Anne McCaffrey Reading Challenge 2011!

Hi all!

As I hinted a few weeks back, I will be hosting in 2011 the Anne McCaffrey Reading Challenge.

I am organising this challenge for readers to discover (and re-discover) the wonderful talent of Anne McCaffrey. She has written more than a 100 books and novellas in both science fiction and fantasy genres. She is the first woman to have won the Hugo Award (in 1968) and in 2006 she was inducted in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Anne McCaffrey is absolutely amazing and she has written fantastic novels on various subjects (Dragons? check. Unicorn girl? check. People with extrasensory powers? check. Dinosaurs? check. Pirates? check. Aliens? check. And plenty more!).


The Challenge:

The Challenge won't be anything too complicated: you set yourself a goal at the beginning of the year (may it be 2 or 25) and you achieve it whenever you want during 2011. You can obviously change your goal during the year, so if you set yourself 3 books and realise you can't survive another day without reading a fourth Anne McCaffrey book, just amend your initial goal! 
If you have no idea who Anne McCaffrey is and don't know where to start, you can trust my fantastic taste *beams* and follow my lead in my schedule below!


Update: I had a few emails about it and I confirm: you can set yourself a goal of one book and complete your challenge during the year, that is entirely fine!

Everyone can participate in the challenge, so if you don't have a blog you can publish your opinion of the book on websites like Goodreads or Amazon and send me the link!

As any challenge, this challenge will have prizes and cool events (says me - and I might be prejudiced in the matter) so stay tuned! 

I have focused on Anne McCaffrey Young Adult-y books but you can read her adult novels as part of the challenge!


MY PROGRAMME:
(all links to Goodreads)


I am aiming to read the following books - you can join me for a quarter or the entire year but it's definitely not mandatory!

First Quarter: Harper Hall Trilogy
The Harper Hall trilogy has been listed as one of the best young adult fantasy novels of all time (link here) and centres around harpers (traditional singers) and people bonding with their personal dragons in the fantasy planet of Pern. (Fantasy series)


Bonus read: Dragonharper (written with Todd McCaffrey)

~~

Second Quarter: The Tower and Hive series
The Tower and Hive series, written with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, is set in the Pegasus universe, a technologically advanced society in which telepathy, psychokynesis and other psychic Talents are used. It is a love story through space! (Science Fiction series)

April: The Rowan
May: Damia

Bonus Read: Lyon's Pride

~~

Third Quarter: The Dragonriders of Pern (the original trilogy)
Those three following books represent the original trilogy of the Dragonriders of Pern. If you wonder why I put this trilogy after the Harper Hall trilogy, it is simply because The White Dragon needs to be read after Dragonsong, Dragonsinger and Dragondrums. You may read the books in the order you prefer! (Fantasy series)

August: Dragonquest
September: The White Dragon


~~

Fourth Quarter: Your choice!
I still haven't decided which book to read for the fourth quarter (I may be reading Anne McCaffrey's stand alone novels like Restoree instead of a series) and you will have read at this point enough books to know what you will prefer! I'll post my choices in September if you still don't know what to choose!
You don't need to decide now either, I'd rather you decide in October if you prefer reading her science fiction novels or more of her Dragon books or if you would like to try her Acorna the Unicorn Girl series!

Visit Anne McCaffrey's wikipedia page for a complete bibliography (link here)!



To participate:

  • Post an article on your blog about the Challenge, linking to this article setting your goal and maybe the books you would like to read.
  • You may add my pretty logo to your blog
  • Send me a link (email here) or comment on this post giving me a link to your article, I will add the link to my Challenge page.
  • As you review the books, update your sign up post with links to your reviews. (If you are a non blogger, send me an email or comment on this post and I shall add you).
  • I have added a linky post for you to put the link of your reviews 
  • And most importantly enjoy the books!!


If you have any questions or doubts, don't hesitate to contact me, I will be happy to answer any question or/and help you with anything I can! I really hope you will enjoy discovering the worlds created by Anne McCaffrey!


You can visit Anne McCaffrey's blog (link here) for more info and news about her!

For my logo I used an artwork from The Pern Museum and Archive (link here), don't hesitate to take a look at their gorgeous website!




