Remember I was experimenting with a reading plan I found on Bluesky? I suppose now we’re staring down the barrel of a new month, I should look at how I’m going so far.
So, in the fifth week of the year, I’ve just finished book number five. That’s pretty good. I’m keeping to the “one book a week” rule on average.
Non-fiction for the month: Monster She Wrote. This one’s quite easily done.
Classic of the month: Tarzan. “Classics” is such a vexed issue, and I’m contemplating a post on that subject, that I did consider either Black No More or the Cornell Woolrich collection could technically count as the classic for January, but Tarzan‘s in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Lose Your Eyes book so I suppose that makes it “more classic”…
Short story per day: THIS, somewhat to my surprise, has been the bit where I’ve fallen down. I haven’t read one story every day, though when I’ve missed a day I’ve made up for it by reading two the next day, so it actually works out, I should have read 366 individual stories by the end of the year… but yeah, I’m finding this hard. Cos I’m not used to reading quite like this; I obviously can’t read most books in a single day so I need to pause at some point and resume it later, but I’m still used to reading multiple chapters in one sitting. I don’t usually approach collections of stories in this one-at-a-time way, I read one and then I want to read the next on straight away. You know, like a “normal” book.
Also, it means that I’m reading more than one book at a time, which is definitely something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I have, in the past, put one book on hold then read another book before going back to the first one, but I wasn’t reading both of them simultaneously, I was focusing on one at a time. And I can’t really do that the same with this approach, my attention is being divided to some extent. I’ll certainly stick with it, cos the plan is otherwise having results; maybe it’ll get easier…
