Joining the Countdown Challenge

Prowling around on other blogs in the past few weeks, I discovered links to numerous book challenges. For those of you who haven't encountered this before, a book challenge is a series of rules requiring you to read a certain number of books (short stories, poems, whatever) with a particular theme in a specified time period. It's for your own amusement, but the structure it provides can give just enough motivation to get the reading done.

For example, I have decided that I will join the Countdown Challenge. The goal behind this challenge is to read 45 books by September 9, 2009. The trick of it is that you have to read 9 books published in 2009, 8 books from 2008, and so on. It's a fun way to challenge myself to read more, and since I have been favoring recent works anyway, I've decided to jump on it. In the coming weeks and months, I'll keep you updated on my progress and will probably create a grid to post on here as a record. It should be a good time!

Before finding out anything about book challenges, I had been planning to read a presidential biography for all 43 in chronological order. Lo and behold, I found the U.S. Presidents Reading Project. I plan to dedicate myself to that one, as well. Unfortunately, I've suggested presidential biographies to many people as gift ideas for Christmas, so I'll have to sit tight for a month to avoid duplicates. That's the only thing I dislike about getting books as gifts for holidays: I have to wait until the holiday to get them. Patience is a virtue I've never acquired.

So yes, I'm looking for new presidential biographies in 2009. I need at least 9 of them, and for the first 10-15 presidents, really. Any biographers out there taking requests?