When are you reading? – Sally Allen

My first year participating in the When Are You Reading? challenge hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words is officially completed. And I’m happy to report I was able to read books set in or written in each time period represented in the challenge.

When I joined it in June, I had three time periods left to cover. I had great ambitions to read books written during those times. But … for two of the three (1500-1599 and 1600-1699), I ended up reading historical fiction instead of books written at that time. For 2017, I’m aiming to read books written during each period since my goal is to read more classics this year.

My final tallies are down below. When I originally wrote this post, I included every book I’d read this year as a way to figure out what I still needed to read. I haven’t included all my 2016 titles read since then, only the ones that completed time periods. If you’re interested in more about the books I read this year, I keep monthly lists here.

If you’re interested in participating in 2017, Sam has a description and sign up here.

When, as a kid, I was in danger of taking life too seriously, my dad would invite me to reflect on my concerns by asking, “How much will this matter in 100 years?” At the time, I assumed his rhetorical question was meant to show me how our fleeting obsessions hold little consequence in the grand scheme of the universe.

But that’s not quite right, is it? Without access to knowledge of future events, we cannot possibly know whether this (whatever “this” is) will matter in 100 years. Life is made up of tens of thousands of millions of seemingly inconsequential choices whose cumulative effects can be world changing.

We study history for this reason, don’t we? To study the actions and reactions that have lead to outcomes we want either to replicate or avoid. But even that doesn’t really work. Evidence suggests we make the same mistakes over and over again; it’s the one thing about human nature and experiences that’s predictable. Conclusion: All we can do in the moment is our best.

I’ve been thinking about this over the last week after discovering a reading challenge hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. Continue reading “Updated – Reading time: The When Are You Reading? Challenge”

Reading challenges make me nervous. They can create a competitive dynamic where it’s unnecessary and unproductive. They can set expectations that, if not met, cultivate feelings of failure that drain the pleasure from reading.

Who needs that kind of negativity, especially from an activity that one engages in by choice, presumably for pleasure and enrichment?

I don’t know. Maybe some people like negativity (that would explain a lot, actually). But I don’t. So I’m very wary of engaging in reading challenge, generally speaking. And yet!

This year brought two highly appealing reading challenges into my life: Read My Own Damn Books initiated by Andi at Estella’s Revenge and When Are You Reading? by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

Read My Own Damn Books

This was the challenge that convinced me to do a challenge this year. I needed it desperately. My book hoarding had achieved intervention levels. I’ve bought two and even three copies of the same book because I no longer have any idea what books I own, and trying to find them on my overstuffed shelves takes hours and days. It’s ridiculous.

One major difference resulting directly from Read My Own Damn Books: My impulse buys are way, way down. I’m still buying new books, but I’m actually reading them too. As opposed to sticking them on a shelf where I’ll promptly forget them. Imagine that! E-book sales were a huge temptation for me. My new policy: I only buy the on-sale e-books if the titles were already on my to-read list.

This year, I’ve bought 45 books and read 24 of them. So I’m over 50 percent in my buy-to-read ratio. The numbers become even more favorable in the last three months. I’m most pleased by that! Continue reading “2016 Reading Challenges: The Quarterly Report”