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bookgazing) wrote2011-01-05 05:30 pm
bookgazing) wrote2011-01-05 05:30 pm
Resolutions 2011
Quickly just congratulations to irisonbooks for winning my 2nd bloggiversary contest! I'll be in touch by email tomorrow about where to send your prize :)
So it’s 2011 – time for reading resolutions. I already mentioned that one of my resolutions is to increase the racial diversity of the selection of authors I read and I’ve joined a few challenges to help me fill specific gaps in my reading, but apart from that I want to:
Even out my male/female author book ratio: I’d like to be reading equal amounts of books by men and women. Last year I read a lot more books by female authors. Since I’m engaged in 3 challenges about reading books by women and I might fancy reading some of the Orange prize list again I’m not sure how that will go, but I think I should make an effort.
Buy less books: I know! This is the sad resolution that none of us like, but I need to buy my own living space and that will not happen unless I save. After my birthday (8 days away) I can’t buy any more books until the end of April. I’m also cutting back on spending on much at all (which you can do when you still live with your parents) and concentrating on banking as much money as possible. That does mean that I’m rather spendy right now, getting all the good things I want in before the cut off point. Existing pre-orders are exempt, so although I can’t make any new pre-orders until after April, I don’t have to cancel any pre-orders that I’ve already made if the books will arrive before the end of April (I think this is just Slice of the Cherry, Demonglass and an EM Forster biography).
Read more literature in translation: In this case more is defined as more than the two books in translation I read last year, so this should be the easiest resolution to complete ever! I’ve already almost finished one book in translation (Journey in Moonlight) and I know the next three Periene books are coming for my birthday.
Read more non-fiction: I’d like to read 12 non-fiction books this year. One book of non-fiction for every month of the year seems like a reasonable target, even if I am terrible at reading non-fiction. It is ridiculous how much long term, unread non-fiction lives in our house and its spread must be stopped.
Read more literary fiction: I LIKE lit-fic everyone, but somewhere along the way I got sucked into the ‘the only lit-fic is this stuff over here about men who want to make everything about their penis’ whirlpool and forgot that serious literary fiction does not have to be like that. How did I go from ‘Omg Wolf Hall, The Little Stranger, The Still Point – lurve’ to ‘Sigh literary fiction exhausts me, please stop waving that in my face’? (This was originally followed by a little rant about what I don’t want to see in lit-fic and what I enjoy in lit—fic, but I decided to remove it because I’d started using phrases like ‘lit-fic must not’ as if I were the lit-fic secret police, which scared me a little bit. Instead I will just say I know what kind of lit-fic books I want to read this year and which kind I think I will try to avoid.).
The last one is not exactly a reading resolution but important for improving my mental health/ tendency to use anger to procrastinate. I will not stalk arguments like ‘The Orange prize is a feminist propaganda exercise’, ‘Girls, please do not get your romance germs in our sci-fi’ or ‘Genre writers destroy honest wordsmiths, says serious author’. I will not click through to Guardian articles that I have been told are inflammatory and I will NOT read the comments on any online pieces from newspapers. I will not obsess about James Frey being allowed to be within five metres of a book (I read that he will have a new book out in 2011, the paper described him as literature’s ‘bad boy’ – head, all over the walls).
I have some bloggy resolution stuff I’d like to do too, like organise the blog and make useful tabs. I’m also having thoughts about reviewing. I’d kind of like to turn more to discussing sort of technical elements/content that interests me, even if I am not bowled over by the book. I’m not totally sure what that will look like though. I still want to be able to say ‘I lurved it’ or ‘Die book, die’ but I don’t necessarily want that to shape my posts entirely. If I read a book that I’m a bit meh about as a reading experience I’d like to still talk about how well I thought this one part was crafted, or how intense this one idea was without giving people reading the false impression that I enjoyed reading the book for fun. Vice versa, I want to be able to say ‘Look at how the mechanics of this book seem to work and to not work’ about a book I liked a whole lot without seeming like I had no fun with a book at all. This might mean multiple posts, or less essay structured posts, more chatty bits on different aspects that don’t join up in a linear structure...I’m not quite sure yet, so suggestions gleefully accepted – will this kind of thing make the blog lack personality do you think?
I’m seeing lots of great resolutions this year (so far exceptionally impressed with Amanda’s set and feel like I’m most copying Victoria from Eve’s Alexandria). I feel like there was a wide spread book blogger hatred of 2010 by the end of the year and now there’s a consensus that 2011 IS going to be different even if we have to trick its good things into a trap using our leftover holiday chocolate at bait. Let’s all achieve things in 2011 shall we?
