Birth Year Reading Challenge 2012

For the third year in a row Hotchpot Cafe is sponsoring the wonderful Birth Year Reading Challenge. This year, in addition to the regular option to read books from your own birth year, we are being offered the chance to select the birth year of someone special that we would like to honor. And the challenge is called, appropriately enough, Birth Year Reading Challenge 2012--Honors. I actually thought about this last year--how nice it would be to pick the year of your mom or dad or spouse or kid or bff and see what cool books were born the same year as they were. You know what they say...great minds think alike and J. G. has granted my wish. For full details on the challenge, click on the link above and join in!



I love this challenge (and I'm a Challenge Addict), so, of course I'm jumping in. With both feet--'cause, you see, I've got two people that I'd like to honor. And they both have some pretty good books that just happen to have been hanging out on my TBR list for a while. So, I'm in twice. [I really wanted to do honor to three people--Sorry, Dad, but the list of books for your year didn't do a whole lot for me.] My plan--to read four books from each year (total of eight books to meet my challenge). I'll probably read more ('cause I'm one of those overachievers that J. G. talks about over on the challenge site)...but my commitment is eight.

First, up 1947. This is the year of Gloria, my mom. Not only is my mom totally great and deserving of the honor just for being a wonderful mom--but she also gets the credit for introducing me to Nancy Drew and starting me on my long love affair with the written word in general and mysteries in particular. Mom gave me her set of 5-6 Nancy Drew books that had been a Christmas gift from her mom back in the '50s and I never looked back. I'm not sure that Mom realized that she was creating such a dedicated biblioholic when she did that.....

Books from 1947:

1. The Clue in the Old Album by Carolyn Keene (3/22/12)
2. Full Moon by P. G. Wodehouse (3/23/12)
3. New Graves at Great Norne by Henry Wade (5/31/12)
4. Swan Song by Edmund Crispin (4/3/12)
5. Dancing with Death by Joan Coggin (12/5/12)

My second honoree burst onto the scene in 1955. Richard is a dear friend who gets the credit for my most recent obsession--book blogging. Again, I'm not sure he knew what he was doing when he told me about his blog (animal/picture-oriented), but had I not checked out his blog and his daughter's (at his suggestion) and moved from there to discovering a whole world of book blogging I don't think I'd be out here in the blogosphere today.

Books from 1955
1. A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (3/6/12)
2. Compartment K by Helen Reilly (7/15/12)
3. So Many Steps to Death by Agatha Christie (5/25/12)
4. Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis (7/31/12)
5. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
6. Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
7. Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr
8. Sinners & Shrouds by Jonathan Latimer

Commitment Complete: 7/31/12.  But still reading!