Hi, I am back again and a Happy 2016 to everyone!!.. I am already halfway through Skloot's book on Henrietta Lacks and I am enjoying it thoroughly. I am hoping that I will be able to finish the book by today so that I can start on my Sandman's series by tomorrow. Now that I am done with the first two reading challenges on Book Riot's to-do list, I thought that I should probably decide what are the next two books that I am going to read for future tasks. So these are the next two challenges on Book Riot's list (which I will read once I am temporarily done with the Popsugar's Reading Challenge)

1) Read a collection of essays: I had initially thought of reading Susan Sontag's collection of essays called, Against Interpretation. However that book is quite hard to find and honestly too expensive!! 

Anyways, I then decided to console myself by reading Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. But somehow I did not feel very excited to read Didion's work and again I was back to where I started. 

But then almost immediately, I had a sudden inspiration to read Robert Darnton 's book The Great Cat Massacre which was published in 1984. Granted it was not the proper kind of  'collection of essays' that the list had in mind, but it still counted as a collection of essays nonetheless, albeit a little more scholarly and academic in its presentation. And also, Darnton's book and the eponymous essay are a classic and a must-read for every aspiring historian like me. Plus this book has been long overdue on my reading list. It's high time I get down to reading it!! 

All cat lovers, proceed with caution!!

2) Read a book out loud to someone: Honestly for me, this is one of dumber challenges on the list (though you are welcome to disagree!). First of all, where am I going to find someone to whom I would read aloud to? The best option is probably to bully one of my friends in being my captive audience. My friends better watch out because I am coming for them!! Also I thought it would be highly impractical to choose a big boring book for this task. So what seemed best to me was to choose a children's book that was appropriately short and relatively interesting. 

If you are planning to waste someone else's time, the least you can do is to make it entertaining. After a lot of of shortlisting (which also include The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster), 

Finally, I decided to focus on Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It is a lovely little picture book and thankfully has minimal dialogues. Whew!!

I am coming for you, my pretties!!!