2015 Challenges

Deal Me In Short Story Challenge

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

I really enjoyed doing Deal Me In in 2014. I have an overage of anthologies that I creep through at a snail’s pace. Which is of course why I’m only reading from one anthology that I owned before October 2014… Deal Me In details:

Come up with a roster of fifty-two stories (you can use any source) and assign each one to a playing card in a standard deck of cards. It can be fun to use different suits for different types of stories, but that is optional. Each “week,” you draw a card at random from your deck and that is the story you will read.

I’ve assigned Hearts to the Russians, roughly following some of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida edited by Robert Chandler, but using my own sources. Clubs are McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. This anthology caught my eye when browsing Paperback Swap a couple months back; looks like a lot of fun. Diamonds go to Murder on the Ropes, a collection of boxing mysteries I’ve owned for ages. Once again, Spades are my “clean-up” suit. Lots more Thrilling Tales there. I’m also doing an extra set of stories. I wanted to read more female authors, but couldn’t decide where to assign them with all the other stories I want to read. So, on the full moon, I’ll be reading women in horror with an emphasis on older literature. I’m borrowing shamelessly from Paula Cappa’s wonderful blog for material.

The Gothic Challenge and Read-a-longs 2015

Update, 4/9: Books Under the Bed has been deleted. *shrug* I’m going to continue with the list below whenever I get to them. More thoughts can be found under the gothic tag. I also have a list on Riffle.

• Castle Otranto, Horace Walpole
• ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’, Elizabeth Gaskell
• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
• A Street Car Named Desire, Tennesse Williams
• Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon

• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• We Have Always Lived In the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Obscure Literary Monsters Challenge

There might be some crossover between Deal Me In (wild cards) and the Gothic Reading Challenge and my own challenge: Obscure Literary Monsters. This is based on the really fabulous article over at Electric Lit. No start or end date. If anyone wants to join me, head over to the dedicated OLM page and drop me a comment.