The OF Blog: Quick update on 2014 reading goals

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Quick update on 2014 reading goals

Barely half a month of 2014 has passed and already I see I'm going to revise my 2014 reading goals.  Not because what I listed before was too difficult, but because I have had more ideas and reading time/energy than I had expected.

January will apparently be an English-free reading month, at least in terms of completing books.  I have already read 24 books and none of those are in English.  12 Spanish, 4 Portuguese, 4 French, 3 Italian (and just begun #4), and 1 in Serbian.  I have a few others I'd like to read before month's end, so it seems that my original goal of reading at least 50 books each in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian will be on pace or above.  If I have another month or so like January, I might extend the Spanish goal to 100 books read/re-read this year.

Next month, I probably am going to devote time to re-reading/reviewing most, if not all, of Gabriel García Márquez's output.  It surprised me to realize recently that I had never reviewed any of his works here, probably because I read them before I really was active blogging.

Starting in March, I'm going to aim to do a weekly set of posts with a World Cup theme.  I want to introduce readers (and myself, foremost) to some of the prominent writers from each of the 32 countries participating in the football tournament.  Later, I might then do "matches" after I have reviewed the works in hand.

From now until likely April or May, I'm going to continue to post my 1994 prose translation of Vergil's The Aeneid that I did for an intermediate Latin class, as I am really enjoying re-reading the poem in Latin and seeing ways that my old self understood it and how 20 years later I can still "hear" it as I read.

Beginning in June, I'm going to do a series of posts on the centennial of World War I/Great War.  There will be a few histories discussed, along with several poems, novels, and other writings from that time period, as well as writings from subsequent generations.

Also sometime in the summer, I'm going to review the major works of one of my favorite Southern writers, Thomas Wolfe, likely 1-2 books a month during that span.

Looks like my reading/reviews of the Premio Alfaguara winners might be finished sooner rather than later.  Going to write reviews of 4 books from that list later this week/weekend and I might be on pace to finish most of the 25 books (once the 2014 winner is announced in the spring) before autumn.

I know these are a lot of projects, but I'm finding this to be exciting and deeply rewarding rather than a checklist of chores to do.  Sometimes, having a direction and goals to (over)achieve is a great motivating force, at least for me.  Hope some, if not all of these, are of interest to you and that you'll continue to visit this blog in the weeks and months to come.

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