Literary Movement Reading Challenge 2015 - Announcement

For next year, 2015, I have a very ambitious plan for reading challenge. Actually, I have had this idea earlier this year, and since then I have been doing some research, collecting titles, and brewing a perfect concept for this challenge. It will be called:

Literary Movement Reading Challenge

The aim is to study how our literary world has been evolving from Medieval era up to the present. There are so many lists/timelines out there, but I particularly use this literary periods timeline from online-literature dot com; firstly, it is simple and nicely presented, and secondly because the number of the movements fits more or less with the challenge purpose. If you see the info-graphic, there are thirteen movements. I will dedicate each month for each movement; but as the Beat Generation period is mostly overlapping the Bloomsbury's, I will merge them into one month.

The challenge concept would be like this:

1.  Reading (or rereading) at least one book each month according to the literary movements we are covering; here is the list:

                                   January        : Medieval

                                   February      : Renaissance

                                   March           : Enlightenment

                                   April             : Romanticism

                                   May              : Transcendentalism

                                   June             : Victorian

                                   July              : Realism

                                   August         : Naturalism

                                   September   : Existentialism

                                   October        : Modernism

                                   November    : The Beat Generation or The Bloomsbury Group

                                   December    : Post-Modernism

2.  To learn about each movement, you can click the link on the above list, it will direct you to pages I have created for each movement. I gathered the information from Wikipedia and/or online-literature, or other sources. If you want to have more details, you can click the sources links as well.

3.  Just as other movements, time period of literary movement might be overlapping one another. And one author could be influenced by more than one movement. For example, I put Dostoyevsky in Existentialism, but he might be regarded also as a Realist.

Q: So, in what month should I put him?

A:  Pick one of them, and read the book, after that you can analyze, in what movement Dostoyevsky shall be put.

Q: What if I have put him in the wrong movement/month, must I move the post to the right one?

A:  No need to do that, this challenge IS to learn about the movements. See point 4 next.

4.  Brief analysis - Inside your review, you are required to add brief (or long if you like) analysis about the book/author you have read, to answer these questions:

a.  Whether he/she fits the literary movement you have categorized him/her? Tell us your reason.

b.  If not, where he/she should be? Tell us your reason.

c.   If he/she doesn’t fit, who do you think would fit better? Again, the reason, please...
d.  [optional] What do you think about this literary movement? How did it correlate with our civilization?

This way we can learn more about the literary movements, from others’ reviews as well as ours.

5.  As the goal is to learn how literary (and the civilization) have been evolving, you are required to read according to the movements in the fixed order.

6.  A linky will be opened on the 15^th of each month for each movement post, and will be closed on the 15^th of the next month.

7.  The champions will be they who (would be announced after the challenge is closed):

a.  Read at least one book for each movement (at least 12 movements); the more the better.

b.  Submit their reviews according to the movements, in time.

8.  The challenge focus is not how many books we’d read, but whether we could manage to read for all the movements in the right order, in the right time. This need courage and discipline, so we deserve some incentive. How about a book that you have been dreaming on? At the end of the challenge (only if the participants are at least 5 excluding me), I will pick one winner randomly from the champions (see point 7), to win: 1 (one) copy of your dream book of $20 or less from The Book Depository. Yeah, unfortunately, only one winner would get the prize, but if you want, YOU can set your own prize you would reward yourself if you succeeded the challenge!

9.  So, are you sure you really want to do this? I don’t…. But, I am going to do it anyway, as “life—says the wise Forrest Gump—is like a box of chocolate, you’ll never know what you’ll get!” Maybe I would enjoy the challenge very much; or maybe I would be much enlightened after this; well…at least, I would be able to say, that… I have never failed on MY own challenges. How’s that??

10. If you’d like to join, just submit your blog/Goodreads (where you would post your reviews) link in the comment box below. I would update list of participants under this post.

For any feedback/question/discussion, just write in the comment box or mention @Fanda_A at Twitter, using hashtag: #LitMoveRC.

List of participants:

1. Ruth @ A Great Book Study
2. Readathon Junkie
3. KateKat @ Nattering & Nonsense
4. Jean @ Howling Frog Books
5. Saari @ Mangoes and Cherry Blossoms
6. Lois @ You, Me, and a Cup of Tea
7. Plethora @ Plethora of Books
8. o @ Behold the Stars
9. Dana Huff @ Much Madness is Divinest Sense
10. Melissa C @ Must Read Faster
11. Crafts4others @ Crafts4others
12. A @ My Reading Conversion
13. Ann R @ Ann's Classic Book Shelf
14. Keely @ We Walked Outside and Saw the Stars
15. Chinoiseries @ Always Cooking Up Something
16. Susanna @ A Misadventures of A Globetrotter in Training
17. Brewing Up Books
18. GothicVamperstein
19. Alberta @ Alberta Ross Reads
20. Maan K.
21. Miss Mortmain @ Miss Mortmain Writes
22. Jason @ Literature Frenzy

*If you have signed up but your name does not appear in the list, please let me know.*