overcoat (1842) - June Short Story
✔️11. Whitman: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition (1855) - May Old School Classics
✔️12. Borges: The Immortal (1947) - July Short Story

[JP]

✔️Challenge #7 - Expand Your Horizon With New Authors

Completed: 6/6 - 1/30/24

✔️1. Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
✔️2. Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
✔️3. Kant: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
✔️4. Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️5. Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)
✔️6. Sextus Empiricus: How to Keep an Open Mind: An Ancient Guide to Thinking Like a Skeptic (200)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #8 –Most Popular Goodreads Books Listed by Year

Completed: 5/5 - 5/29/24

10 Books of Interest for 1924
✔️1. Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor
2. Ferber: So Big
✔️3. O'Casey: Juno And the Paycock
✔️4. Wodehouse: Ukridge
✔️5. Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
6. Coward: The Vortex
7. Parker: Complete Stories
8. Zamyatin: We
9. Dunsany: The King of Elfland's Daughter
✔️10. Yumeno: The Spirit Drum

Books Read
✔️1. Yumeno: The Spirit Drum
✔️2. Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor
✔️3. O'Casey: Juno And the Paycock
✔️4. Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
✔️5. Wodehouse: Ukridge

[JP]

✔️Challenge #9 – Fiction/Non-Fiction

Completed: 5/5 Pairs - 6/26/24

Socrates
✔️Fiction - Aristophanes: The Clouds of Aristophanes (-423)
✔️Non-Fiction - Plato: Apology (-400)

Evolution
✔️Fiction - Lawrence/Lee: Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Courtroom Drama in which Two Men Wage the Legal War of the Century (1955)
✔️Non-Fiction - Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)

Wodehouse
✔️Fiction - Wodehouse: Summer Moonshine (1937)
✔️Non-Fiction - Wodehouse: Over Seventy (1956)

Death by Poisoning
✔️Fiction - Shakespeare: King Lear (1605)
✔️Non-Fiction - Plato: Phaedo (-400)

Classical Greece
✔️Fiction - Homer: The Odyssey (-701)
✔️Non-Fiction - Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #10 - The Half a Millennium Challenge with a Sour Lemon Twist of Difficult

Completed: 6/5 - 4/18/24

✔️11th Century - Anselm of Canterbury: Three Philosophical Dialogues: On Truth/On Freedom of Choice/On the Fall of the Devil (1086)
15th Century - (1480 - 1489) - Malory: Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript (1485)
✔️16th Century - (1580 - 1589) - Montaigne: The Complete Essays (1580)
✔️17th Century - (1680 - 1689) - Locke: Second Treatise of Government (1689)
✔️18th Century - (1780 - 1789) - Kant: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
✔️19th Century - (1880 - 1889) - Tennyson: Idylls of the King (1885)
✔️20th Century - (1980 - 1989) - Duras: The Lover (1984)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #11 - Old and New Linked Categories

Completed: 5/5 Pairs - 4/25/24

Sailors
✔️Old - Tennyson: Enoch Arden (1864)
✔️New - Melville: Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor (1924)

Richard Burton Roles
✔️Old - Shakespeare: Hamlet (1601)
✔️New - Williams: The Night of the Iguana (1961)

Death by Poisoning
✔️Old - Plato: Phaedo (-400)
New - Kesselring: Arsenic and Old Lace (1939)

Evolution
✔️Old - Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️New - Lawrence/Lee: Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Courtroom Drama in which Two Men Wage the Legal War of the Century (1955)

Arthurian Romance
✔️Old - Tennyson: Idylls of the King (1885)
✔️New - White: The Once and Future King (1958)

Classical Greece
✔️Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (-701)
✔️Non-Fiction - Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #12 - Series Books – Start, Continue, Complete

Completed: 3/3 - 4/29/24

I've finished 87 of the hundred books in the Collector's Wodehouse edition. Although I probably won't finish all thirteen books that I have left, I plan to complete the three books remaining in the Jeeves series.

✔️1. Wodehouse: Ring for JeevesRing for Jeeves (1953)
✔️2. Wodehouse: Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)
✔️3. Wodehouse: Very Good, Jeeves! (1930)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #13 - Travel the World One Continent at a Time

Completed: 6/6 - 4/17/24

✔️Africa - Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)
✔️Asia - Yumeno: The Spirit Drum (1924)
✔️Australia - Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
✔️Europe - Unknown, tr. Sayers: The Song of Roland (1115)
✔️North America - Morrison: Recitatif (1983)
✔️South America - Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #14 - Rereading - Some do. Some don't

Completed: 3/2 - 3/27/24

Possible Rereads
✔️1. Homer:The Odyssey (-701)
✔️2. Shakespeare: Hamlet (1601)
✔️3. Turgenev: Fathers and Sons (1862)
4. Brontë: Wuthering Heights (1847)
5. Zola: The Fortune of the Rougons (1871)

[JP]

