So I am joining another challenge. But I will say this in defense of my overweening listiness of spirit: this challenge doesn't start for several months, giving me plenty of time to worry away at the Chunkster challenge, my Year of Down Under, and my other varied New Year's resolutions. This time I am committing myself to the intriguing Non-Fiction Five Challenge started by Thoughts of Joy. Joy challenges us to read one nonfiction book a month from May to September, for a total of five, with a particular exhortation to vary the types of nonfiction you read and push the boundaries of genres you normally encounter.

My preliminary list (subject to change before the end of April) for the challenge is as follows:

1) "Send in the Idiots" by Kamran Nazeer
2) "1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare" by James Shapiro
3) "Commonwealth of Thieves" by Tom Keneally (overlap with my Year of Down Under)
4) "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
5) "This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff

Extra credit/Alternates:
* "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt
* "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
* "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser
* "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi
* "Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century" by Barbara Tuchman
* "Watching the English" by Kate Fox