Back to a former future

Towards the end of 2021 I did a little musing about the coming year, and mentioned a few authors and books I was considering on my wishlist for 2022. As we near the end of this year I shall indulge in a bit of reflection, considering what I actually read compared to what I listed.

First of all, I’m glad I managed to mark the birth of two authors in 1922, Sam Youd – better known under his pseudonym John Christopher – and Kurt Vonnegut with reads of, respectively, The Winter Swan and Cat’s Cradle. Regrettably I never got round to reading any authors who were born in 1972. Nor any titles published either a hundred or fifty years ago – except, I think, for Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). Oh, and the Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic (1972) . . .

But I did get round to enjoying writings from elsewhere in those two decades, thanks to several memes such as Novellas in November. The 1920s included Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, H P Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit, and Muriel Jaeger’s The Question Mark; the 1970s have featured most of The Dark is Rising sequence, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop, and Jan Mark’s Thunder and Lightnings, among others. And of course loads of other stuff.

© C A Lovegrove

For this year I aimed to at least reach parity between female and male authors, and I’m pleased that when I get to the end of December with my planned reads I’ll actually have completed more titles by women writers than by men. As for countries these authors hail from they include Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, United States and, of course, Wales – a fair smattering from around the globe though not as much variety as I’d hoped for.

Nevertheless I’m a klutz when it comes to specific reading challenges such as Classics Club, Back to the Classics or the European Reading Challenge. I don’t know why I even consider them except maybe to feel guilty – blame my Catholic upbringing – or to flagrantly ignore them. However one commitment I’m faithful to is the Goodreads Reading Challenge, in which I set myself a sensible, achievable annual target; this year I’ve comfortably passed my intention to read and review 60 titles, and have already passed the 70 mark.

Nevertheless, I’m much better with what I think of as prompts, with no prescriptive titles, numbers or multiple categories – Vintage SciFi Month, Nordic FINDS, March Magics, Begorrathon, Dewithon, 20 Books of Summer, Readers Imbibing Peril, SciFiMonth or Novellas in November for example.

And of course the memes I’m directly involved in I assiduously cleave to – primarily Witch Week (co-hosted with Lizzie Ross) and the one-off Narniathon, and my open-ended themes like Talking Tolkien and the Library of Brief Narratives, this last focused on short story collections (which sadly I’ve rather neglected this year).

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Wait, what’s this, though? Another shiny meme?!? Hmm…

But it’s all about the books, isn’t it? And reading for pleasure, of course. And connecting with other bookbloggers. And living other lives vicariously and visiting other worlds and inhabiting different time periods. And … Well, you get the picture.

Next year I shall be restructuring this blog a bit, removing ephemeral posts and redirecting some pieces elsewhere; but never fear, this blog will always be about the books and the bloggers and – as the strapline says – exploring the world of ideas through books.

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So, have you started to think about next year? Do you have plans you intend to stick to, or do you take pot luck, go with the flow, take things as they come? Or – heaven forbid – do you have a little devil on your shoulder whispering must-reads in your ear?

Image borrowed from research by LizzieRossWriter.com