2021 Reading Challenge

I have, to this point in my life, avoided reading challenges.  Why is this?  Primarily, I'm a slow reader so I am almost inevitably bound to fail at them unless the goal is ridiculously low.

[Aside: ridiculous is a word I always spell wrong the first time.  Rediculous.  But then I know that looks rediculous so I change it to ridiculous.]

Secondarily, I am not great at intermediate-term goals.  Short term goals (today, this week) I can remember and more or less stay focused on.  Long-term goals I'm not actually sure I'm very good at, but the goal seems to have changed by the time I get there anyway, so no matter.  But those intermediate-term goals (6 months, a year) ... those are tough.  Not enough time has gone by for the goal posts to have moved too far, but too much time has gone by for me to remember why I really care.

Whew, I thought we were talking about books here.  That got heavy.

K identified a 2021 reading challenge which looks pretty interesting.  It's a book a month (which is a lot for me), but since it's just the two of us we can make up our own damn rules.  I added a couple of restrictions of my own, to help me get through my backlog of books:

1. It had to be a book I already owned;
2. It had to be a book I had not read yet;
3. I can go out of order (mostly since my March and October books are already on my nightstand); and
4. I can bend whatever other rules I want later.

So, here are the lucky winners:

January: a book by a person who is famous for something other than writing
At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, by Dwight Eisenhower

February: an author's debut novel
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

March: a book about an animal
Winter World, by Bernd Heinrich

April: a book about an area of science you know nothing about
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

May: a prizewinner
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown (among other things, the American Bookseller's Association's 2014 adult non-fiction Book of the Year)

June: a book in translation
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda (trans. W.S. Merwin)

July: a book that's been banned
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (banned numerous places, including Australia, India, and Ireland)

August: a retelling of a myth or fairy tale
The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

September: a classic mystery
Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories, by Arthur Conan Doyle

October: a graphic novel
The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui

November: a collection of letters
What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, ed. Ellyn Spragins

December: a book that's set in your hometown or state
The Slide, by Kyle Beachy