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Challenge #2 - The Year You Were Born and 100 Years Earlier
Select 10 books from the year you were born. Select 10 more from 100 years earlier, for a total of 20 books. The challenge is to successfully read 10 of the 20 books selected. 5 from your birth year and 5 from 100 years earlier.

Examples: If you were born in 1960
1960
To Kill a Mockingbird
Green Eggs and Ham
Rabbit, Run
The Incredible Journey
A Man for All Seasons
Black Like Me
The Sot-Weed Factor
Island of the Blue Dolphins
No Longer at Ease
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

1860
The Mill on the Floss
First Love
The Trail of the Serpent
Castle Richmond
The Black City
Framley Parsonage
The Marble Faun
Conduct of Life: A Philosophical Reading
Tithonus
The Semi-Attached Couple and the Semi-Detached House

1960
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1860
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Challenge #3 Your Birth Year Top 10 Best Sellers
List the Top 10 Best Selling books from the Year you were born. This challenge is considered successful by reading 5 books from your list.

Top 10 Best Sellers for 1957
#1-By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens
2nd-Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
3rd-Compulsion by Meyer Levin
4th-Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman
5th-Blue Camellia by Frances Parkinson Keyes
6th-Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson
7th-The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
8th-On the Beach by Nevil Shute
9th-Below the Salt by Thomas B. Costain
10th-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Selected Five
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Note-A book that made the top 10 list the year you were born may not have been published that year. Example from the above list Peyton Place was published in 1956, (Release date: Dec 12, 1956) but was the second best seller in 1957.

If anyone is interested here is a link to all best sellers according to Publisher's Weekly for each year of the 20th century.

This Wikipedia list of 'years in literature' may also come in handy. It's obviously not a complete source, but a starting point.

oh sorry forgot link

Thank you Laurie and Johanne

I won't be committing to this now, but I can see myself coming back to it later in 2020 if I get bored once I run through my current challenge stash. We'll have to see.

Laurie wrote: "If anyone is interested here is a link to all best sellers according to Publisher's Weekly for each year of the 20th century.

"

Can we use only the bestsellers or also the critically acclaimed books from this list for the bestseller challenge?

Philina, challenge number two is more about the most popular books for the year you were born, while challenge number one would encompass all books for the same year. If you choose to use books other than the top 10 please make note of that fact so others are aware that some of your selections are not best sellers.

A little clarification on challenge #3. This is the only challenge the group has ever done where you don't have any control or say in your book selections. You had no say in what made the top 10 bestsellers list for the year you were born.

That is the reason only reading 5 of the 10 books is considered successful completion. This does allow some control, it is hard to believe someone would find all 10 irresistible.

Bob wrote: "it is hard to believe someone would find all 10 irresistible.."

This is where I would insert the laughing face emoji! I couldn't even get to 5....

Liesl wrote: "Bob wrote: "it is hard to believe someone would find all 10 irresistible.."

This is where I would insert the laughing face emoji! I couldn't even get to 5...."

Both birthday challenges are going to be difficult. I did the top 10 challenge (personal) and it took years. I wasn't ever in any hurry and picked up books as I found them. I was lucky and ended up liking most of them. I had 1-2 star, 2-3 star, 5-4 star, and 2-5 star reads. Seven of the ten I really liked, again, just lucky.

Several of my birth year books seem so unappealing. I won't be doing this challenge but I might try it over a few years as Bob did.

This is fun! I'm already looking forward to looking up my birth year's top 10

Lots of good children's books were published during my birth year! I think I'll add them to the list but not really count them. Or maybe give them a half point. Haha! This challenge intrigues me because it gives a sense of the culture into which one was born. What writers/movements/ideas were swirling around in the air I breathed in my earliest years? Fascinating.

Some times there aren't even 10 books written 100 years before you were born to find available. There just aren't that many mid-19th c. books from a particular year in libraries at all, or shops, or even on Project Gutenburg.
I suppose this is a challenge that will only work for one year. Perhaps later it will need to be say, 50 years prior or perhaps by age, where if you're say 50, then books from 1970 then 50 years prior so 1920.

/list/show/2458

Try this link for the 1860's
Any and all ideas are welcome for future challenge changes

That's what I mean though, that's for 1860-1869, when you choose just one of those years there's not very many left, 8 or 10 a year. Most will have been read already if they are very popular, and some will be lost to time, unable to find anywhere.

Also I live where it is almost impossible to ever find a book, especially a classic book, in the library. Austerity meant the closing of many libraries and the selling off of old stock, whilst new stock is extremely limited. There may not even be a new book added once a month.

I was not happy with my list from 1857 but was able to get enough to work the challenge. Adjustments will be needed or create something else next year

Bob wrote: "I was not happy with my list from 1857 but was able to get enough to work the challenge. Adjustments will be needed or create something else next year"

How do you locate the books? Are they free online? None of the older books will be available in my library. And that goes for the 1860s AND the 1960s. Most of the stock has been sold off due to austerity and hundreds of libraries closed in the country. Especially in the north where I live. IF they can find the book elsewhere in the country it costs £6.89 ($9.00 USD) to bring it to our branch and then you're under pressure to finish it before it is due. I can't afford that for a library book. Classics are extremely limited, almost non-existent as they say no one reads those now. It is very sad that the space that used to be filled to overflowing with books 20 years ago is now empty and barren, taken over by the council offices, Citizen's Advice Bureau, other such organisations. And this is the largest library in this part of the country. :(

Project Gutenberg is a library of free ebooks. Check them out here:
You can find many classics there.

