Ten 10-10-10 Challenge wrap-up

So, how'd I do?

Not too spectacularly, especially when you look at what Melissa and Kalen managed to pull off. I finished a total of 50 books for the challenge, and reached ten books in only two categories, history and contemporary YA.

I really slacked off after the first couple months - most of the books on these lists were there by May.

But the thing is, I didn't just read 50 books since January 1. I've recorded 91 books in LibraryThing since then, though that also doesn't represent my total reading time - as always, most of my reading time is spent rereading. I did push myself to read more new books than I otherwise would have, though, in those first few months.

Other musings:

• Despite the fact that a third of the mysteries I read for the challenge were by Agatha Christie, I'm not actually much of a fan - I'm willing to suspend disbelief to some extent, but her plots were too implausible even for me.
• I keep intending to read poetry more often than I do. I had plenty of options to choose from just at home, without even heading to the library or the bookstore, but I chose to read other stuff.
• From what I can tell, three of the 50 books I read for the challenge were written by people of color. That's pretty pathetic, especially for someone who tries to be aware of things like that.

Here's the summary:

1. Shakespeare-related (2/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro

2. Poetry (1/10)
Red Bird, Mary Oliver

3. Biography (3/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom
Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman, Judy Taylor

4. Contemporary young adult (10/10)
Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
The Clearing, Heather Davis
The Things a Brother Knows, Dana Reinhardt
The Six Rules of Maybe, Deb Caletti
Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin
Kissing Tennessee, Kathi Appelt
My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
Habibi, Naomi Shihab Nye
Only the Good Spy Young, Ally Carter

5. Children's non-fiction (7/10)
Honeybees: Letters From the Hive, Stephen Buchmann
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?, William Pogue
Bloody Scotland, Terry Deary
Math Doesn't Suck, Danica McKellar
The War to End All Wars, Russell Freedman
Here There Be Monsters: The Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid, H.P. Newquist

6. Science fiction (2/10)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Android Karenina, Leo Tolstoy and Ben Winters

7. History (10/10)
Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Melvin Konner
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
Playing the Enemy, John Carlin
Helluva Town, Richard Goldstein
Hellhound on his Trail, Hampton Sides
A Nation Rising, Kenneth C. Davis
Farmers Against the Crown, Keith Jones
The Atlantic, Simon Winchester
The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardins

8. Mystery (9/10)
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
The Mapping of Love and Death, Jacqueline Winspear
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters
The God of the Hive, Laurie R. King
Dark Road to Darjeeling, Deanna Raybourn
The Tale of Oat Cake Crag, Susan Wittig Albert
The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie

9. Written before 1900 (5/10)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Roughing It, Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy

10. Pulitzer winners (4/10)
Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Red Bird, Mary Oliver
War in a Time of Peace, David Halberstam