2019 Reading Challenges

Another blogging year has begun here on Edith’s Miscellany – the seventh already! – and it’s time to make some literary resolutions. It’s true that I haven’t yet finished my review schedule for 2019, but like past year I plan to fill it with twenty-six books, one for every other week, plus as many extra ones as I feel like writing. Once more I signed up for a few reading challenges starting on 1 January and closing on 31 December 2019 to add flavour to the reviewing… and above all to choosing the right books. However, in this collective sign-up post for all reading challenges in which I’m participating this year, there is only one real novelty and one that fits in perfectly with my habits as you will see. A separate book list for each one of the reading challenges will go online later this month.

This year I stumbled accross The Good Rule Reading Challenge on Becky’s Book Reviews and I just couldn’t resist signing up. The idea is to alternate old and new books as C. S. Lewis recommends in his inspiring quote. In fact, I long made it my habit to review classical and contemporary works in equal shares, but so far the opportunity to do so for a reading challenge never presented itself. I don’t intend to apply the good rule to other books than those read for review here on my book blog, be they classics first released between 1900 and 1970 or later contemporary fiction. I doubt that any reread book will make it on my review schedule this year although I don’t generally exclude them.

»»» follow my progess on My Literary Balance of Books First Released Before/As From 1970.

As a matter of fact, the Epistolary Reading Challenge 2019 that Jamie Ghione hosts on her blog Whatever I Think Of is a bit of a déjà-vu as well because I participated already in its 2017 edition. Back then I made my personal longlist of 100 Novels in Letters that I keep revising and completing with review links since. Just like two years ago, my focus will be on fiction based on good old snail mail letters only… which means that I’m going to pass over novels written in related forms like diaries, blogs, e-mails, tweets, instant messages or whatever new ways of communicating with others have escaped me so far. I haven’t yet made up my mind about how many or which epistolary novels I’m going to read for the challenge, but there definitely are enough of them on my wish list.

»»» check out the regularly up-dated list of My 2019 Literary Mail Portion of 100 Novels in Letters.

Once again, too, I signed up for the *New* Decade Challenge of the GOODREADS Bookcrossers Group. This time I’m going to make it A Literary Voyage Through Twelve Decades in Ten Plunges and Two Extra Deep Dives, i.e. I plan to read books first published from 1900 on instead of limiting myself to 99 years as intended by the host. In addition, I’ll try to find books written in twelve different languages, but as yet I haven’t found the right one for each period. I’ll post all my reviews here on Edith’s Miscellany, of course, and later I’ll share a teaser with the review link on GOODREADS … unless I forget as I sometimes did.

»»» find out which destinations of My Literary Voyage Through Twelve Decades in Ten Plunges and Two Extra Deep Dives I already ticked off on my list and which you can still look forward to.

This leaves the perpetual reading challenge of Aloi aka the Guiltless Reader that I joined already in spring 2014, namely Read the Nobels. It goes without saying that (although time-delayed) I’ll continue cross-posting duplicates of my reviews of books written by an “en-NOBEL-ed” on the Read the Nobels blog although to my great regret it has been pretty dormant as late. As far as I know, there isn’t any other site online with as many reviews of books penned by one of the 114 Nobel laureates in Literature so far. I’m planning to add another five reviews in the course of 2019 that will bring me fairly close to having ticked off half of the authors on the list by the end of the year.

»»» see my post for Read the Nobels with the complete list of winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the links to my own book reviews here on Edith's Miscellany and on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion.