About
My aim is simple: to read 52 books between January 1 2008 and January 1 2009. It’s not an original one. The Internet is heaving with reading challenges and, in 2006, I took part in the 50 Book Challenge community on LiveJournal. The aim there is equally simple: to read 50 books, or whatever number happens to suit you, in the same period of time. This came after a difficult year (2005) in which I’d done virtually no reading at all and it was a great way of getting back into what had been one of my most absorbing preoccupations. The results are recorded here in the 2006 archive.
What I like (your experience may differ)
The books I tend to like are crime novels, romans policiers and thrillers. I also read a fair bit of non-fiction - especially history, travel books and stories about mountaineering, for some reason. I’m not big on romance or chick-lit at all. I do like fantasy and sci-fi but in relatively small doses. Horror’s not a big thing of mine but I am happy to give the occasional title a try - something by Stephen King, maybe, or Anne Rice. I have a morbid streak which draws me to true crime. My current favourite authors include (but are not limited to) Daphne du Maurier, Michael Dibdin, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Bill Bryson, Patrick O’Brian, Robert Harris, Jane Austen, Arthur Ransome, Philip Pullman, Sara Paretsky and PD James. I used to like JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books a lot - but realised that, shortly after the publication of book six, that my infatuation with that series had worn right off. One of my pet hates is people who are snobbish about genre fiction - while I realise there are a lot of bad genre novels out there, others are brilliant and deserve recognition for their quality.
Rules? Who said there were rules?
My rules are pretty flexible. If I take two weeks to read a book then read two in a week, it still counts. I’m happy to include re-reads and novellas. I’m also including graphic novels; I think that, at their best, when written by people like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, these rank as true literature. However, I am hesitant to include the kind of comics that take about 40 minutes to get through as I don’t want to devalue the challenge and make it too hard the year after. I find there’s no quicker way than to fail to meet a target than to rush at it, build up a huge lead and then run out of steam. I don’t intend to rack my reading target up for next year since there’s nothing like setting yourself an impossible target to encourage failure.
Who the hell am I?
There’s nothing special about my opinions. I just find that blogging as I go helps keep me focused on the task. I’m not an especially prolific reader: some people get through more than a hundred easy-to-read books; others go only for serious literature or philosophy and are happy to notch up a total of twenty. I’m setting a target for myself alone and I like the middle ground where there is a good mix of serious and recreational reading going on. I’m a huge fan of rummaging in second-hand shops. I live surrounded by books and don’t like to get rid of too many - I find that once you’ve read something it’s part of your mental furniture and you never know when you might want it again. However, I accept that sometimes it has to happen especially when a purchasing decision has been bad. I get cross when I buy bad thrillers, something that happens only too often. I am often seduced by three-for-two offers but try not to have all my reading decisions made for me in this way. I am a library member. I like writing, but strictly for fun - I harbour few illusions about how good a fiction writer I actually am. I also like puzzles and word games and will occasionally post these here.
Welcome to the blog. I hope you enjoy it.