New Year's Academic Reading Challenge 2015

The first challenge I organized went well.  Some day I'll write a blog post about it, but most of the people who participated did all their reporting on Facebook.  Now I've learned this reading challenge idea is a "thing." I found another one at Book Riot That I like. However, if I keep doing so many reading challenges to keep myself limber and not over-specialized, I may wind up not actually doing all that reading for work that I have to do. With that, here's my......

Winter-Spring Reading Challenge 2015

Challenge Categories	Author,  Title,  date published;  pp. #	Date read	Points
any book for teaching/research 200 pp.			5
book written by someone you saw give a lecture or present at a conference			10
book by a current colleague, coworker, or friend			10
Academic book someone else recommended to you			10
Book from a “Best of 2014” list			15
book about the history or culture of a city, town or neighborhood in the United States			15
academic book that’s considered a classic in your field (that you’ve never read) OR  Book that you always see cited but haven’t read.			15
Book with a color in the title			20
Journalistic or popular book about any place outside the United States			20
Special Issue of any academic journal			25
National Book Award Winner from before 1980			20
3 books related to science			35
Science fiction book
Non-fiction book about science written for general readers
Academic book about science or science fiction. (history or philosophy of science, lit crit of science fiction/utopia, cultural studies of science, or actual science for audience of scientists)
EXTRA CREDIT – Book in a genre you hate /or Double up in any category except the first “free” one.			10

Rules:

The academic books must be at least 175 pages long

Novels must be at least 200 pages long

Books of poetry or special issues of journals must be at least 100 pp. long

Any book on the list, except where specified by category, can be a novel

Books can only count for one category, but you can switch them from one category to the other before you’re done if you like.

Only one book can be a re-read

Audiobooks are fine as long as they are unabridged and the print edition at least 200 pages long.

Books must be started no earlier than midnight Jan 1and finished no later than May 31, midnight.