Here are the categories suggested thus far. Let's call this our working list and make adjustments as needed.

1) a book that changed the world

2) a book that changed your world

3) biography

4) wit lit

5) noir (American or otherwise)

6) buldungsroman

7) literary award recipient

8) dystopias

9) 1000 pages or more

10) 100 pages or less

11) particular authors (required numbers would vary)

12) choosing from an established list (100 best books of all time, or something along those lines)

Comments? (Feel free to suggest new categories.)

                                                                            Rose

what is this wit lit you speak of?

"Wit lit"--humor. I got this from a post by Tome Trader. I like the idea!

                                                       Rose

sevenspi,

Wit lit is classic literature that is humorous or funny or contains at least something to make you snicker, guffaw, or chuckle slightly at least once.

Mark Twain's work for example. Sometimes Dickens can be funny. 

I am hoping others chime in their ideas and we can change out at least 2 or 3 of those ideas. Biography, for example. I know I thought of it, but I bet it will be difficult to find a variety of classic biographies.

All I can think of is Elizabeth Gaskell's bio of her friend Charlotte Bronte written in 1857.

Maybe we could extend the biography category a bit by saying the biography should be about a classic author.

                                                                                              Rose

Maybe the biography category could include autobiographies.

It could include books like Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, slave narratives such as Douglass's or Equiano's, or even ones like Rousseau's Confessions.

Autobiographies are definitely biographies. That's a good suggestion, Caralen.

                                                                                    Rose

I missed last year, but have we done classic fantasy yet (i.e. Dunsany, Tolkien, George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, even Homer could count)?

I'm willing to insert classic fantasy into the list (instead of classics under 100 pages, perhaps).

Or we could have 13 choices, but readers choose 12.

                                                                               Rose

I like the categories. I also like the "classic fantasy" idea.

#2 ("a book that changed your world") is a re-read, correct?

Will there be a 13th category (as an alternative)?

13 categories! A baker's dozen. Nice.

A book that changed your life would definitely be a re-read. I just don't happen to have any books that are classics that changed my life. 

Classic fantasy? Hmmm

I'm going to suggest two other categories: a) short stories and b) letters.

                                                       Rose

What do you mean by noir?  By people of African descent?  People of color might be better, as I interpret it.  And, what is buldungsroman? 

Noir would be a mystery that particularly emphasizes cynical attitudes and sexual motivations, utilizes a stylized urban setting and blurs the line between hero and villain.  My favorite noir authors are Raymond Chandler (the Philip Marlowe mysteries) and Patricia Highsmith (The Ripley novels, Strangers on a Train).

Bildungsroman is a genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood like Candide, The Sorrows of Young Wether, David Copperfield, Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Black Boy, Of Human Bondage, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and lots of others.

Rose,

Can you give some examples for the letters category?

I'm guessing letters would be an epistolary novel; written primarily as letters from one character to another like Dangerous Liaisons, Dracula or The Screwtape Letters.

I like the idea of adding a short story &/or letters category, and also a classic sci/fi~fantasy category. The only one I'm iffy on is the book that changed your world. Personally, I'd like use the challenge to experience/read new things, not revisit books I've read before. That being said, I'll definitely do it if everyone else wants the category included.

I've been trying to find examples of books over 1,000 pages and I am not having much luck. Even books that I *thought* might be as long as 1,000 pages (ex: Don Quixote) seem to be coming in under 1,000.

Can anyone suggest some titles?

Janet

Actually, I was thinking about books of letters written by particular authors: the letters of Charlotte Bronte, for instance, or those of Wilkie Collins.

 As for the 1000+ category, maybe we could entitle it something like massive tomes, meaning it has to be around 700 pages or so.

                                                                                                                                 Rose

Here's some authors whose letters have been collected in books: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Charles & Mary Lamb, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rifka, Eudora Welty, Evelyn Waugh, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Isek Dinesen, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. There are, of course, many others.

                                                                                                                             Rose

Janet

Re: 1000 page book.

I'll be reading Gone with the Wind as I've heard it's not that melodramatic, bodice ripping, fainting spell pablum that I always thought it to be. Apparently it's serious literature.

There is always, of course, War and Peace

But are books that are a collections of an author's letters classic books in and of themselves?