Participants:

Caroline @ Portrait of a Woman
Nayu @ Nayu's Reading Corner
Christina @ Reading Extensively
The Mole @ Our Book Reviews Online
Kaz @ Karen Mahoney - Urban Fantasy Writer
Hannah @ My Book Journey
Demitria @ Demitria Lunetta
Becky @ The Bookette
Katherine Roberts @ The Reclusive Muse
Book Dragon @ Book Dragon's Lair


A zillion thanks to Transworld Publishers for the help and support with the Challenge!

64 comments:

  1. Unicorn girl? That sounds like my kind of book. I'm definitely up for this one, since I'm sure it's an outrage I haven't read Anne McCaffrey already. I'll check back in with a link once I've decided which books I'm going for first. :D

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  2. Lauren - definitely read the unicorn girl! I'm reading the whole series for my special week (2nd week of Jan) so you can check out reviews for Acorna series there :)

    (Caro - will sort my post out tomorrow. And will try to put up which books I hope to read. Some were a bit tricky to get hold of so I might skip them).

    ReplyDelete
  3. So I am like totally confused because I must be in a crazy place today. Am I meant to read the books you suggest or can I find the ones that I would like to read and just make that my goal? As I am writing a sci-fi, I want to read in that genre. Let me know hun. Thanks.

    P.S. I love this challenge because most books will be accessible through public libraries and they need much love right now.

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  4. I was trying not to sign up for too many challenges for next year but I think I'll have to sign up for this one! I've never read anything by Anne McCaffrey so I really think I need to do something about that :o)

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  5. @Becky: You may choose the number of books and the titles you want for the challenge or follow my programme! It is a no pressure challenge!

    @Sarah: Oh yes!! You can sign up only for a quarter and most of her YA books are quite thin!

    ReplyDelete
  6. This challenge sounds like fun. I've heard so many good things about the Harper Hall Trilogy.

    Here is my signup post:

    http://reading-extensively.blogspot.com/2011/01/2011-anne-mccaffrey-reading-challenge.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. Having never read any McCaffery, but heard a lot about her books, I am going to take this challenge! My resolution can be found at http://ourbookreviewsonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/moles-reading-reolutions-for-2011.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've decided to join in too! Here's my post on it:

    http://hannahmariska.blogspot.com/2011/01/anne-mccaffrey-reading-challenge-2011.html

    I figure I'll start easy and see how I find them :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I am umming and ahhing about signing up. I read The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey years ago, and it bored me silly. Whenever I hear her name, I just groan inwardly over how hard it was and completely unentertaining to read that one small book. Yet, my Dad is a huge, huge fan, and has so many of her books. He's always going on at me to read the Pern novels, as he has them all and knows I love fantasy... so maybe I will sign up, just for him. But I don't know. We'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jo... try the Pern books! I agree "The Ship Who Sang" is a bit different, more SF. The Pern books are more like fantasy, even though they have a sound sf background to explain why there are dragons flying around.

    I'd like to do this, since Anne MacCaffrey was my no. 1 favourite author when I was a teenager, but only have one review slot a week on my author-blog... still, I'm going to review ACORNA soon (since I've just downloaded it on my Kindle), and CRYSTAL SINGER later as an all-time favourite of mine, so can I enter?

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  11. Hi Katherine!
    You can definitely enter the challenge, since you can set yourself the goal of two books for this year and complete the challenge! The aim is only to get people to discover and read Anne McCaffrey, may it be one or twenty books! But you can also post your reviews on Goodreads if you want to review more!

    And Jo, you can sign up for one book and see if it changes your mind on Anne McCaffrey!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thanks, Caroline... here's my first link

    http://reclusivemuse.blogspot.com/2011/01/anne-mccaffrey-reading-challenge.html

    including my review of THE CRYSTAL SINGER!

    ReplyDelete
  13. this is definitely for me i don't have a blog but i do have face book you can find me there linda sayer

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  14. can it be audio books as icant read properly and have had to ask my mum to do this for me

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  15. Hi Linda,
    You can listen to audiobooks for the Anne McCaffrey Challenge but facebook doesn't really work to post reviews. You can sign up to the website goodreads (it is free) and create your account and post reviews there (and send me the link), that is perfectly fine!

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  16. thanks will do that

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  17. I love Anne McCaffrey! I also recommend the Pern novels over Ship/Brawn but I've read almost all of her published works.

    My goal is to re-read the Harper Hall trilogy this year but I listed some of the others I'd like to get to.

    My post is here

    Gina at Book Dragon's Lair

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