Friends! Book lovers! Bloggies! Come one, come all and join me in the 2009 Busy Bookworm Challenge!

What is the Busy Bookworm Challenge, you ask? That's an excellent question! I've just made it up! Here's the gist:

I am a very busy lady, as I'm sure many, if not most, of you are as well (unless you're a guy and then you're a very busy lad...obviously). Nevertheless, I LOVE to read as you may have gathered by now. I know many of you also love to read. I also know that many of you also love to blog/chat/gossip/bitch/moan/list/review/discuss about the books you have read, are reading, and have yet to read. I ALSO know that if you're anything like me, you love a good challenge if for no other reason than succeeding in that challenge.

Enter the 2009 Busy Bookworm Challenge! It goes like this: make a list of all the books you want to read before the end of the year. Go ahead. Make the list. I'll wait...

You back? Okay, so there is your goal. You are to read those books by the end of the year. Once you've finished one of the books on your list, write a blog post about it telling everyone that you've (a) read it, (b) how you liked it (or didn't as the case may be), and (c) if you'd recommend it. As you read others' blog posts/discussions about the books they've read and you want to read their book just add it to your ongoing list of books that you will use for the 2010 Busy Bookworm Challenge. After the new year, we'll start the new challenge. Easy peasy, right?

Hopefully, this will encourage and inspire all of us Busy Bookworms to spend more time reading wonderful stories and nourishing our inner nerd instead of watching t.v. or otherwise wasting our creative energies. Of course, your personal list can be edited to be longer or shorter depending on what you have going on in your life because, honestly, the whole point of the Challenge is to remind ourselves on a regular basis of the joy of picking up a great book and getting lost in another world if only for 10 minutes a day. It's a way to refresh and renew and have a little bit of "me time" before jumping back into the fray of jobs, kids, husbands, pets, and chores.

What do you get out of the Challenge, you ask? Besides nourishing your inner nerd...I don't know yet. But I'm going to try to think of some nice little trinket (a blog award? a small gift?) to present to those who succeed in reading all the books on their list by the end of the year. Honor system, people. And besides, I'll know if you don't review the books as you read them. Because I'm smart like that.

So, grab a glass of wine (Cabernet is my favorite, what's yours?) have a seat in a comfy spot and make your lists. Then grab your current to-read and get started! Happy reading!

So...who's in???

My lists:

Books Read in 2009 (to the best of my recollection)

1. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
2. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
3. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
4. Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
   
5. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
   
6. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
   
7. Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos
8. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
   

Challenge List (to be read by December 31, 2009)

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (currently reading)
   
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
4. Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
5. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
6. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
7. The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman
8. The Rose Labyrinth by Tatiana Hardie
9. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
10. The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
11. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
12. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb