It would probably be a good idea to sign up for my own challenge! You can join us here: Back to School Reading Challenge and Wednesday Book Club. The idea is to read some books in August and September with the aim of learning something new. 

I want to commit to the Senior level (7 to 8 books). If I’m going to read that many books, I’ll need to count some books that I’ll be reading for other purposes as well.

Telling Memories Among Southern Women by Susan Tucker is one of the books that was recommended when The Help was so popular and controversial. Our Diversity Book Club (I most recently wrote about them here: Book Review: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander) will discuss Tucker’s book this month. I want to read it fairly quickly because we don’t have as many copies in our local library systems as some of our other books and we need to share them.

The Whole Fromage by Kathe Lison is about French cheese. This is the August book selection for the From Left to Write Book Club. It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in one of these, but since we went to France this spring and really loved the cheese, I couldn’t resist this book.

Julia Child Rules by Karen Karbo is the next in her Kick Ass Women Series. I read the one on Coco Chanel before our France trip (Book Review: The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo) and the one on Georgia O’Keeffe on the advice of Vassilly at 1330v (Book Review: How Georgia Became O’Keeffe). I’m very excited to have an e-ARC for Julia Child Rules which is coming out in October, especially since I loved Child’s autobiography (Book Review: My Life in France by Julia Child).

Our Read Along book will be something about education. Help us choose one of the five selections in this fun survey: Choose our Back to School Read-Along Book.

So, that’s four books. I’d like my other four books to fit one or two themes so that I feel like I’m digging a little deeper into a topic.

For one topic, I’m going to look at addiction and overeating. Satia of Satia’s Journal commented on Book Review: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander to say that the Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy by David Sheff might add another dimension to that issue. At the time, I was reading Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, Book Review: Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss (Part 3), which made a strong case for overeating as an addiction to foods that have been designed to be irresistible. Clean seems to be a natural next step to that book as well. Along with Clean, I’m going to read something completely different, a slim volume of philosophy called Gluttony by Francine Prose.

For my second topic, I’m going to investigate the modern process that a writer goes through to get a book published. I knew all this in the mid-1990s and the process had been much the same for decades. I ended up self-publishing then (before it was cool). Now, I want to consider commercial publication but I’m guessing that things have changed with the advent of the Web. I have two books to read on this topic: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry and How to Write a Book Proposal, 4th Edition, by Michael Larsen.

Eight books in eight weeks plus a few days. I better make a plan!

Won’t you join us? What books do you want to read to learn something new?