This reading challenge–the “Books To Read Challenge (personal)”–is my own attempt to whittle down the to-be-read pile and I have it done it for a couple of years now. In fact, some of these books have been on those previous lists.  They reside on my 2017poss shelf in Goodreads.

There are a total of 85 books which includes some 8 on pause. Of these I challenge myself to complete 2 from each of the 16 categories and a total of 35.

Maybe by upping this number quite a bit—aimed for 12 of 44 in 2016—I will do better at getting through some of these. Then again, I know that’s a laugh because other books will continue to show up and there are already more than 1150 others on the Goodreads to-be-read shelf.

Beer and Brewing

• Amber, Gold & Black – Cornell
• The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp …: From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes – Joshua Bernstein
• Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers (Brewing Elements) – John J. Palmer and Kaminski
• New Brewing Lager – Noonan
• The Brewer’s Companion – Mosher
• The Homebrewer’s Companion – Papazian
• Pubs and progressives : reinventing the public house in England, 1896-1960 – Gutzke

Central Oregon

• Hiking Oregon’s History – William L. Sullivan    
• The Deschutes River Railroad War – Speroff
• Oregon’s Dry Side – St. John

Erotica

• The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica – Caraway, ed.
• The Jade Door – Chaiko
• Burlesque and the Art of the Teese / Fetish and the Art of the Teese – Dita Von Teese, Bronwyn Garrity

History

• Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend – Karen Essex
• The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse – Brian Cowan
• Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage – Stephanie Coontz
• Hip Hop Family Tree – Piskor
• Hoptopia – Kopp

Librariana

• Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age – Alex Wright
• Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America – Aspray & Hayes, eds.
• Language and Representation  in Information Retrieval – Blair
• What is Documentation? – Briet [translation]

Language [Language and related]

• Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything – David Bellos
• Integrationist Notes and Papers 2014 – Roy Harris
• Basic Color Terms – Berlin & Kay
• The Unfolding of Language – Deutscher

Literature [(lit, poetry, essays, short stories) and literary theory]

• The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language – Mark Turner
• Imagination in Place: Essays – Wendell Berry
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino [translation]
• Seven Gothic Tales – Isak Dinesen
• Collected Fictions – Borges [translation]
• Scenes of Clerical Life – Eliot [which ed.?]
• Bouvard and Pecuchet – Flaubert [translation] [which ed.?]
• The Little Town Where Time Stood Still – Hrabal [translation] [which ed.?]
• The Things We Don’t Do – Neumann [translation, short stories] [2015 Open Letter ed.]

Philosophy [loosely defined]

• Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning – Bradd Shore
• The Sovereignty of Good – Iris Murdoch
• You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense – John T. Lysacker
• Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals – Mark Edmundson
• Conjectures & Confrontations – Fox
• Philosophy on Tap – Lawrence

Post 2016 Election

• Islam: A Short History – Armstrong
• Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric – Farnsworth
• Shaming the Devil – Jacobs
• Wickedness – Midgley
• Dead Feminists – O’Leary
• Purity and Danger – Douglas

Renewal

• The Wayward Mind: An Intimate History of the Unconscious – Guy Claxton
• Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict – Tsultrim Allione
• Soul: An Anthology – Cousineau
• Chi Walking – Dreyer
• Healing Trauma – Levine

Sex & Gender

• Straight: The Surprisingly Short History Of Heterosexuality – Hanne Blank
• Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation – Elissa Stein
• Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction – Cheever
• A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis – Friedman

Tech & Software

• Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas – Seymour Papert
• Just My Type: A Book About Fonts – Garfield
• Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation – Pollan
• Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power – Josef Pieper, Lothar Krauth [translation]

Wander

• The Practice of Everyday Life – de Certeau [translation, philosophy]
• Selected Stories – Walser [translation, short stories]
• The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs – Gooley
• The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness – Solnit, or one of her others
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder – Taleb

Assorted/Too Lazy to Classify

• How to Worry Less about Money – John Armstrong
• Myths, Dream and Mysteries – Eliade
• Taste – Stuckey [science]
• Home Comforts – Mendelson

Re-reads

• Eros the Bittersweet – Carson [renewal]
• Reverence – Woodruff [renewal]
• On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year – Roripaugh [poems]
• What Do We Know – Oliver [poems]
• Ambitious Brew – Ogle [beer]
• Wisdom, Information and Wonder – Midgley [philosophy]
• Middlemarch – Eliot [lit]
• Winter Hours – Oliver [poems]

On Pause

• Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority – Patrick Wilson [Philosophy]
• Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight – James Atlee [Assorted]
• Thinking Body, Dancing Mind: Taosports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life – Chungliang Al Huang & Jerry Lynch [Assorted]
• Take Control of Automating Your Mac – Joe Kissell [Tech & Software]
• The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest – Timothy Egan [DPL ebook]
• The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason – Mark Johnson [Philosophy, Renewal]
• Full Catastrophe Living – Kabat-Zinn
• The Breathing Book – Farhi

Clearly some of these books could go in other of these categories. There are also other categories I am tracking not in this list but all of those are covered by something here.

To recap, of a total of 85 books (which includes some 8 on pause) I challenge myself to complete 2 from each of the 16 categories and a total of 35.