The OF Blog: 2014 Reading/Reviewing Goals

Thursday, January 02, 2014

2014 Reading/Reviewing Goals

Now that 2013 has come and gone like the bad cold I felt like I had all year, time for new and updated goals to reflect the changing of the calendar.  Some of these are alterations of things I considered in December, but others are brand new.  Feel free to comment on them.

1.  Read (or re-read) at least 50 books each in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. 

I'm still working on my reading comprehension of the Western Romance languages, plus I have at least 75 books/e-books in each of these languages (in the case of Spanish, around 600, and for French, just over 300), so there should be plenty of good reading material.

2.  Have 35% or more of my reading/re-readings this year be of works (co)-authored or (co)-edited by women.

Slight expansion of last year's goal of 33%.

3.  To (re)-read and review each of the Premio Alfaguara winners, including those of the 1965-1972 incarnation.

In the past I have reviewed a few of the 1998-present winners (and have read all but some of the pre-1998 winners), but I think it should be a nice challenge to review 1-2 of these books a month for the year.  Progress will be tracked on this old article.

4.  During the months leading up to the 2014 World Cup, reprise my 2010 "World Cup" series of posts by writing a combination of reviews of prominent writers from participating countries or summaries of national literature.

This should be both fun and educational, no?

5.  Do an in-depth series of articles/reviews on a Southern writer.

The last two years, I wrote several posts on William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor (abandoning each by early spring) on a weekly Friday basis, but this year, I think I'll save myself stress by covering the writing of Thomas Wolfe, who wrote four novels and only a few short stories.  These won't be on a weekly basis, but maybe a monthly or even quarterly basis, depending on my time.  Also might cover some of Howard Waldrop's short fiction if time permits.

No set overall reading number goal, although I wouldn't be surprised if I average more than a book a day again.

What are your 2014 reading goals?

Edit:  Not a reading nor a reviewing goal, but I also might devote more energy in 2014 to wailing away against that puerile, creativity-sucking entity that sometimes goes by the moniker of "geekdom."  These days, I find myself waiting eagerly for the next decade or so to pass, in hopes that this rehashing of things that I find troublesome in content and presentation (not to mention the perceived lack of originality in content creation) will have passed the way that feathered hair and leg warmers did in my youth.

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