So it’s 2011 – time for reading resolutions. I already mentioned that one of my resolutions is to increase the racial diversity of the selection of authors I read and I’ve joined a few challenges to help me fill specific gaps in my reading, but apart from that I want to:
Even out my male/female author book ratio: I’d like to be reading equal amounts of books by men and women. Last year I read a lot more books by female authors. Since I’m engaged in 3 challenges about reading books by women and I might fancy reading some of the Orange prize list again I’m not sure how that will go, but I think I should make an effort.
Buy less books: I know! This is the sad resolution that none of us like, but I need to buy my own living space and that will not happen unless I save. After my birthday (8 days away) I can’t buy any more books until the end of April. I’m also cutting back on spending on much at all (which you can do when you still live with your parents) and concentrating on banking as much money as possible. That does mean that I’m rather spendy right now, getting all the good things I want in before the cut off point. Existing pre-orders are exempt, so although I can’t make any new pre-orders until after April, I don’t have to cancel any pre-orders that I’ve already made if the books will arrive before the end of April (I think this is just Slice of the Cherry, Demonglass and an EM Forster biography).
Read more literature in translation: In this case more is defined as more than the two books in translation I read last year, so this should be the easiest resolution to complete ever! I’ve already almost finished one book in translation (Journey in Moonlight) and I know the next three Periene books are coming for my birthday.
Read more non-fiction: I’d like to read 12 non-fiction books this year. One book of non-fiction for every month of the year seems like a reasonable target, even if I am terrible at reading non-fiction. It is ridiculous how much long term, unread non-fiction lives in our house and its spread must be stopped.
Read more literary fiction: I LIKE lit-fic everyone, but somewhere along the way I got sucked into the ‘the only lit-fic is this stuff over here about men who want to make everything about their penis’ whirlpool and forgot that serious literary fiction does not have to be like that. How did I go from ‘Omg Wolf Hall, The Little Stranger, The Still Point – lurve’ to ‘Sigh literary fiction exhausts me, please stop waving that in my face’? (This was originally followed by a little rant about what I don’t want to see in lit-fic and what I enjoy in lit—fic, but I decided to remove it because I’d started using phrases like ‘lit-fic must not’ as if I were the lit-fic secret police, which scared me a little bit. Instead I will just say I know what kind of lit-fic books I want to read this year and which kind I think I will try to avoid.).
The last one is not exactly a reading resolution but important for improving my mental health/ tendency to use anger to procrastinate. I will not stalk arguments like ‘The Orange prize is a feminist propaganda exercise’, ‘Girls, please do not get your romance germs in our sci-fi’ or ‘Genre writers destroy honest wordsmiths, says serious author’. I will not click through to Guardian articles that I have been told are inflammatory and I will NOT read the comments on any online pieces from newspapers. I will not obsess about James Frey being allowed to be within five metres of a book (I read that he will have a new book out in 2011, the paper described him as literature’s ‘bad boy’ – head, all over the walls).
I have some bloggy resolution stuff I’d like to do too, like organise the blog and make useful tabs. I’m also having thoughts about reviewing. I’d kind of like to turn more to discussing sort of technical elements/content that interests me, even if I am not bowled over by the book. I’m not totally sure what that will look like though. I still want to be able to say ‘I lurved it’ or ‘Die book, die’ but I don’t necessarily want that to shape my posts entirely. If I read a book that I’m a bit meh about as a reading experience I’d like to still talk about how well I thought this one part was crafted, or how intense this one idea was without giving people reading the false impression that I enjoyed reading the book for fun. Vice versa, I want to be able to say ‘Look at how the mechanics of this book seem to work and to not work’ about a book I liked a whole lot without seeming like I had no fun with a book at all. This might mean multiple posts, or less essay structured posts, more chatty bits on different aspects that don’t join up in a linear structure...I’m not quite sure yet, so suggestions gleefully accepted – will this kind of thing make the blog lack personality do you think?
I’m seeing lots of great resolutions this year (so far exceptionally impressed with Amanda’s set and feel like I’m most copying Victoria from Eve’s Alexandria). I feel like there was a wide spread book blogger hatred of 2010 by the end of the year and now there’s a consensus that 2011 IS going to be different even if we have to trick its good things into a trap using our leftover holiday chocolate at bait. Let’s all achieve things in 2011 shall we?