Courtney posted on her reading blog a few days ago about What’s in a Name?, an interesting reading challenge that spans one year, and requires one to read at least six books in that span of time. Seeing as this merges well with my 50 book challenge practice, I’ve decided I’ll join.

Basically, one has to read six books whose title match a certain, predefined criteria (see the challenge post for more information), and post the list somewhere. And then one just has to read the six (or more, I suppose!) books between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008.

Sounds interesting. I took a bit from my to-read list, since that makes a lot of sense!

Last updated: 21 March 2008
Note: books read are emphasized!

My Challenge List

I listed a few possible books for each criteria, and some still don’t have a set book for them. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment! :)

1. A book with a color in its title.

   The Golden Bowl by Henry James
   Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
   Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt
   Red Azalea by Anchee Min

2. A book with an animal in its title.

   The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander
   And Condors Danced by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

3. A book with a first name in its title.

   Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles
   Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
   Katherine by Anya Seton
   Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

4. A book with a place in its title.

   The Knight of the Sacred Lake by Rosalind Miles
   Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
   Petersburg by Andrei Bely
   Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

5. A book with a weather event in its title.

   The Silent Storm by Sherri Garland

6. A book with a plant in its title.

   Juniper by Monica Furlong
   Frangipani by Celestine Hitiura Vaite

The second day of NanoWriMo has come and gone. I’m off to retire, but I wanted to write a bit before I did. I’m going along rather splendidly in terms of the word count goal. I stopped as I hit some faintly problematic stuff in memoir-writing: that is, research into the exact sequence of events and things. It’s still a little slow going.

NaNoWriMo 2007

words: 4,278 / 50,000 (9%)

One thing to note, however, was that I changed the point of view of my story in the middle of writing it. Since this is a memoir, I’ve been writing it in first-person perspective. Unfortunately, a few problems came up, namely:

• limited knowledge; or, inability to provide a bigger perspective of each scene, and
• it increasingly felt a little too close for comfort.

The second issue is due largely to the fact that I am writing about a certain time in my life: it’s currently a bit too “close” to me. Since the point of this exercise is also to do some post-processing of that situation, I decided a more objective, distant voice would better suit this scenario.

Hence, now I am writing in third-person omniscient, and I have a chunk of text greyed out in my text that needs to be converted over to that POV in time, as well as expanded. I kept it in since it’s really part of the story, I just need to do a rewrite.

The Wikipedia entry for Point of View actually has the exact same scenario that I am using (although it’s an advantage in my case):

The disadvantage of this mode is that it creates more distance between the reader and the story. A variation is where the narrator is a character in the story; a small amount of the story might be told in first person.

I kept the first part of the memoir in first-person; the introduction/prologue, if you will. I will probably expand this in time, but for now it will have to do — I don’t want to go in and edit it since that might bog me down.

So NaNoWriMo has officially started. Well, it’s technically the second day of NaNo for me, as it’s 12:05 AM at this very moment. I started a bit after midnight last night, as I couldn’t sleep, and wrote for an hour. Not bad for the first session:

NaNoWriMo 2007

words: 919 / 50,000 (2%)

Sadly, I haven’t written more today, mostly due to getting home late and other sundry duties, along with a reprise of the wallpapers I did for NaNo last year. I hadn’t redone them this year, as I didn’t know there were others who would like to use them again this year–but I was wrong! I feel quite fulfilled that others remembered my wallpaper and liked it. :3

Again, the wallpapers come in both large and small versions, and with black/white backgrounds:

Feel free to grab the wallpapers from wallpapers.indisguise.org :)

Now I’m off to do a bit more writing. This really isn’t too healthy, I should try to start writing earlier and sleep earlier…

It’s that time of the year again — it’s National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know what it is… where are you been, seriously?
It’s also that time of the month where I always set myself up to fail, apparently. I’ve joined almost every year, but after writing about a few […]

I found a Book Crossing book! There were lots more at The Cafe Cartel; Apparently it’s an official hotspot, as Singapore has its own Book Crossing thing going on, called BookCross@SG. Apparently, they are partnered with the main Book Crossing movement. It’s curious how they don’t link back to the main Book Crossing site somewhere […]

I finished Lloyd Alexander’s last work sometime last week. The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio was light, and in keeping with how I know Alexander’s work to be: seemingly simple, but something with great depth. I loved the characters he created, as usual — for all the short time I got to know them, by the time I ended the book I loved them all.

Why does it seem like a lot of my favorite YA authors seem to be leaving Earth this year? I just found out that Madeleine L’Engle died last September 6, at the age of 88. Of the books she wrote, the ones I read and loved were her Kairos books, principally the ones with the Murrys. (Of the O’Keefes, I’ve only been able to read An Acceptable Time).

Lenneth posted a wonderful interview with her: Allegorical Fantasy: Mortal Dealings with Cosmic Questions. I practically couldn’t tear my eyes away from the interview — I felt it had great meaning to me personally, both as a writer and a Catholic.

I’d like to highlight some lines that I felt were very meaningful for me:

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield’s evocative novel on the connection and bond between siblings, revolves around two sets of twins: Margaret Lea and her deceased twin Moira, and tragedy-born twins Emmeline and Adeline March. The story is two-fold, one story in another story: you have Margaret while she goes about her task to write the life story of reclusive, mysterious author Vida Winter… and then you have Vida Winter narrating her story; Ms. Winter, the successful writer who’s never told the truth about who she is and where she came from. She’s finally coming clean.

I found a book-related meme on personal habits and practices on taking care of books on my watchlist in Livejournal, and after a while of hemming and hawing I’ve decided to fill it out.

Other than children’s/young adult fare, I haven’t been able to make much of a dent in the books that I brought with me here to Singapore. Still adjusting to life here, still adjusting to six o’clock being too dark, and half-past seven in the evening still having a few rays of the dying sun. Still adjusting to going home right after work, to no after-office Starbucks, to the general feeling of being alone amidst a lot of people. It is not always lonely, but it is not always home.

I started Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale back home in the Philippines, and I’ve been intrigued from the start, from the moment I picked up the book, but I was getting ready for my move then, and had to tear myself away. I picked it up again now, and am still deciding between going to sleep now and staying up and reading through, because then I would get so thoroughly sucked into the story that it will be almost painful to put it down.