451 Challenge

I just joined another challenge...

Welcome to the 451 Challenge! This challenge is based on 451 Fridays, a weekly feature hosted at As Usual, We Need More Bookshelves.

451 Fridays is based on an idea from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In his novel, a group of people (Bradbury calls them Book People) are trying to keep the ideas found in books alive. Instead of actually saving the books, the Book People each "become" a book - memorizing it, word for word, and passing it down to the next generation.

451 Fridays asks what books you feel passionate about. What book do you think is so important that you would be willing to take on the challenge of "becoming"?

We have compiled an amazing list of books this year in our weekly 451 Fridays posts, and it's time to start reading them! So, the 451 Challenge was born.

Here is how it will work: between January 1, 2010 and November 30, 2010, participants are challenged to read books on the 451 master list. There will be several levels of participation:

Spark - read 1-2 books from the master list
Ember - read 3-4 books from the master list
Flame - read 5-6 books from the master list
Blaze - read 7 or more books from the master list

Re-reading is acceptable, as are crossovers with other challenges. Audio, print, and e-books are all acceptable. Each month, participants will be encouraged to post their reviews on the challenge blog, and each review posted will be an entry into a grand prize drawing for a $25 gift card to the online bookseller of the winner's choice.

451 Master List

• 1984 - George Orwell
• A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
• A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
• A Confederacy of Dunces - John O'Toole
• A Solitary Blue - Cynthia Voigt
• A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
• Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
• Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
• Ashes in the Wind - Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
• Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
• Atonement - Ian McEwan
• Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
• Blake's Poetry & Designs - William Blake
• Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
• Calvin and Hobbes - Bill Watterson
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• Centennial - James Michener
• Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
• Collected Poems - Robert Frost
• Collected Poems - William Butler Yeats
• Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton
• Demonology - Rick Moody
• Devil in the White City - Erik Larsen
• Diaries of Anais Nin - Anais Nin
• Different Seasons - Stephen King
• Dr. Seuss's ABC - Dr. Seuss
• Dr. Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
• Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise - Ruth Reichel
• Geek Love - Katherine Dunne
• Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien
• Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling
• I Am America and So Can You! - Stephen Colbert
• I Am David - Ann Holm
• In This House of Brede - Rumer Godden
• Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
• Islandia - Austin Tappan Wright
• Izzy Willy Nilly - Cynthia Voigt
• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
• Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
• Julius Ceasar - William Shakespeare
• Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling
• Legends of Pensam - Mamang Dai
• Les Miserable - Victor Hugo
• Little Boy Lost - Marghanita Laski
• Little Women - Louise May Alcott
• Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
• Long Day's Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill
• Love You Forever - Robert Munsch
• Macbeth - William Shakespeare
• Mary Poppins - P.L. Travers
• Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
• Middlemarch - George Eliot
• My Invented Country - Isabel Allende
• Night - Elie Wiesel
• Night at the Circus - Angela Carter
• Nursery Rhymes - Mother Goose
• Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis
• Paco's Story - Larry Heinemann
• Paradise Lost - John Milton
• Parthian Stations - John Ash
• Peace Like a River - Leif Enger
• Perfume - Patrick Suskind
• Persuasion - Jane Austen
• Piercing the Darkness - Frank Peretti
• Pitch Dark - Renata Adler
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
• Quarantine - Jim Crace
• Rabbit is Rich - John Updike
• Rasero - Francisco Rebolledo
• River's End - Nora Roberts
• Roots - Alex Haley
• Sam Bangs and Moonshine - Evaline Ness
• Sea Glass - Anita Shreve
• Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 - Nathaniel Philbrick
• Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
• Silence - Shusaku Endo
• Small Gods - Terry Pratchett
• South Riding - Winifred Holtby
• St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell
• Summer of my German Soldier - Bette Green
• Ten Tales Tall and True - Alasdair Gray
• Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights
• The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith
• The Awakening - Kate Chopin
• The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Beginning and the End - Naguib Mahfouz
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - Barbara Robinson
• The Blindfold - Siri Hustvedt
• The Blue Castle - L.M. Montgomery
• The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
• The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
• The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Complete Works of Shakespeare - William Shakespeare
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
• The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court - Peter Irons
• The Double Helix - James D. Watson
• The Dragonridgers of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
• The Family from One End Street - Eve Garnett
• The Far Pavilions - M.M. Kaye
• The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
• The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
• The Giver - Lois Lowry
• The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein
• The Golems of Gotham - Thane Rosenbaum
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
• The Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
• The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
• The Hiding Place - Corrie ten Boom
• The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
• The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein
• The Hours - Michael Cunningham
• The Hours - Michael Cunningham
• The Iliad - Homer
• The Iliad - Homer
• The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
• The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
• The Joy of Cooking - Rombauer, Becker, and Becker
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
• The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
• The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
• The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
• The Magic of Ordinary Days - Ann Howard Creel
• The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
• The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
• The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
• The Ring and the Book - Robert Browning
• The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend
• The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
• The Sleep Book - Dr. Seuss
• The Stand - Stephen King
• The Story Girl - L.M. Montgomery
• The Story of a Mariage - Andrew Sean Greer
• The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
• The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffinegger
• The Way of Herbs - Michael Tierra
• The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan
• The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
• This Present Darkness - Frank Peretti
• Time and Again - Jack Finney
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
• Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
• Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
• We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
• We the Living - Ayn Rand
• We Were the Mulvaneys - Joyce Carol Oates
• Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
• Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
• Women in the Wall - Julia O'Faolian
• Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

I'm going to go all out and go for "Blaze". It would be nice to cross-over several of these challenges! :)