Count me in!

At my niece's invitation/inspiration, I've joined a reading challenge!

I've got a serious case of book-club envy. I belonged to one (even the word "belong" strikes envy into my lonely heart) for the final year that we lived in Colorado, so it's officially been four years that I've been a lonesome reader.

Which is not at all to say that I haven't been reading. Au contraire! But I've missed that sense of community, sharing with other people who get excited when they see a book-shaped package in the mailbox or under the tree.

Since I haven't been able to find a book club here, I'm going to join my niece and some of her friends in a reading challenge. And part of why I'm joining -- and why you might want to as well -- is because of the fun rules. We've decided to follow the categories from the Semi-charmed Kind of Life Winter 2012 Book Challenge.

You earn points by reading books in a specific category. To wit:

5 points: Read a book written by an author you have never read before.

5 points: Read a book you already have at home but haven’t gotten around to yet (from the library, from a bookstore, borrowed from a friend, on your e-reader, whatever).

10 points: Read a book written in the decade that you were born. 

10 points: Read a book that takes place in the state/province where you were born. If you were born outside the U.S. and Canada, read a book that takes place in the country you were born.

15 points: Read a book titled The _______'s Daughter or The _______'s Wife. (There are a ton, I promise!)

15 points:  Read a book that was originally written in a language other than English.

20 points: Read a book with a number in the title. This could be an actual digit or a number like “hundred” or “thousand.” No arbitrary numbers are allowed (e.g., several, few, many, couple).

20 points:  Read a book set during Christmas or another winter holiday. Submitted by Jessica of Sweet Green Tangerine via Twitter.

20 points: Read a book written by an author who shares your initials. Submitted by Sarah of The Roaring Twenties via Twitter.

25 points: Read a Pulitzer Prize winner or finalist for fiction.

25 points:  Re-read a book. (Personally, I’m going to re-read a book from my childhood that I don’t remember well, like Narnia or The Phantom Tollbooth, but you can re-read any book you’d like.)

30 points: Read three books from three different genres (e.g., romance, historical fiction, horror, biography, etc.). Remember, the books used for this category cannot count for any other category. 

Some of these categories really live up to the term "challenge!"

I've just started rereading Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy, so I think I'll count that as "re-read a book."

Looking forward to this!