I want reading prompts!

[oulfis]

This year was my first year since perhaps elementary school that I didn't have a school-mandated list of books to shape my reading habits. Obviously I couldn't live without rules, so I've been doing the Popsugar Reading Challenge! I've finished most of the 50 prompts and have really enjoyed figuring out creative ways to fulfill the prompts[1] (especially finding obscure 18thC titles for them![2])

However, I am not really as excited for the 2019 prompts. Several of them look really similar to this year's.[3] And in general, I think I might have gotten what I wanted out of the Popsugar experience. I didn't really spend time chatting in the forums, so it didn't matter to me that other people had the same list; all I really wanted was something to make a spreadsheet about, and something to search Eighteenth Century Collections Online for.

THEREFORE, I am thinking of making my own list, and seek wacky prompts from you, yes, you! What kinds of books should I try to find?

I particularly enjoy prompts like "a book with X word in the title": what are some words I should go on a scavenger hunt for this year?


[1] My proudest prompt-fill is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making for "A book that involves a bookstore or library," for which the library in question is a dragon.

[2] The best 18thC find is "The Effects of Tyranny & Disobedience!" by Lawrence Lovesense, for "A book by an author with the same first or last name as you." (Yes, it's true, my last name is Lovesense. Please don't doxx me.)

[3] "Nordic Noir" this year and "a book set in Scandinavia" next year; "a book set on a different planet" this year and "a book set in space" next year...

Comments

[ordinarybirds]

This isn't quite like the one you'd asked for, but consider: a book released on your birthday. Any year you want, just the month and day is the same.

[oulfis]

No, that's exactly the kind of thing that gets me poking around and coming across books I'd never find otherwise! It looks like it's kind of hard to find books by publication date (it's the kind of information that most book-metadata sites HAVE but won't let you SEARCH by, a phenomenon I find endlessly frustrating), but using Goodreads I could do a book published in February 2008 or later.

Or I could read something by an author with the same birthday as me, I found a list on Wikipedia with some promising leads... Thank you for the idea!

[breathedout]

• A book whose title includes your least favorite color.


• A book involving a non-Christian holiday


• A bouquet: Three books with flowers in their names (extra points for coordinating the flowers)


• A work published at one point as an incunabulum (obviously, you could read a later printing)


• A book that revolves around a bet or game


• A book set in on a continent where you have never been

[oulfis]

I like these! The incunabulum prompt especially has me seized with curiosity -- I THINK my university's special collections library would probably let me examine an original. The trouble is finding one printed in a language I can actually read... but skimming the titles, I THINK my Latin might actually be good enough to get the gist of some of these... De duobus amantibus Euryalo et Lucretia is only 28 leaves, I bet I could read that in one sitting! I'm tempted to find out if I can read an incunabulum, just to see!

But just in case they notice that I am not a medievalist, I think I will modify that prompt to "read something in a rare book room." A few weeks ago I was trying to figure out if 18thC pamphlets was bound & stitched or just folded, and I almost walked right over to special collections to ask to see some -- if they don't want to give me a real incunabulum I'm sure they'd let me look at stuff in my field.

Thank you for the prompts! Very inspirational, as I'd hoped!

[greywash]

Have you ever done a theme chain? I used to do this with playlists, but it's fun with books too: you want the part of one to match part of the next, but you can't reuse the matching part. So: Northanger Abbey -> The abbey Psalter : the book of Psalms used by the Trappist monks of Genesee Abbey -> Awful disclosures, by Maria Monk, of the Hotel Dieu nunnery of Montreal -> Mount Royal: There's Nothing Harder than Love -> The Royal Hunt of the Sun -> The Sun Also Rises.

THIS IS A DUMB EXAMPLE, but they're super fun (and as you have probably gathered, WorldCat search by title is your friend if you get stuck). You can do titles, like that example; or first-and-last lines, or author's names can be fun, too--just pick a rule and do, say, a four- to six-book chain.

[oulfis]

I've never heard of these, but this sounds like a REALLY fun way to come up with title keywords! I really enjoy just poking through book databases seeing what comes up for random queries (hence: this whole shebang; also, my entire academic career) and this is perfect for that. Thank you!

[dcbrierton]

- a book containing a recipe, but not a cookbook
- a book to which illustrations are integral
- a book to which typesetting/formatting is integral
- a book set in a single location
- a book taking place in one 24 hour period
- a book with your age in the title; or a set of books with the digits of your age in the title (so for me, a book with 33 in the title or two books, each with 3 in the title)
- a book with a word in the title matching a place you have lived