2015 Literary Movement Challenge

This is one of the most difficult reading challenges that we’ve stumbled across for 2015, so, of course, we’ve decided to give it a try.  This could end very poorly, but here we go!  This challenge was created by Fanda at Fanda Classiclit (http://klasikfanda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/literary-movement-reading-challenge.html).

Here are the requirements for the challenge:

1. Reading (or rereading) at least one book each month according to the literary movements we are covering; here is the list:

January: Medieval

February: Renaissance

March: Enlightenment

April: Romanticism

May: Transcendentalism

June: Victorian

July: Realism

August: Naturalism

September: Existentialism

October: Modernism

November: The Beat Generation or the Bloomsbury Group

December: Post-Modernism

2. To learn about each movement, you can click the link on the above list, it will direct you to pages I have created for each movement. I gathered the information from Wikipedia and/or online-literature, or other sources. If you want to have more details, you can click the sources links as well.

3. Just as other movements, time period of literary movement might be overlapping one another. And one author could be influenced by more than one movement. For example, I put Dostoyevsky in Existentialism, but he might be regarded also as a Realist.
Q: So, in what month should I put him?
A: Pick one of them, and read the book, after that you can analyze, in what movement Dostoyevsky shall be put.
Q: What if I have put him in the wrong movement/month, must I move the post to the right one?
A: No need to do that, this challenge IS to learn about the movements. See point 4 next.

4. Brief analysis – Inside your review, you are required to add brief (or long if you like) analysis about the book/author you have read, to answer these questions:
a. Whether he/she fits the literary movement you have categorized him/her? Tell us your reason.
b. If not, where he/she should be? Tell us your reason.
c. If he/she doesn’t fit, who do you think would fit better? Again, the reason, please…
d. [optional] What do you think about this literary movement? How did it correlate with our civilization?
This way we can learn more about the literary movements, from others’ reviews as well as ours.

5. As the goal is to learn how literary (and the civilization) have been evolving, you are required to read according to the movements in the fixed order.

6. A linky will be opened on the 15th of each month for each movement post, and will be closed on the 15th of the next month.

7. The champions will be they who (would be announced after the challenge is closed):
a. Read at least one book for each movement (at least 12 movements); the more the better.
b. Submit their reviews according to the movements, in time.

8. The challenge focus is not how many books we’d read, but whether we could manage to read for all the movements in the right order, in the right time. This need courage and discipline, so we deserve some incentive. How about a book that you have been dreaming on? At the end of the challenge (only if the participants are at least 5 excluding me), I will pick one winner randomly from the champions (see point 7), to win: 1 (one) copy of your dream book of $20 or less from The Book Depository. Yeah, unfortunately, only one winner would get the prize, but if you want, YOU can set your own prize you would reward yourself if you succeeded the challenge!

9. So, are you sure you really want to do this? I don’t…. But, I am going to do it anyway, as “life—says the wise Forrest Gump—is like a box of chocolate, you’ll never know what you’ll get!” Maybe I would enjoy the challenge very much; or maybe I would be much enlightened after this; well…at least, I would be able to say, that… I have never failed on MY own challenges. How’s that??

10. If you’d like to join, just submit your blog/Goodreads (where you would post your reviews) link in the comment box below. I would update list of participants under this post.

For any feedback/question/discussion, just write in the comment box or mention @Fanda_A at Twitter, using hashtag: #LitMoveRC.