2012 Reading Challenge Crunch Time

Friends, I don't know about you, but now that the weather is turning crisp and my daughter keeps telling me she wants a pumpkin costume for Hallowe'en, I'm suddenly lifting my head up as if I'd fallen asleep with my head on my desk at work, looking sleepily around me, and noticing that 2012 begins to grow old.  It's nearly November, for heaven's sake, and how far along have YOU gotten in all of your reading challenges?  Yes, it's a bewildering thought, isn't it?  For those 5 of you who have already finished and read 30 more books than you estimated on your Goodreads goal, Hermione would be proud.  For everyone else, you can cheer yourself up by checking out the following list of books that I'm supposed to finished between now and December 31st.  Even better, I have predictably left all the hardest ones until last.  Wish me luck, she said sardonically...

• The Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo
• The Life of St. Columba by St. Adamnan of Iona
• Ecclesiastical History of the English People by the Venerable Bede
• History of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours
• Beowulf
• History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
• Pastoral Care by Pope St. Gregory the Great
• The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
• Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory
• The Alexiad of Anna Comnena
• The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan

By Agatha Christie:

• The Sittaford Mystery
• The Golden Ball and Other Stories
• Destination Unknown
• Ordeal by Innocence

• Arabella by Georgette Heyer
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

By Debbie Macomber

• 311 Pelican Court
• 44 Cranberry Point
• 50 Harbor Street
• 6 Rainier Drive
• 74 Seaside Avenue
• 8 Sandpiper Way
• 92 Pacific Boulevard
• 1022 Evergreen Place
• 1105 Yakima Street
• 1225 Christmas Tree Lane

• King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by H.G. Wells
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Angel Time by Anne Rice
• The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

So, that's all.  In two months.  Right.  It'll be the coldest day Hell's ever seen if I manage to finish it all in that amount of time.  But, I am still busily reading away on the list, believe it or not, and I mean to get through as much of it as I can.  Also, I've already bumped a couple of the items onto 2013's My Re-Education Challenge (they are written in purple in the list above).  I'll get them next year, if not this.  Of course, it was just the old story, wasn't it?  "The best laid plans"...  When I signed on to read all of this, I wasn't expecting to lose basically an entire year of my life to a mystery illness which we still have yet to diagnose.  The search goes on.  But I think I actually made a respectable showing, considering the actual percentage of 2012 I spent in hospital and emergency rooms!  On to 2013.