Lahochstetler's Dewey Decimal challenge

Wow- this looks like fun. I'm putting my lists together of what I've read, and I'll be posting them up here in sections.

The list-making is pretty fun, if a bit time-consuming. Posting in sections is a good idea, because otherwise the touchstones don't work very well. I wish I had posted mine in smaller sections.

Yeah, I noticed that as I started putting mine together. And, without further delay, here we go...

000:
028- For the Love of Books
070- Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly

100:
129- Spook by Mary Roach
133- The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol Karlsen
155- The Wild Boy of Aveyron by Harlan Lane
170- Ethics by Aristotle
179- Sloth by Wendy Wasserstein
193- The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzche

200:
200- Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People by Jon Butler
230- The Puritan Way of Death by David Stannard
248- When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd
269- Rebecca’s Revival by Jon Sensbach
270- The Confessions of St. Augustine by Saint Augustine of Hippo
274- Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester by Daniel Beaver
277- Inventing the Great Awakening by Frank Lambert
282- Mohawk Saint by Allan Greer
283- A Blessed Company by John K. Nelson
285- The Elizabethan Puritan Movement by Patrick Collinson
286- Disorderly Women by Susan Juster
289- Daughters of Light by Rebecca Larson
291- A Perfect Babel of Confusion by Randall Balmer

300:
301- Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century by John Kasson
302- The Culture of Fear- Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner
303- American Technological Sublime by David Nye
304- The Population History of England by Wrigley and Schofield
305- Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks
306- Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society by Susan Dwyer Amussen
309- The Puritan Family by Edmund Morgan
320- Civic Wars by Mary Ryan
321- The Republic by Plato
322- Early New England: A Covenanted Society by David Weir
323- Liberty before Liberalism by Quentin Skinner
325- Lords of All the World by Anthony Pagden
326- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
330- Creating the Commonwealth by Stephen Innes
331- Daughters of the Shtetl by Susan Glenn
333- Forest Dreams Forest Nightmares by Nancy Langston
335- Utopia by Thomas More
336- Principle and Interest by Herbert Sloan
338- Men, Women, and Work by Mary Blewett
345- The Common Peace by Cynthia Herrup
346- Law, Land, and Family by Eileen Spring
347- Neighbors and Strangers by Bruce Mann
349- Law and People in Colonial America by Peter Charles Hoffer
362- A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
363- Devices and Desires by Andrea Tone
364- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
370- Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas
378- The Emergence of the American University by Laurence Veysey
381- Merchants and Empire by Cathy Matson
394- The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

400:
420- Governing the Tongue by Jane Kamensky

500:
500- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
508- American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World by Susan Scott Parrish

600:
610- The Intern Blues by Robert Marion
611- Stiff by Mary Roach
612- Sperm Wars by Robin Baker
613- When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair by Geneen Roth
615- The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Worwood
616- Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
621- Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
636- The Animal Estate by Harriet Ritvo
641- Tea: The Essence of the Leaf
658- The Visible Hand by Alfred Chandler

700:
720- In This Dark House by Louise Kehoe
731- Graven Images by Alan Ludwig

800:
808- Write Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker
810- Beneath the American Renaissance by David Reynolds
811- The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
812- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
813- Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall
818- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
820- English Biography in the Seventeenth Century by Allan Pritchard
822- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
823- Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
824- Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes
847- Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
863- Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
891- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

900:
907- That Noble Dream by Peter Novick
914- Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
917- Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
920- Divided Lives by Elsa Walsh
923- The Puritan Dilemma by Edmund Morgan
929- Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
940- Hiroshima by John Hersey
941- Bonfires and Bells by David Cressy
942- Bad Blood by Lorna Sage
946- Driving over Lemons by Chris Stewart
970- Facing East from Indian Country by Daniel Richter
972- The Path between the Seas by David McCullough
973- American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier
974- Coming Over by David Cressy
975- American Slavery American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan
976- Daniel Boone by John Mack Faragher
977- Indians Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy by Daniel Usner
978- It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own by Richard White
979- Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck

Just finished for 500:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. This book is basically a social history of the history of science and technology. Bryson describes the history behind the major scientific discoveries from the Enlightenment to the present. He focuses on how scientists have come to understand significant natural processes, from volcanoes, to galaxies, to DNA. It's quite a long book (nearly 500 pages), but clearly written in Bryson's voice. As with Bryson's other books, he's interested in people and their experiences, so he brings much of the style and the humor of his travel books to bear on science. This book is best read as a chapter a day book- you won't want it to be the only book you have going, but it's most certainly funny and interesting.