Also you can read books free from Open Library:

There are many other places to get free ebooks also, or PDFs of books. Just do an internet search. The above two are ones that I have used successfully.

Finding 'many classics' does not find you many from a particular year.

I know these sites very well.

The choices are extremely limited, and this is not a challenge that can be repeated year to year.

Thanks though x

Jazzy wrote: "Finding 'many classics' does not find you many from a particular year.

I know these sites very well.

The choices are extremely limited, and this is not a challenge that can be repeated year to ye..."

What year are you seeking, I'm happy to try and find a few titles.

Bob wrote: "Jazzy wrote: "Finding 'many classics' does not find you many from a particular year.

I know these sites very well.

The choices are extremely limited, and this is not a challenge that can be repea..."

If you find the titles I would need the books as well. What have you for 1860s? I have decided to go for 1860 - 1869 a book a year, but I can't add tremendously long books (like Les miserables which I've read twice already, the second time being less than a year ago.) I am also looking to see which 1960-1969 books I can find. I have bought some of the ones on my list from ebay so far, like the Picturegoers.

I've got First Love from Turgenev so far.

Actually I can probably find them, but I'm just pointing out we can't do this multiple years in a row, as it would be impossible.

I think GR has Listopia lists for all decades:

/list/show/2...

/list/show/18

Christopher wrote: "I think GR has Listopia lists for all decades:

/list/show/2...

/list/show/18"

You're missing the point just because books were written DOES NOT MEAN you can find them! Also there are not that many to choose from in the mid 1800s, why would you want to read the same books over and over and over....

Perhaps some countries and cities have libraries that have a good choice of books. This is not the case where I live.

I know all about those goodreads lists. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ just doesn't work very well. You cannot find books by YEAR with those lists. Also they are the 'best' ones which means if you can find them that they've been read over and over and over... at least by me!

Surely the point of these challenges is not to read the same books multiple times.

And it's a given that you can't read the top 10 usa bestseller books more than one year in a challenge (if you could even find them!) or you'd be wasting valuable time. I really would have liked to find the top best sellers of other countries, but that is proving an impossibility since they don't seem to have kept lists unfortunately.

If someone can find the top selling european books, australian, asian, etc (anything but usa) lists please let me know! Thank you.

I'm a Mid-Century Modern, and new to this group, but have been doing reading challenges and reading classics for a lifetime :)

Bob wrote: "Both birthday challenges are going to be difficult. I did the top 10 challenge (personal) and it took years....."

YEARS? but this is a challenge for this year tut tut! I'm obsessive/compulsive and don't want to set myself up for failure -

But on the other hand i can't NOT choose to do ALL the challenges!
:)

I'm really enjoying this challenge! I think it can be adapted for future use by just picking 10 books from one year and then 10 books from 100 years earlier. That way you're not limited by your birth year and still get this super interesting span of time between books.

I know that I'm late for the party, but can I join this challenge?

Yes, you can start a challenge anytime you want.

Is this list acceptable for Challenge #3? I found myself wishing that there was a list of best-selling books by year, not just best-selling fiction and best-selling non-fiction. While I believe it is only the best sellers on Amazon, it likely gives a reasonably accurate representation as it is a major retailer. In other words, I feel it would be a representative sample. Otherwise, would the following list work?


I would list the six books from 1995 to 2000 as the best selling book for each year closest to the date I was born. I'm only reading half the amount that would typically be read as I joined halfway through the year and intend to do several challenges.

If neither of the two lists above is acceptable, should I choose the top books from the fiction category since I am more interested in fiction, and these usually sell better? Or an even amount of the two so that both have an even representation?

The challenge is to read five of the top ten best-selling books the year you were born. The exception is a book published late in the year prior to the year you were born and didn't become a best-seller until your birth year. Example from message one, Peyton Place was published in 1956 it wasn't a best-seller till 1957.

If you are planning to use other popular selling books sold during the same time frame as illustrated above, I guess one can consider that keeping to the spirit of the original challenge. Using books published other than the year just before and the year of your birth, wouldn't be keeping to the concept of the challenge.

Bob wrote: "The challenge is to read five of the top ten best-selling books the year you were born...If you are planning to use other popular selling books sold during the same time frame as illustrated above, I guess one can consider that keeping to the spirit of the original challenge."

I guess my two main concerns were that there is so much controversy over what are indeed the best sellers. It's not as cut and dry as this challenge seems to make it out to be. A lot of times, bestseller lists come from places like Publisher Weekly and the NYT, both of which are surrounded by significant amounts of controversy. The main reason for this being that they only represent certain publishers and aren't always the most truthful about which books are best sellers even within the publishing companies they represent. Difficulty also arises from the fact that most sources with Best Seller lists either don't have a nonfiction category at all, as is the case most years for the NYT or show the two lists separately, as is the case with Publisher Weekly. I mentioned this fact in my first post on this thread, which you replied to when I said that "I found myself wishing that there was a list of best-selling books by year, not just best-selling fiction and best-selling non-fiction". This was especially true for the year I was born as Angela's Ashes, a highly regarded nonfiction book to this day, was published the year before.

This is a nice list of both fiction and non-fiction given to us my Laurie in message #2,

If you have access to another list and prefer to use that list, it works just as well. My main thought when creating this challenge was to get an idea of what authors were writing about, that readers thought worthy enough to buy in large enough quantities to make a best selling list.

As for Angela's Ashes being published the year prior to your birth, if like the example of Peyton Place, it made a best selling list during the year you were born use it.

Can I still do this challenge?

Yes, feel free to set up a Personal challenge folder, you can do this challenge or any other that you may like.