The November Novella Challenge

This one is just too good to pass up. The November Novella Challenge, hosted by Bibliofreak, runs (oddly enough) just through the month of November, and sounds very do-able. There are four levels of participation, so you can read just one novella or as many as you can squeeze in. And there really aren't any other rules – I love challenges like that! But you can read all about the challenge and its non-rules over at the challenge announcement page.

I've already got a "bucket list" of novellas and short fiction that I'd like to read before I shuffle off this mortal coil (ah, the famous someday), so it should be easy to find likely titles. Right now, I'm just going to commit to one novella – but I'm hoping to do a little better than that. So I'm considering a few of these possibilities:

A Simple Heart, by Gustave Flaubert
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates
Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by H.P. Lovecraft
The Kreutzer Sonata, by Leo Tolstoy
The Ladies from St. Petersburg, by Nina Berbova
The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James
The Lifted Veil, by George Eliot
The Lover, by Marguerite Duras
The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett
Van Gogh's Room at Arles: Three Novellas, by Stanley Elkin

Hard to believe I've managed to avoid reading Animal Farm all these years, so I probably should start with that one. But I'm thinking of taking on the Henry James title first – I'm pretty sure I've already got a copy of that one. So now I guess I just need to get back to my reading – believe it or not, November's almost here.