It's interesting that two people in this group completed a Bill Bryson book for the challenge today!

I wonder what author has written books in the most categories?

>16 carlym:
I don't know if it's true, but I remember hearing somewhere that Isaac Asimov was the only writer to write a book in each of the ten categories.

Edit: And that's apparently not true at all. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

I don't know if I'd say not true *at all*.... I think all but the 100s is still pretty good!

I have no idea who's written in the most categories, but I do know that A Short History of Nearly Everything taught me that Bill Bryson is ridiculously versatile. The amount of science he had to learn to write that book was pretty astonishing.

070: Journalism, Publishing, Media
Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly

This book is actually a publication of O'Reilly's blog covering her move from London to the north of England. It's a funny, engaging memoir, and a very easy way to get a book in a category that's mostly reference books.

19>

The amount of science he would have had to learn to write that book, if all the science in the book were correct, would be moderately impressive.

However a lot of the science is flat wrong (he actually even vectors the old "glass flows" nonsense), and the book is much more usefully thought of as capsule biographies of scientists fleshed out with some half- or wrongly- remembered science tidbits. It's amusing enough, but don't trust everything in it.

302: Social Interaction
The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner

The basic point of this book is to show how the news media creates hysteria around things that are either not dangerous or so statistically unlikely to happen that they bear little thought. The most insidious of these media-created hysterias create and contribute to destructive prejudices, such as those against black men. Glassner argues that all of the attention paid to these pseudo-problems detracts from truly destructive social problems which, if solved, would truly benefit large numbers of people.

Overall, an interesting read, though I suspect that many people who are taking the time to read books about current issues (rather than watch Dateline 24-7) are probably already skeptical of much of the hysteria they see in the media. The book was written in 1999, so it's a bit dated now, but there's much that still resonates.

Ah, poor Dewey decimal challenge, I abandoned you for awhile while I was trying to get other challenges done at the end of the year, but I am now back, and have read:

179: Other Ethical Norms
Sloth by Wendy Wasserstein. This book comes from the New York Public Library's Annual Lecture Series, which in 2002-3 focused on the seven deadly sins. Each sin was tackled by a particular author and published in book form. Wasserstein's meditation on sloth takes the form of a mock self-help book, sellng sloth as the solution to life's problems. It's rather funny, and the last chapter, on uber-sloths, is a poignant (thugh still funny) social critique.

641: Food and Drink
Tea: Essence of the Leaf by Sara Slavin and Karl Petzke- a basic primer covering how tea is grown, processed, prepared, and drunk. While nothing in the book was really news to me, the photographs were absolutely beautiful.

Wow- haven't posted here in awhile.

I've recently read:

553: Economic Geology- Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay - a very readable history of how various peoples have valued jewels. I quite enjoyed it.

I didn't make as much headway in 2010 on this challenge as I would have liked.

373- Secondary education- The Aqua Net Diaries - a not very good memoir about a popular girl bored with high school.

663- Beverage Technology- Bottled and Sold- a very interesting book exploring peoples' obsession with bottled water and the effects thereof.

809- Literary History and Criticism- Why not Catch 21? - interesting look at how famous works of literature got their titles. Best read in small increments.

I'm going to actively work on making more headway with this challenge in 2011

Welcome back! Bottled and Sold does sound interesting; thanks for your excellent review. (And it would be a new category for me, too.)

Bottled and Sold does look like a good choice for one of those weird tech/manufacturing categories. Thanks for the recommendation.