Context matters...

A guy on the tramway constantly stumbles on my feet, during a twenty minute ride. He is gripping hard on the new part of the Millenium trilogy, and thus has no hand free to steady himself on to the handrails. I am much less pissed than I would be normally. J.-

2014: The non-reading challenge

Like every year, goodreads invites its users to participate in a so-called "reading challenge" -- a personal challenge to read a certain number of books in the course of the upcoming year. The whole thing comes with a public declaration in the respective user profile, the possibility to keep track with friends' progress on their goals and to comment. Well, and some statistics provided by the platform, if one feels like consulting the corresponding pages.

So far, so good. That sounds like an honourable thing to do when trying to keep your reading life active while having a job, a family and all the other distractions of modern life at hand. Little reminders give you hints if you should try harder and squeeze in a few more pages tomorrow... well, wait: Squeeze in pages? 

While I enjoy the platform for the possibility to keep track of what books I already read, what authors I liked and their new publications - I do not like the impact it had on my reading behaviour.


Admittedly -- I am a to-do-list-freak. I love crossing stuff off lists, creating new lists, structure items in categories... and I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with putting a fresh read on goodreads. I am proud of being a bookworm and every new item on my list of read books seems to be a confirmation that I am allowed to carry that label.

In short: This little obsession of mine lead to disastrous lists of "crossed off" books during the last year.

I see myself finish books just to... well, finish them. And put them on the list. Perhaps give an acid review (and thus spend another ten to twenty minutes on a piece of literature that I did not even like¹⁾. And go for the next easy read from the chicklit section. *brrrr*

So, inspired by the goodreads "event", I will try an inverted challenge scheme for 2014:

I challenge myself

1.  to read at most 30 books (professional reading excluded). 
2. to stop reading books that I do not enjoy on the first 70 pages (and to not feel sorry for that - the harder part).
3. to list those books directly on bookcrossing or get rid of them on some other way.

Thirty books might sound a lot to most people, but seem reasonable to me, compared with the 48 books that I devoured in 2012 and 2013 each². It will, in any case, force me to be more picky about what I read. Of course, the reading list is not at all settled and will be evolving...

For the moment:

1. Ruth Ozeki: A Tale for the Time being
2. Michael Ende: Die unendliche Geschichte
3. Alan D. Altieri: Madgeburg. L'eretico ³⁾
4. Charles Eisenstein: The most beautiful world our hearts know is possible

Suggestions are welcome. :)

J.-

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1 Let's better not talk about that book whose main character I basically hated... and not in the entertaining, but the very annoying way.^↩

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2 Guess where I got that bragging information from... thanks to the statistics site...^↩

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3  An Italian writing a fantasy trilogy about my home town... how could I resist? ^↩

Starting points

I've been trying to start a blog-shaped version of my one-woman-show several times throughout the last years. I've been on and off (public) writing all through that time. (I put the "public" as I am constantly scribbling into journals and there a few wonderful persons out there that keep up a penpalship with me, even though I often run late with my answers.)

However, I had this plan of blogging about some parts of my thoughts for quite some time now. Nothing revolutionary - like most of you out there, I want to try to regularly sum up how I am doing in my little personal fight against entropy. So, yes, I have absolutely no particular reason to claim space here. If you stopped by for ground-breaking insights - better move on to avoid disappointment. I have no pregnant belly to report on, no holiday pics, ... Well, one further event that often evokes blog appearances is some stay-abroad experience - as I am actually doing that, I could use that as a pretense... Yeah, great, so let's go for that one...

To sum up: Don't expect anything. At least I will try to avoid expectations. (Yeah, as if I  would be capable...) Just... be.


J.-