***Edited to add: Heather had a great point: Joining this challenge will help you complete your 100 Books Challenge. And these books are quick reads. Heather is BRILLIANT!

This site is dedicated to the Novella Challenge, which is hosted by trish.

The reason behind the Novella Challenge:

I’m an avid reader (I don’t have time to be voracious, so avid will have to do) and in the beginning of 2008 I had two novellas that I would have put off if I hadn’t made myself read them. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read the books, they were just so small, and I gravitate towards the chunksters. :-)

So I said to myself one day, “Self, why don’t you host a challenge for novellas! Ew, wait…there’s already a short story challenge, but I think novellas and short stories are different. I better look that up.” Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about novellas:

A novella is a narrative work of prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. While there is some disagreement of what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000….Occasionally, longer works are referred to as novellas, with some academics positing 100,000 words as the novella‒novel threshold.

Sweet! I can host a challenge!

I’ve copied Wikipedia’s list of novellas:

And here’s some I know of:

  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
  • The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  • Stephen King’s The Green Mile (when it first came out it was 6 or 7 novellas)
  • The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
  • The Lost Boy by Thomas Wolfe
  • The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
  • Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
  • Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali

Before I continue, the other part about why I was so excited about hosting a novella challenge is because I thought it was something that anyone could participate in. Work full-time? No problem! Mom with kids? No problem! Going to school and working? No problem! Working full-time, working a second job, and planning a wedding? No problem! :-) The chunkster challenge is something that is quickly becoming near and dear to my heart. The bigger the book, the better, and what better than a challenge to keep me motivated? But moms with kids? Oy, committing to reading chunksters might not be something they can do, but committing to read a lil ol’ novella is totally doable. Says the working-full-time-working-a-second-job-planning-a-wedding girl.

So please! Go ahead and sign up! The rules are easy:

  1. Read six novellas between April 2008 and September 2008. I wanted to give everyone plenty of time to reserve/buy/mooch the books they want to read.
  2. The novella needs to be between 100 and 250 pages (because who has time to count the words in a book, Mr. Wikipedia?). Some leeway is definitely allowed (some of The Green Mile novellas by Stephen King are 96 pages, and I would hate to exclude those. I’m a lover not a hater.).
  3. Sign up! Leave a comment and I’ll add your name to the sidebar. There will be prizes (yet to be determined). I’m a competitive and loves-to-win-stuff kinda gal, so I couldn’t resist offering prizes. :-)
  4. Please review or let people know what you’ve read. You can do that on your own blog (linking back to here) or you can post a comment here or you can post the review here. Whatever.
  5. Need not have your own blog to play. Again, I’m a lover not a hater.

Coupla other things:

  • I don’t have a graphic for this challenge! :(
  • This is my first hosting of a challenge, so please be gentle. ;-)
  • Seriously, let us know what you’re reading. I believe there’s a ton of untapped novellas out there just waiting for discovery.

Umm…I think that’s it. I’m really nervous and really excited, all at the same time!