New year, new reading ambitions. In 2019 I want to read books that challenge me, and books that don’t but which are exciting or fun or just pleasant reads. I hope to find new favourites and revisit old, and I want to keep having great discussions about books with all my blogging friends.
Reading classics
The Classics Club is my favourite reading challenge and I still have many unread books on my classics list. I hope that I will be able to read at least twelve of them during 2019.
The Back to the classics reading challenge is also fun. There the goal is to read and blog about twelve books that fit particular categories and which are at least 50 years old. I am not too focused on actually finishing this challenge but I like the way it encourage me to actually review the books I read and therefore want to join again.
Keep reading books by African, Asian and South American authors
During the last two years my reading comfort zone has greatly expanded and I now get inspired rather than scared when a book is written by an author from a country I normally don’t read from. As I don’t want too many reading challenges this year I am hoping that this will remain true even without making a challenge out of it. However, I will keep tracking the author’s country of origin of all the books I am reading, and if I find that I have stopped reading books by authors from outside of Europe and North America, I may make a challenge out of it later in the year.
Book buying
For the last two years I have attempted to not buy more books than the number of unread books I read from my bookshelf. Although I failed both years it did help me restrict my book buying. Unfortunately it also had some negative side-effects. I found that this book-buying challenge actually discouraged me from using the library or rereading my own books, as books I read from these sources did not count against my book-buying. As I love the library and rereading I will not attempt this challenge this year. However, I still do need to keep some constraints on my book-buying and therefore have decided that I can buy as many books as I want, but that the total cost of them may not be more than what I paid for books in 2018. Second-hand book-stores here I come!
I read that in a book 
So you can buy as many books as you want, so long as they don’t cost more in toto than what you paid last year? How resourceful of you! Unfortunately I’m not organised enough to tally books as I acquire them, and my new-to-me acquisitions are as likely to be secondhand as bookshop pristine.
No, my main constraint is bookshelf space, and I have a pile of books to dispose of before I can seriously start filling in gaps. (Having said which, I bought two new books and one used copy yesterday, and have added them to my precariously balanced bedside pile!)
I’m not using my local library as much as I should: I’ve had a couple of books out for more than three months without so much as glancing at them, even playing enough in late fines to have bought an armful of charity shop books…
Anyway, good luck with your plans for 2019, I am looking forward to reading your thoughts about your purchases.
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That’s the plan, and as I bought some rather expensive books last year I’m feeling really good about it. Bookshelf space is an issue of course, although I added two new bookshelves in the latest move so so far I’m managing, but hopefully I won’t buy too many more books I want to keep compared to last year.
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Those are some very exciting challenges. I want to do a check of all the countries I’ve read books set in or written by authors from… and then hopefully expand on that. All the best with your challenges this year!
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Thank you! Keeping track of where books are set sounds like a good way of expanding your reading.
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Classics are great! As are second hand bookshops….. Happy hunting! 😉
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Thanks!
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Happy reading for 2019 – you’ve certainly inspired me to take more notice of how international my reading is!
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Thank you, I’m happy to hear that , I have certainly enjoyed making my own reading more international.
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Nice goals. About reading more Asian literature, you are familiar with the Japanese Literature challenge, right? It may be a bit late for this year, but you can schedule it for next year: https://dolcebellezza.net/2018/12/29/japanese-literature-challenge-12/
Dolce Belleza organizes it every year. See that post and others on the topic on her blog
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I don’t think I want more challenges but it looks like a great place to get some Asian reading inspiration, thanks!
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