I have often considered this blog as a book journal that documents my reading life from its conception in 2012. What I Think About When I’m Not Blogging is an attempt to close the gap between book blogging and journaling. This is a (semi)regular stream-of-conscious where I explore all the bookish thoughts I currently have got on my mind.
I have been thinking a lot about book challenges and book projects lately. We are coming to the end of the year and it is about that time to start planning for next year. For the past couple of years, I have committed myself to a 36-book challenge, which included all different genres. This is The Literary Exploration Challenge and while it will be running again next year, I am not sure if I want to be involved. Sure I will be hosting it at the Literary Exploration book club but that does not mean I have to do it again.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the challenge and I think it is a great way to experience genres of different varieties. I just want to commit to something different next year. I have only been reading books since 2009 and in that time I have discovered close to 700 books (680 books according to my spreadsheet). I remember back in 2012 I wrote a post about re-reading and how there are so many books to discover, so I didn’t want to waste too much time re-reading.
Since then, I’ve changed my mind; I know there are millions of books out there that I want to read. I know that I will never get to them all and that does stress me out. However I have changed a lot as a reader and a book blogger and I want to see what I think of books I have read in the past. There are favourites I want to experience again but there are also classics I might not have been ready for. I am curious to see what I will get out of books from my past.
This is not an excuse to write reviews on books I have missed but that is a bonus. Next year I would like to devote some more time to re-reading. I am not sure I would set an amount but ideally I want to re-read at least one book a month. The reason why I don’t want to set an amount or a reading challenge is I want to also spend some time with some reading projects. Sometimes a big book or a complicated book needs that extra time and attention and I would love to leave myself some time to explore them.
So there you have it; this is what I would like to achieve with my reading next year. Have you thought about a reading challenge for next year? Are you going to try something different? I like the idea of reading challenges but I think I will feel more free to read bigger books if I don’t set myself a reading goal or join any reading challenges.
I love the idea of challenges as well but I fail them and that bothers me. I think my main challenge will simply be to read more. I’m doing much better this year so there is hope but lets see how it goes next
Failing is always a strong possibility. I hate getting near the end of a year and spending so much time trying to finish a challenge; it’s not fun
When someone has experienced a transformation in their reading life as you have then rereading is a great opportunity to reflect on that transformation. You said you didn’t read much before, so your reading habit has only grown over the last couple of years and as you pointed out before, it developped quickly.
I’ve been reading pretty much my whole life, and as a kid, I would reread books 5 or more times. I didn’t feel the need for new stories, so I loved the old ones to pieces instead. Now I very seldom feel I need to reread a book except for those early favourites I like to come back to now and then, like The Secret Garden or The Lord of the Rings. I read your post on rereading back in the day, and it still reflects my own thoughts on the subject pretty well.
I love reading challenges (I’m always involved in several at a time) and I’m going to try out a couple of them in 2015. I want to commit to reading more fantasy books in the next years, because it used to be my favourite genre before I started studying literature. Apart from that diminishing my physical tbr has top priority. I guess all wookworms know the problem 🙂
I think studying changes your perspective on books a lot. I’m currently in the middle of my studies (part time) and I know I tried a lot of difficult books like Woolf’s To The Lighthouse before I learnt the skills I have. I think now is a good time to see the effects.