The Deal Me in Challenge 2020

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Cardsharps Caravaggio

Cardsharps (1594) Caravaggio
~ Wikiart

The Deal Me In Challenge 2020 is here!  I completely failed at this challenge last year but it doesn’t mean that I can’t try again. And how can I miss its 10th Anniversary? Jay at Bibliophilopolis is hosting this amazing 10th challenge, where you choose 52 short stories for the year, each linked to a playing card, and then draw the cards each week to see what you’ll read.

I’ve changed up the challenge; I make each suit a different category, like this:

Clubs: Short Stories
Spades: Essays
Diamonds: Poetry
Hearts: Classic Children’s Novels

I don’t even want to speak about last year’s challenge but normally I carry over what I didn’t finish to the next year and fill in the gaps. This year I’m going to choose a whole new slate. There may be some doubling up by my intention is to start afresh and hopefully accomplish more than I expect. Ha!

The End of the Game of Cards

The End of the Game of Cards (1865) Jean Louis Ernest Meissionier
~ Wikimedia Commons

So here are the chosen 52 for 2020!

Deal Me In Challenge 2020

 

Clubs – Short Stories

A – Taman – Mikhail Lermontov

2 – Bezhin Lea – Ivan Turgenev

3 – Love – Leo Tolstoy

4 – The Queen of Spades – Alexander Pushkin

5 – The Nose – Nikolai Gogol

6 – The Story of A Farm Girl – Guy Maupassant

7 – The Birds – Anton Chekhov

8 – The Hammer of God (Father Brown) – G.K. Chesterton

9 – The Diary of a Madman – Guy Maupassant

10 – Doubtful Happiness – Guy Maupassant

J – The Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel Crane – G.K. Chesterton

Q – The Honest Thief – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

K – The Lion – Evgeny Zamyatin

 

Spades – Essays

A – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – G.K. Chesterton

2 – The Tyranny of Things – Edward Sandford Martin

3 – A Note on Jane Austen – C.S. Lewis

4 – In Defence of Literacy – Wendell Berry

5 – The Tyranny of Bad Journalism – G.K. Chesterton

6 – The Hotel of a Total Stranger – E.B. White

7 – Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community – Wendell Berry

8 – Psycho-analysis and Literary Criticism – C.S. Lewis

9 – Where I Lived, and What I Lived For – Henry David Thoreau

10 – Reflections on Gandhi – George Orwell

J – The End of the World – G.K. Chesterton

Q – Self-Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson

K – On Going A Journey – William Hazlitt

 

Diamonds – Poetry

A – Phoenix and the Turtle – William Shakespeare

2 – From Milton [Jerusalem] – William Blake

3 – Ode to the West Wind – Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 – A Sea Dirge – Lewis Carroll

5 – To A Mouse – Robert Burns

6 – Gesang Der Geister Über Den Wassern – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

7 – Ode III – Fray Luis de León

8 – Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas

9 – It Is A Beauteous Evening – William Wordsworth

10 – Love Sonnet XIII – Pablo Neruda

J – The Mad Gardener’s Song – Lewis Carroll

Q – Resolution and Independence – William Wordsworth

K – Sonnet XXIII – Garcilaso de la Vega

 

Hearts – Children’s Stories

A – City of the Golden House – Madeleine Polland

2 – Carry On, Mr. Bowditch – Jean Lee Latham

3 – The Hidden Treasure of Glaston – Eleanor Jewett

4 – All Sails Set – Armstrong Sperry

5 – Beyond the Desert Gate – Mary Ray

6 – A Triumph for Flavius – Caroline Dale Snedecker

7 – The Story of the Treasure Seekers – E. Nesbit

8 – My Father’s Dragon – Ruth S. Gannett

9 – Shadow Hawk – Andre Norton

10 – The Spartan – Caroline Dale Snedecker

J – Three Greek Children – Alfred J. Church

Q – Red Sails to Capri – Ann Weil

K – The Bronze Bow – Elizabeth George Speare

Well, there you go …… I kept quite a few of them because they sounded interesting, lol!  This year just has to be better than last!

Here are my other Deal Me In Challenges for previous years:

If you want to join us, please sign up here!

 

Deal Me In Challenge Classical Carousel

37 thoughts on “The Deal Me in Challenge 2020”

  1. How interesting!!! Oh Cleo, all these challenges! They are very tempting! 🙈🙉😇📚 I am half tempted to try this one because just a couple of days ago I bought a huge hardback edition of classic American short stories that was on sale and thought I would read it this year. It sounds like this challenge would add an element of fun to reading it. 😁

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  4. The Bronze Bow is one of my favorite stories from childhood. I read it when I was 12 and I’ve reread it every decade or so. Speare really captured the time and the people and engaged me at that age and continues to do so. I hope you like it after all my gushing!

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  5. You REALLY love your Challenges, don’t you? This is the umpteenth one I’ve seen you join for ’20.

    You definitely thrive on them, that is for sure. Best of luck!

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    • Ha, ha! They must be blending all together for you. This is the second one for 2020 and I’ll probably do one more, a classics one. So you see, I’m being restrained for 2020. Or at least, that’s the plan …. 🙄

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      • Really, this is only the 2nd? I could have sworn it was the 4th or 5th! I guess they really ARE blending it.
        Actually, you know what it is? I’m blending you with all the other bloggers I follow who are ALSO doing challenges :-/

        And if this is only the 2nd, then yes, you are being really constrained. I applaud you 😀

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  6. I read The Bronze Bow several years ago and really enjoyed it! And also Chesterton’s The Hammer of God is Father Brown at his best (although there are a lot of great Father Brown stories).

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    • Thanks so much for the information, Dale. They’re certainly two authors who you can’t go wrong with. Glad to see you’re faithfully doing the challenge again this year!

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  7. Oy! You keep signing up for challenges I had been thinking and then had almost decided not to do. Too much temptation!

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    • Welcome, Karen! I’m keeping it to three challenges …. I think. One challenge is very restrained of you. I wonder which one you’ll choose …????

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  9. I tried this once, failed miserably, and realized, it’s just not the sort of challenge I can realistically keep up with, no matter how great an idea it is. (And I DO think it’s a great challenge!) Good luck and enjoy! (Also, maybe I should plan to read some children’s classics again this year…it’s been a while…)

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    • Oh yes, read some children’s classics! I do really miss your Children’s Literature Challenge. Maybe one year you’ll bring it back.

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      • Oddly, I’d kind of forgotten about that challenge until I read this post. Maybe if I can get my blogging act together for more than a few weeks at a time, I’ll come back to it someday. After all, I still have a really long reading list to pick from !

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