2014 Book Challenges

So, what’s the plan for 2014? Maybe update this blog more than once every twelve months …

Actually, I have set a couple of reading challenges for the year & hope to write up a bit about those as time goes on. The first is the “SFF Explorer” challenge, set by one of the groups I joined on the Goodreads website, the Science Fiction and Heroic Fantasy group, with the goal of reading works by science and fiction and fantasy authors I haven’t read before. I set a goal of 20 new authors for the year. (I thought that would be amibitious, and prompt me to look into sub-genres like military sci-fi that I don’t read as much of, and both of those may yet prove to be the case, but so far this challenge has mainly prompted me to pick up several I’ve-been-meaning-to-get-around to titles off my own shelves and the library shelves. Hmm, with Wesley Chu I’m already up to at least 4.6666 out of 20.)

The second is a poetry challenge, because I can tend to put off reading volumes after I’ve bought them, at least cover-to-cover. They do take time and attention; you need to be in a certain mood, and sometimes they can be a little heavy. But I set myself a 25-in-2013 challengen that cleared out a little of my backlog and turned me on to some interesting new stuff (much of it slam-influenced and published by Write Bloody Publishing). Highlights included Gardening in the Dark by Laura Kasischke and Brass Girl Brouhaha by Adrian Blevins, who turns out to be from Abingdon & a Hollins alumna. Still, 25 felt like a lot, so this year I set the less amibitious but more poetic 14-in-2014 challenge. To make it more of a challenge and to keep up on recent works, I’ve decided to try to read at least one volume of poetry published in each year of the 21st Century –- which means, if I include both 2000 and this year, it’ll actually be 15-in-2014. We’ll see. And that doesn’t mean I won’t throw in a few extras, or some titles from the ol’ 20th C. (A little Richard Wright perhaps? Although I usually only “count” poetry books when I’ve read them cover-to-cover, and sometimes with collections, I just feel like grazing, which might be particularly appropriate for haiku.) Or even earlier. I haven’t read anything toward this challenge yet, but I should be checking off a year or two soon, because Major Jackson is giving a reading at VCU in a few weeks, and I’ve got two recent books of his on my list.

Well, hopefully more to come …