Celebrate the Author

The main link for the challenge could be found here ..

It is a twelve month challenge. January - December 2009.

• The challenge is designed to “celebrate” author birthdays.


• Choose one author for each month of the year.


• Read at least one book a month. 12 authors. 12 birthdays.


• If you like, you can read MORE than that.


• If you’re really obsessive, you might want to “celebrate” all 52 weeks of the year. (But even I am not THAT zealous!)


• The challenge is designed to ‘celebrate’ the special bond–the connection–that occurs between the author AND the reader as well as the connection between readers. It is very easy to “bond” with other readers over certain works, certain authors, etc.

To find out author birthdays, visit these helpful sites:
Author birthdays by date (pdf), author birthdays by name (pdf), kidsreads.com, teenreads.com, author birthday directory, etc.
Or conduct google searches of your own. (Hint: typing the authors name, a “+” and the word ‘birthday’, tends to work if you assume that wikipedia gets such things right.)

You can choose picture books, poetry books, early readers, chapter books, fiction for middle grades, fiction for teens, adult reads, nonfiction, whatever you want. You could choose 12 picture books. You can read books in or out of your comfort zone.

You might want to make a list and choose alternatives for each month…that way you can narrow it down as you go. And you do NOT have to choose a book until the very moment you’re ready to start reading. Just pick a handful of authors.

And here’s the secret. If you change your mind, just be sure to change your list to reflect that change. I don’t care how many times you change your list.

Why make a list at all? Good question. It’s not that I want you to stick to your list. I don’t care if you change it. I don’t need to see it in advance. But I mention lists because I think–and this could be me–that it is easier to visit those sites and jot down a few authors per month to give you ideas then it is to wait until the last minute and try to figure out which birthday is when and what counts etc. But if you want to be completely spontaneous then that’s fine with me!!

This year the round ups will be here on this wordpress site. You’ll be leaving links to your reviews. If you write reviews that is. Or you’ll be leaving comments to say what you read.

This is my list of authors to choose from for now..

January - Diana Gabaldon

February - Beloved by Toni Morrison

March - Tunnels Of Blood by Darren Shan

April - High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

May - Michael Palmer(Silent Treatment) / Jodi Picoult

June - Patricia Cornwell (Postmortem) / Dan Brown / Lawrence Block / VC Andrews / Steve Niles

July - Jeff Lindsay(Dexter) / Cormac McCarthy / Dean Koontz / Michael Connelly

August - Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

September - Speak No Evil by Allison Brennan

October - Nora Roberts / Jim Butcher / Anne Rice / Jackie Collins

November - Dead To The World By Charlaine Harris

December - Stephenie Meyer / Nicholas Sparks / Diana Palmer / Catherine Coulter

This is one on the uncompleted challenges of 2009 :P