Reading in Reykjavík

I have been keeping a reading journal since 2004. Before that year, my reading bookkeeping was sketchy to non-existent, and while I do have a list of around 370 books I know I read before that time (mostly keepers and old favourites), it's just a list of remembered titles with very little other information. I had the sense to compile certain statistical information right from the beginning of my journalling in 2004 and one of the things I have kept track of since the start was the original year in which the books I read were published. The last time I was between books and in the limbo of deciding what to read next I was inspired by a discussion thread on my favourite book discussion board in which some of the members were organising a year-by-year group reading challenge for the 20th century. I sat down and compiled a list of books I have read, by year, with a view to possibly doing a "fill in the gaps" year-by-year reading challenge. This was easy, because at the beg...

I’ve been thinking about reading challenges. Not just possible future 52 Books challenges for myself, but reading challenges in general. A reading challenge is a good way to get some focus into your reading if you feel you don't know what to read next, you want to expand your reading horizons, become an expert on a given subject, or break out of a bad reader's block. Hunting down the books can be half the fun if you assign yourself a specific set of books and they turn out to be out of print or otherwise hard to find. Different challenges suit different people. Some may do a modest book-a-week challenge for one year or plan to read all of a specific author’s books, while others may be more ambitious and embark on a lifetime reading plan of every book mentioned in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon . Some may want to cover every number in the Dewey catalogue. Including the fractions would be a bit too much for most, but by taking whole numbers only you would get 999 books and ...