Being but a humble “newbie”, I’ve read threads about the 50 book challenge. Intrigued, I did a search to entertain the infamous hamsters, but didn’t come up with anything.
So, how are those that participated in this challenge doing, now we end the year - and will there be one next year?
Total books in 2003: 73 completions, 6 that I quit part way through.
Most frequently appearing author: Shakespeare, 7 plays.
Best book: Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray. I just love this book. I love the characters, the plot, the narrative intrusions, the dialogue, the sneaky social commentary, and the ambiguous ending. Very clever. Very funny. Very thought-provoking.
Best non-fiction book: Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. This book is informative, accurate and funny. Finding political commentary that meets has anyone of those qualities is rare, but all three is almost unheard of.
Close runner up: The Battle for Christmas. This is a book about the history of Christmas in America. Fascinating stuff. Did you know that the Puritans banned Christmas on the grounds that it promoted “wassalry”?
Worst book: Well there’s The Fifth Sorceress. And as a close runner up, Left Behind
Will there be a challenge next year? Well, I intend to read fifty next year. I can’t speak for anyone else.
The reason you didn’t come up with much is that it’s mostly at Livejournal (if you don’t have a code, someone might offer you one if you ask in mpsims)
Even without a code you can probably read it http://www.livejournal.com/community/50bookchallenge/
I read 61 new books 
As far as I know we’ll be doing this in 2004 too. I don’t see why we wouldn’t.
elfkin, livejournal did away with invite codes a few weeks ago. Now anyone can create a new account.
Thanks for the link; I’ll be taking up the challenge in 2004. My lj user name is kristnicole.
** penny dreadful** Thanks for the info about the codes. One of my friends will probably join now that there are on codes required
I started the orignal thread about the 50 Book Challenge, but I have woefully fallen from the path and am nowhere even close to meeting my goal. It is, however, a goal I set for myself every year (and one of these years, I’m going to make it, dagnabbit!) so I’ll definitely be doing it again.
The LiveJournal community linked above really took off…I think that there are over 500 members. Whew! I’m gratified to see that so many people are still interested in reading at that pace, even if everyone didn’t quite get there.
My second resolution for this year, in addition to attempting to get to 50 books read, is to actually keep track…that’s one of my major failings. I’m not even sure where I wound up for 2003 because I stopped writing them down. So, here’s hoping I can stay on the straight and narrow in both aspects.
Like Jadis, I lost track. I did make 50 by somewhere in July (that long bus ride to work helped!), but I realized somewhere there that I had failed to write down at least one batch of library books, so I just gave up recording what I read.