Monday, January 11, 2010

'In Death' Reading Challenge

Perpetual Challenge

Christine of The Happily Ever After is hosting the "In Death" Reading Challenge.  Here's what she says:

I've had an idea to set up this reading challenge for a while now, but recently decided to put it into action when I realized that the latest In Death novel by author J.D. Robb, Kindred In Death, was released the other day. Kindred In Death is the 35th(!) installment in the well loved and very successful In Death series by romance author Nora Roberts who writes this series under the J.D. Robb pen name. The In Death series is futuristic romantic suspense series that consistently delivers an interesting, quality murder mystery; plenty of danger, intrigue and action; futuristic forensic methodology; and most of all, a riveting look into the professional and personal life of NYPSD detective Eve Dallas and her enigmatic lover and eventual husband, Roarke, along with a colorful cast of secondary characters.

If I did my research correctly, there are now 35 In Death stories published--30 full length novels and 5 novellas, with a 6th novella expected later this month. Clearly, Ms. Robb is doing something right as she continues to write these stories and readers continue buying, reading, and loving her work.

At this point, I've only read the first four books in the series, and even then, that was almost two years ago that I did so. You'd think I should be able to read these stories at least as fast as Ms. Robb can write them, but it appears I fall even further behind with each new In Death release. So to help remedy my own state of remiss, perhaps help motivate other readers who are similarly way behind in this series or to inspire readers to even start this series in the first place, I've decided to create an In Death Reading Challenge. I think this challenge may even be fun for readers who are already caught up in their In Death reading as they either revisit past books or simply enjoy watching the rest of us fall for this books for the first time.

Keep in mind that many, many libraries have the In Death series on their shelves, so you may not need to buy them if you don't want to or can't afford to. In other words, there's no excuse not to try one just one In Death book. Come on! You know you want to!

CHALLENGE RULES:

1. Anyone can join at any time.

2. Read one 'In Death' book by J.D. Robb per month, starting in January 2010 until you're caught up in the series.

3. To join, make a post on your blog about the challenge where you will keep a running list of the books that you'll edit as you go along. (See my own entry post HERE as an example). Once you've made your entry post, come back to this post and enter the link to your entry post in Mr.Linky below.

4. If you don't have a blog and you'd like to join the challenge, you can come back here and leave a comment as you read the books, or at the monthly 'In Death' Challenge post that I'll make on or around the last day of each month.

5. Reviews are optional. I will make a post on or around the last day of each month with a Mr.Linky for you to link any reviews or commentary from your blog so that we can find each other's posts easily and engage in some dialogue about the books.

6. If you miss a month, don't stress over it. This is all for fun and camaraderie! To motivate everyone from stay on track, however, I plan on awarding prizes at regular intervals (maybe every four months) to a randomly selected participant who has stayed on schedule for that time period.