✔️Challenge #15 - A-Z Title Challenge

Completed: 23/23 - 8/12/24

✔️A - Plato: Apology (-400)
✔️B - Alcott: Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power (1866)
✔️C - Aristophanes: The Clouds of Aristophanes (-423)
✔️D - Cervantes: Don Quixote (1605)
✔️E - Tennyson: Enoch Arden (1864)
✔️F - Turgenev, tr. Carson: Fathers and Sons (1862)
✔️G - Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)
✔️H - Pratchett: Hogfather (1996)
✔️I - Lawrence/Lee: Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Courtroom Drama in which Two Men Wage the Legal War of the Century (1955)
✔️J - O'Casey: Juno And the Paycock (1924)
✔️K - Shakespeare: King Lear (1605)
✔️L - Aristophanes: Lysistrata (-424)
✔️M - Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
✔️N - Williams: The Night of the Iguana (1961)
✔️O - Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️P - Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
*Q -
✔️R - Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (1597)
✔️S - Unknown, tr. Sayers: The Song of Roland (1115)
✔️T - Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (-701)
✔️U - Wodehouse: Ukridge (1924)
✔️V - Wodehouse: Very Good, Jeeves! (1930)
✔️W - LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
*X -
✔️*Y - Singer: Yentl the Yeshiva Boy (1983)
*Z -

[JP]

✔️Challenge #16 - A-Z Author Challenge

Completed: 23/23 - 8/4/24

✔️A - Alcott: Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power (1866)
✔️B - Ballard: Crash (1973)
✔️C - Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
✔️D - Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)
✔️E - Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876)
✔️F - Flaubert: Madame Bovary (1856)
✔️G - Gaiman: Neverwhere (1996)
✔️H - Hamilton: The Greek Way (1930)
✔️I - Ibsen: The Master Builder (1852)
✔️J - Jordan: The Eye of the World (1990)
✔️K - Kant: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
✔️L - Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
✔️M - Morrison: Recitatif (1983)
✔️N - Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)
✔️O - O'Casey: Juno And the Paycock (1924)
✔️P - Plato: The Last Days Of Socrates: Phaedo (-400)
*Q -
✔️R - Robinson: The Blind Geometer (1986)
✔️S - Sextus Empiricus: How to Keep an Open Mind: An Ancient Guide to Thinking Like a Skeptic (200)
✔️T - Tennyson: Enoch Arden (1864)
✔️U - Updike: The Twelve Terrors of Christmas (1994)
✔️V - Verne: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863)
✔️W - Wodehouse: Summer Moonshine (1937)
*X -
✔️*Y - Yumeno: The Spirit Drum (1924)
*Z -

[Terris]

Wow, JP! Great lists! I bet you had fun planning :)

The two that I'm interested to see what you think about are:
A Clockwork Orange AND Cry, the Beloved Country

Those two have really stuck with me -- but you have LOTS of other good ones on there too!

Enjoy your 2024 Buffet :)

[JP]

Thanks! I've watched the Kubrick film many times, and have had the book on my shelf for a while. It's time to read it!

[Terris]

JP wrote: "Thanks! I've watched the Kubrick film many times, and have had the book on my shelf for a while. It's time to read it!"

Absolutely! It's often quite different seeing the author's actual words.

[Wobbley]

Wow, some really ambitious choices here. Enjoy your reading!

[Ila]

Many interesting choices here. All the best!

[Lynn, New School Classics]

Nice to see that you are planning the buffet JP. I like to see what you are reading.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Looks like you will be spending some quality time in the 19th century. Enjoy your challenges.

[JP]

Woot! I just finished my last challenge today.

While I used to dread the millennium and half-a-millennium challenges, they're really fun to plan for. Fiction/nonfiction is also tough for me, as most of the nonfiction I usually read is recent.

I challenged myself this year by putting my decade challenge in the 1850s-60s. While there were lots of books of interest in this decade, I didn't really want to read 10 huge novels, so I mixed in some poetry and short stories.

Altogether, to finish all 18 challenges, I read 74 works totaling 18548 pages. Even though about 30 of these were shorter works (stories, novellas, essays, plays, ...), there were a few massive books, like Montaigne's Essays and Don Quixote, giving an average page count of 251.

I'm already planning for next year!

[Wobbley]

Oh my goodness, that's such a huge amount of reading. You're inspiring! Congratulations on finishing your challenges, and with so much of the year left!

[Rora]

Congrats on completing your challenge JP : )

[Sara, Old School Classics]

Very impressive, JP. Also looks like you enjoyed your reading.

[JP]

Thanks, all. It was fun.

[Lynn, New School Classics]

JP wrote: "Woot! I just finished my last challenge today.

While I used to dread the millennium and half-a-millennium challenges, they're really fun to plan for. Fiction/nonfiction is also tough for me, as m..."

I am impressed at how much you read, how quickly you read, and that you're already finished!!

[Terris]

Great job, JP!! You accomplished a lot, and read a lot of good books! Now you can start planning for next year ;)