Challenges Galore

Yesterday I organized my books. I am continuing with it this morning, and I have a lot of posts saved in draft to entertain people with over the next few days... In actuality, I made up challenges for myself with all the themes that run through my books. This morning, though, I am posting a list for the Classics Challenge that booklogged is hosting. I am an unofficial participant, because you are supposed to read five classics during the months of January and February, but I am making mine a year long thing.

Anyways, just a reminder about the Advent Calendar Tour. Be sure and comment either on my blog or Marg's, and we will get everyone organized. I think it is fun, and that you might even be able to count your advent post as a G.I.F.T. post, depending on what you post about! Aim to comment before Sunday, but if we do not have enough participants and you decide to join in later, by all means.

Speaking of G.I.F.T., I thought that I would post a brief post about a story that I have heard since I was little. It is about the song, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas". I do not know if my story is necessarily the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but I have been told since I was little, so even if it is false it is a bit like a Christmas tradition, that this song was originally written in the town that I was born in. People would like say "so?" right around now. Well, if you saw where I came from, you would understand how cool it is that a Christmas carol that is popularly known was written in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. The reasoning that I tend to slightly believe that this is in fact true? The lines: "There's a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well,/The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow". There really is a Grand Hotel, they really do put up a very impressive tree, and there is a park right across the street called Frost Park. Is that the proof that I need? No. I believe in it because the story of the song is something that I have been hearing for years. Even if it is not true, it is a Christmas tradition. The lyrics to the song:

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
Toys in ev'ry store,
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
There's a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well,
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.

1. The Three Muskateers by Alexandre Dumas
2. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
4. Tess of the D'Uberviles by Thomas Hardy
5. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
9. Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
10.Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
11.The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum
12.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Bonus "Chunkster" Classics:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

I would also like to read some of my Lucy Maud Montgomery books:
1. Chronicles of Avonlea
2. A Tangled Wed
3. Emily's Quest
4. The Story Girl
5. Emily Climbs
6. Akin to Anne
7. Against the Odds
8. Among the Shadows
9. Jane of Lantern Hill

If I did that, then I can order the ones I do not own...

Then, I have all of Jane Austen's novels and have only read Pride and Prejudice. I would like to fix that... And I want to read C.S. Forester.

I am going to aim to read 5 in January and February, but if I do not, I hopefully will read some of the books off this list next year. I get classics at flea markets and yard sales, or at the UBS if there is one I really want to read. It is time to actually read some!