Oooooo...a CHALLENGE!

I was going to wait at bit before joining any challenges, but this one caught my eye, so I just signed up. Whether or not I'll stick with it remains to be seen...








In this challenge, hosted by Find Your Next Book Here, I will attempt to go outside of my comfort zone in reading and writing. There are ten challenges, and I've selected my books for some of the challenges already.

1. Random Book Selection. Go to the library. Position yourself in a section such as Fiction, Non-Fiction, Mystery, Children (whatever section you want). Then write down random directions for yourself (for example, third row, second shelf, fifth book from right). Follow your directions and see what book you find. Check that book out of the library, read it and then write about it. (If you prefer, you can do the same at a bookstore and buy the book!)

I put myself in the fiction section and ended up with the book Puzzled to Death by Parnell Hall. It looks like a mystery-type book, so I'm super excited to read it.
2. Random Word. Go to this random word generator and generate a random word. Find a book with this word in the title. Read the book and write about it.

3. Birth Year Book. Find a book that was published or copyrighted in the year of your birth. Read the book and write about it.

4. Judge A Book By Its Cover. Pick out a book based SOLELY on the cover. First, write about what you expect the book to be about based on the cover art. Then read the book and write about how the book was different from and/or similar to what the cover art led you to expect.

The book I picked up was Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti. Here's the cover, in case you're interested.

1. Phoning An Author. Pick a random last name out of the phone book. Find an author with the same last name and read a book by them. Write about it. (I'm flexible ... if the first random name you pick is Xprxyrsss, you can pick again!)
   
2. Public Spying. Find someone who is reading a book in public. Find out what book they are reading and then read the same book. Write about it.
3. Random Bestseller. Go to Random.org and, using the True Random Number Generator, enter the number 1950 for the min. and 2008 for the max. and then hit generate. Then go to this site and find the year that Random.org generated for you and click on it. Then find the bestseller list for the week that would contain your birthday for that year. Choose one of the bestsellers from the list that comes up, read it and write about it.
4. Lit Riff (inspired by the book Lit Riffs by Matthew Miele.) Choose a song and then write a brief story that is inspired by or further explains the lyrics of the song.
5. Poetic Review. Write a book review in three different forms of verse: haiku, limerick and free verse. (You can pick any book you want to write about.)
6. Movie/Book Comparison. Find a book that you haven't read that has a movie based on it that you haven't seen. Read the book and watch the movie within a few days of each other. Write about your reactions to both the book and the movie and compare the two.

The numbering got a bit screwed up...but oh well. I think this will be a lot of fun!