Read-a-thon 2011

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of reading. I was a born reader. Really! But there are so many books to read and so little time to read them until now. After I tied the nuptial knot with hubby dearest and decided to bid farewell to the corporate world in order to pursue more creative endeavours, reading became a top priority once again. I stumbled upon a reading challenge last year when Girl Detective posted the 15/15/15 challenge on her blog. It was fun to read in a group (sort of) and by completing a book a day, my reading speed improved tremendously and I devoured all sorts of books last year.

The most difficult part of my New Year resolutions was the book list for 2011. I came across many more challenges, each trying to outdo the other. There is the author challenge in which you read all the works of one author in a certain time period. Now if the author were Maugham, Alistair MacLean or Dostoyevsky, I would jump on board without a second thought. But all works of, for example, the Bronte sisters, Sheakespeare or Virginia Woolf can have disastrous effects. Bronte put me into such abject depression when I read ‘Jane Eyre’ (way back) that I have not picked up any of her works since. Reading Sheakespeare is a major task because I need to understand hidden nuances of the play thorough ‘Sheakespeare made easy’ books. As far as Woolf is concerned, hubby dear fears too much of her might turn me into a feminist!

My Booklist 2011 (so far)

There is the chunkster books challenge which provides one with the much needed courage to pick up those big, never ending books from the shelf and finish them, in a certain time period (and not a lifetime!). I have just one issue with this challenge; chunky books can’t fit into my hand bag or gym bag and one never knows when one might need to read. Challenge aborted.

The TBR challenge, to me, appeared extremely practical. We book lovers keep hoarding books which results in our reading books from the ‘new’ pile while the ‘old’ pile gets shifted at the back of the shelf. But am I inspired enough to follow it? Well, not really. Sometimes that new book is just too tempting!

So, how will I get my reading done this year? Well, I made my own list. And at present, I am trying to tackle it. It includes books from my TBR pile but I keep making additions whenever I end up buying a new book which is, I’m afraid, quite often! I tried to do an ‘Author of the Month’ challenge for myself last year. The aim was to read works of authors according to their birth months. This helped me read a lot of authors I used to overlook (read: ignore) when trying to decide on a new book to read. It helps me not only discover new authors but re-discover some old masterpieces (last year I rediscovered The Great Gatsby).

So, will I be able to cross my 2010 book list (link) this year without any challenges? I guess that’s my challenge! (And at present, there is no Woolf, or Bronte in my list!).