Ah, Reading Plans. I always start each year with such good intentions and then end up disappearing down rabbit holes of my own creation. But I thought I might sketch out some things I'm definitely planning to read in 2023. BTW if this seems like a lot I should note that I read quite fast. This isn't necessarily a good thing and I make no judgements about the benefits of fast reading. Sometimes I think it is great, sometimes I think it means I don't read deeply enough.
1. John Gardner's James Bond continuation books: I read some of these back in my mid-teens. I can still see the hard back books I borrowed from Gerrards Cross library as I type this and on a whim I re-read the first one, Licence Renewed, in November so I thought it might be good to read the rest one a month until March 2024. I think it is good to have something 'light' in the reading plans. A reading diet should have many different food groups in it to be interesting and healthy.
2. The Cadfael Books by Ellis Peters: these fit into a similar place in my reading life as the John Gardner books. They were part of my teenage reading years. Last month I re-read the first novel, 'A Morbid Taste for Bones' and decided that this too might make for a good fun reading project spread out over 2023-24. There are 21 books in the series so at one a month that would take me through to September 2024.
3. #Febregency, #NYRBWomen, #Victober and other BookTube monthly/annual projects. There are a lot of these but I've picked a few to join in on. You can find out more about #Febregency at Christy Luis's YouTube Channel - here. BookTube has lots of these kind of projects and you can pick up on the ones that you are most interested in as and when.
4. Remembrance Reads: this is something I have done for the last two years. I focus my reading on World War One during November. This is mostly a non-fiction project - and ties in with BookTube's Non-Fiction November - and I've read poetry, history and memoirs. It also includes my now annual re-read of In Parenthesis by David Jones. This is a personal project but I'm happy if other people want to join me.
5. #LoveHain: this was a new one I decided to go for today which is head about from via Twitter and was outlined on Calmgrove's blog. This is just to read Ursula K Le Guin's Hanish Cycle over the course of 2023. I've read The Left-Hand of Darkness already, but the rest have been waiting for an excuse for me to pick them up. #LoveHain gives me that excuse.
6. History: I'm planning to read more history books in 2023. I used to read a lot of history and feel like I've let that decline a little so that's something I plan to change in 2023.
7. Booker Prize Longlist: Every year I set out to read the Booker Prize Longlist before the Shortlist is announced. Every year I fail. In 2022 though, by shear fluke, I managed to read all 6 books that made the Shortlist before it came out. I will undertake this Quixotic endeavour again in 2023. I will fail again. But fail better perhaps. I should note here that I find Book prizes a great way to get into a genre. There are lots of them. The shortlists/longlists are fine ways to get introduced to a genre. It's how I got back into reading modern poetry - via the T S Eliot and Forward poetry prizes. I suspect every genre has its prizes. See also 'Best of' lists that come out at the end of each year.
8. Everything else: as I said my reading plan's often fall apart in the face of the myriad distractions of the real world so my reading will end up being a mishmash of the above plans, books that grab my attention and rabbit holes I get dragged down by other people or my own mental meanderings. Happy 2023.
