A Personal Challenge
A word to the wise: this blog won't be about writing. (For that, may I recommend you my other blog,
Different Frontiers
? I hope you like it.) I want to talk about reading.
2013 wasn't a very good year to me, in many senses. I won't elaborate: let's just say I had too many on my plate and couldn't do many things I wanted (the only honorable exception being my six-week spree in Seattle as a member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop). Chief among them was reading: I'm - just like you - an avid reader. I can read whatever falls into my hands, from an instructions manual to a 20-volume (in physical form, not digital) encyclopaedia, out of boredom, or because there's nothing else to do, or because there's so much else to do but that's what I want to do. As simples as that.
Last year I found about the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I don't know if it existed before - I'm a Goodreads member since 2009, but after 2011 I pretty much stopped logging in - my mind was elsewhere. I came back last year, regretting that I was gone for so long. But the reading never stopped.
My personal annual reading record is around 150 books, a bit more than that. I used to make annual lists since 1984, first on paper, then on digital files. I lost most of this archives, alas. I vaguely recall I might have read around 170 books on a certain year, but I'm not sure. I'm sure I read 150, and I'll settle for that.
When I started making part of the Goodreads Reading Challenge in 2013, I proposed myself a modest but attainable goal: 50 books in a year.
I almost made it.
49 books read cover to cover.
I must have read twice this number, but never finished half of them, and I only put in my lists (as well as the Goodreads Reading Challenge only allows you to) the completed ones. I was humbled. But not frustrated. You see, I had done so much last year I was amazed I had time and the energy to finish 49 books.
This year, I don't know. 2014 is not starting in as fine a shape as I wanted to start, but I'll work with what I have at hand. And I have lots of books with me.
That's why this year I amped up my personal limit to 100 books. And I already started reading two: Transcendental, by James Gunn, and Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig.
Let's see how many books we can read, shall we?
2013 wasn't a very good year to me, in many senses. I won't elaborate: let's just say I had too many on my plate and couldn't do many things I wanted (the only honorable exception being my six-week spree in Seattle as a member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop). Chief among them was reading: I'm - just like you - an avid reader. I can read whatever falls into my hands, from an instructions manual to a 20-volume (in physical form, not digital) encyclopaedia, out of boredom, or because there's nothing else to do, or because there's so much else to do but that's what I want to do. As simples as that.
Last year I found about the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I don't know if it existed before - I'm a Goodreads member since 2009, but after 2011 I pretty much stopped logging in - my mind was elsewhere. I came back last year, regretting that I was gone for so long. But the reading never stopped.
My personal annual reading record is around 150 books, a bit more than that. I used to make annual lists since 1984, first on paper, then on digital files. I lost most of this archives, alas. I vaguely recall I might have read around 170 books on a certain year, but I'm not sure. I'm sure I read 150, and I'll settle for that.
When I started making part of the Goodreads Reading Challenge in 2013, I proposed myself a modest but attainable goal: 50 books in a year.
I almost made it.
49 books read cover to cover.
I must have read twice this number, but never finished half of them, and I only put in my lists (as well as the Goodreads Reading Challenge only allows you to) the completed ones. I was humbled. But not frustrated. You see, I had done so much last year I was amazed I had time and the energy to finish 49 books.
This year, I don't know. 2014 is not starting in as fine a shape as I wanted to start, but I'll work with what I have at hand. And I have lots of books with me.
That's why this year I amped up my personal limit to 100 books. And I already started reading two: Transcendental, by James Gunn, and Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig.
Let's see how many books we can read, shall we?
No comments have been added yet.
