2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

I'm joining the group late in the year, but I wanted to get things rolling as practice for next year. I'm posting my progress backdated to January 1st in a couple of the yearly challenges that appeal to me and which I'd like to do again next year.

New to You Challenge

I went through the books I've read this year and made a list of all the authors I read that were new to me and discovered I've read 28 new authors this year. I think I can manage another several before the end of the year, so I will list my challenge goal as 35.

So far, I've read these new-to-me authors in 2012:

1. Rudolfo Anaya - Bless Me, Ultima *****
2. Jonathan Carroll - Bones of the Moon **
3. Michael Moorcock - Behold the Man ***
4. Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside ****
5. Barbara Comyns - The Vet's Daughter *****
6. Douglas Clegg - Isis ****
7. J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country ****
8. Fritz Leiber - Conjure Wife ***
9. Kristin Cashore - Graceling *****
10. Penelope Fitzgerald - The Bookshop **
11. Helene Hanff - 84, Charing Cross Road *****
12. Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen *****
13. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea ****
14. Muriel Barbery - The Elegance of the Hedgehog *****
15. Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon ****
16. Andreas Eschbach - The Carpet Makers ***
17. Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea ****
18. Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives ****
19. Ian McEwan - Amsterdam ***
20. K.J. Bishop - The Etched City ****
21. Shane Jones - Light Boxes ****
22. Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention Of Morel & Other Stories ****
23. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Notes from Underground ****
24. Dezső Kosztolányi - Skylark ****
25. Elizabeth Peters - Crocodile on the Sandbank ****
26. Christopher Morley - Parnassus on Wheels ****
27. Adam Roberts - Yellow Blue Tibia ***
28. Ransom Riggs - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children ****
29. Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind ****
30. Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet - ****
31. Koji Suzuki - Ring ****
32. Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera **** (my review)
33.  Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood **** 

Total new-to-me authors: 33/35

The Listopia Challenge

I'm going to work on two lists for now. There are sooo many I want to read through, but I'm going to force myself to only take on what I can possibly actually handle for this project. (I've been a Listopia junkie for a very long time now.) For my own convenience, I'm also noting which books are included on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

Best Gothic Books of All Time:
Goal: Finish the top 15
4. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier (1001)
9. The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
11. The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
12. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (1001)
14. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (1001)
15. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Translated Speculative Fiction:
Goal: Finish the top 25
1. Solaris - Stanislaw Lem (Poland, 1001)
3. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russia, 1001)
4. Blindness - Jose Saramago (Portugal)
5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami (Japan, 1001)
7. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (Japan, 1001)
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia, 1001)
12. Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
13. Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist (Sweden)
14. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami (Japan)
15. The Trial - Franz Kafka (Czech Republic, 1001)
18. Ring - Koji Suzuki (Japan)
19. Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina, 1001)
20. The Nutcracker - E.T.A. Hoffman (Germany)
25. Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe (Japan)