More than any other genre, I read Science Fiction. I’ve read so much science fiction and fantasy that it irritates me to go backwards in my reading timeline and populate my profile in sites like Goodreads because it takes so long.
Last year I read two Not Science Fiction books that utterly changed my concept of the world. One was Babylon by I. Finkel, and the other was Beloved by Toni Morrison. Sci-Fi and Fantasy still rock my world, but in ever more seemingly familiar ways. I’m really comfortable with the ideas of time travel, or living space ships and so forth. Not so comfortable with real ideas of really real history and cultures. *wince* I realized that maybe I’ve read too much SF/F and started wondering if perhaps I should expand my reading horizons a bit.
So I came up with the goofy system of The DarkCargo Explorer Challenge last year. We found ourselves reading –and enjoying! *gasp*!– other books that it never would have occurred to us to read. We had a lot of fun.
In the meantime, Darkcargo acquired two new authors. Amongst four authors and the Ye Olde Book Club, Darkcargo had so much to say on a daily basis that I moved this self-challenge to its own site, here.
I tried to come up with strange ways to make myself seek out books in other genres and even (OMYGOD!) Non-Fiction! Here are the Explorer parameters I’ve set for myself. I’ve managed to sneak in The Lies of Locke Lamora as part of the Explorer Challenge. Heh!
In clicking through and reading other book blogs via the Lies of Locke Lamora Read-A-Long, I’ve found lots of other reading challenges. Some of them pique my interest and I’ve linked to them, below. Reading through these inspired me to re-introduce the Explorer Challenge.
Each page, above, is dedicated to one of the ten doofy categories I invented. If you are so inclined, I’d appreciate any participation or book suggestions/recommendations in the comments.
Darkcargo's Explorer Challenge 