So what are your New Year's reading resolutions? asks Wayne Gooderhan on The Guardian blog :
My Reading Resolutions are important to me for the simple reason that if I'm not reading something in which my full interest is engaged, the feeling of disaffection tends to encroach upon all other areas of my life, rendering me a shadow of my former self, left to wander listlessly from room to room, sighing heavily and gazing wanly out of windows. Well, metaphorically, at least.It's a question that I can't answer as well as Daphne does here. But I agree on one important point - your reading resolutions have to be about pleasure.
This year I have decided not to make serious reading plans at all, but simply to enjoy read serendipitously and for the fun of it.
If I read a book and find I am not engaged by it, I will drop it. Simple as that.
My appetite at the moment is for non-fiction, short stories (starting here!) and science-fiction. If my monkey brain will behave itself, I also plan to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge of Asian fiction (and Adrienne's list helps enormously). I also feel so out of touch with new poetry that I think I will go shopping for some of last year's award winners.
The novels I am most looking forward to, though, are as you might have guessed, Peter Carey's and Ian McEwan's forthcoming books.
Of course, the ambitious among you could sign up for a reading challenge. I like the sound of the Typically British Reading Challenge (but then I would, wouldn't I?). There's a Romance Reading Challenge, the intriguing Colourful Reading Challenge, a Short Story Reading Challenge (hmm, I'm tempted by this) as well as a whole lot more challenges listed here. Best of all, there is the Reading Resolutions Challenge where you can set your own goals for the year.
Why not make new friends across the world by signing up to one, or start your own challenge with a few friends you rope in here?
Anyway, what are your resolutions going to be?
(Sorry, I shamelessly nicked the pic from here.)
4 comments:
Reading resolution: a massive amount of short stories, picking up where I left off end of 2009 (got 1200 pages already on tap).
Writing resolution: a massive amount writing time on my novels. Looks like I'll be going for broke this year,literally once I leave Unimas on 1 April!
So far (in three days) I got a lot to look forward to in 2010! Got a short story coming out in Descant (literary journal in Canada, Spring issue), an article coming out in The Writer (May 2010), and I just got named as one of the “50 Expats You Should Know” in the January 2010 issue of Expatriate Lifestyle.
Don't know how that came about -- is this the Law of Attraction working? I do know several expats whose names should've been included, including yours Sharon. I was disappointed in not seeing it there!
Another expat writer that you've promoted, Ioannis Gatsiounis, also got named. Where would we be without you! A million thanks!
For those interested, here's the link:
http://www.expatriatelifestyle.com/latest-articles.html
Great! Hope this continues to be a very good year fro you, Robert. My new year started very well too, finding a new venue for my courses, so I am happy.
As for the expat thing - well i'm clearly below a lot of people's radar but having had my two minutes of sort of fame, I'd rather be unnoticed now.
Thanks. Glad to hear that. It's not a nice feeling to be in limbo. I'm going to be in that state fairly soon and I'm already feeling the repercussions, so I'm buckling down to get stuff done! I thought I was way off the radar here in Kuching. Yeah fame is double edged -- Tiger Woods. The recognition, I hope, can open up some doors...and push me a litle harder to achieve my writing goals. It's basically what we leave behind that matters...
hey Robert, bought a copy of this! nice to see you and Ioannis in it.
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