My goal is to read a book per month, I think that's reasonable and achievable - IF I put the effort in. Much like anything really.
I have 31 books on my shelves that I have not yet read, and that's after culling about 50 more when we moved to Echuca. My wife and I are not minimalists, but we have experienced hoarding first-hand, and have moved internationally numerous times. Put those together, along with my age-old collection of books, sporting memorabilia, Lego, rocks, and various other crap, and it becomes rather tedious - not to mention damn expensive - to shift this stuff around all the time. Plus I had to consider which books I had been keeping that were just "trophy" books, or was I really going to potentially read them again? That's what prompted the mass cull. Frankly about half or more of those 31 unread tomes are destined for the donation bin at some stage too, but not until I have consumed them...
Anyway, so this is going to be a bit of a funny post. This bit is actually being written in late 2019, with a view to the new year in a few days (hey I am NOT a NY resolution kind of person, but sometimes it's valuable to measure things in terms of what can be done in the period of one year). So anything beyond this point will reference specific books, possibly with a footnote at the end of it all.
Yes, quite correct Dave. In fact this latest paragraph (plus the second half of the top one) is being written in late July. Having been more than halfway through this covid-infested year, I can safely say that I am well behind in my reading. A decent Clive Cussler pulp, an enjoyable-but-not-legendary Stephen King para-psychological thriller, finishing off a seedy report on Jakarta's underbelly, and a fairly forgettable Star Wars novel (not around the canon story arcs, one of the frequently enjoyable sidelines) make up four of the five books I have read thus far. The fifth is the one standout - Gweilo by Martin Booth, which is a hugely nostalgic memoir about a Hong Kong childhood, albeit one that occurred 40 years before mine. Amazingly enough though, that fellow lived much of his at number 80 Waterloo Road, whereas my years in HK were spent at number 90. What a coincidence! Anyway, I loved the book and have since lent it to a friend of mine who also spent a number of years living in the ex-British colony.
So this reading challenge is one I partake in, care of the Goodreads app. It sends out an email each year, asking its members to set themselves a goal in terms of number of books to get through in the coming 12 months. In previous years I had set ridiculous goals (in the 20's), and either fallen drastically short, or simply forgotten to record my progress at all. This year however, I am more keen on keeping up with it, as I find that the busyness of life makes reading easy to slip by the wayside, and given what an amazing form of exercise for the brain it is, I don't want to continue to let that happen.
Interestingly though, my next reading goals are not part of the 31. In fact they go waaaayyyy back, back to 1991, back to a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, and back to the second oldest book in my collection - the first being the complete works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, gifted to me by my father back sometime in the early 80's. I should read that one again sometime too, but for now my sights are set on two books - my first ever Steven Brust Vlad Taltos novel - Jhereg, and the first of his crazy trilogy called the Khaavren Romances, titled The Phoenix Guards. It was the former that I picked up in that dusty shop back in my first year of university, and has stayed with me since. An omnibus of his first three Taltos books, published, in my opinion, in an incorrect order! 1-3-2 in terms of time instead of 1-2-3. Anyway, I digress. The thing is, it has been so long since I read that omnibus that I can't remember it at all, but seeing as I now own everything Brust has ever written, and greedily consume anything new that comes into print, as well as stalking him on his blog, I think it would be a wonderful experience to go back to where it all began and start anew.
That's the first one. The second one, and frankly if I see this all the way through will take me past my goal of 12 books this year, is to reread the Khaavren trilogy. Or trilogy within a trilogy, because Book 3 is itself split into three more books, so it's a five book trilogy if that makes sense. Anyway, it was recently announced that a new book - The Baron of Magister Valley - is soon to be published, and this is a sequel to the original trilogy. Very exciting! But the thing is, much like with Taltos, it was so long ago that I read books 1 and 2, and I never finished the Book 3 trilogy, that I need to go back and start over. That's going to be quite a task, but I feel it is one I need to do.
So there you go, how's that for self-indulgent? I have no idea if I'll even come close to accomplishing these reading goals, but I hope I give it a fair crack. I know enjoying Brust's works all over again is going to be fun.
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