books | 2010 Reading Goals

2010 Reading Goals

Does anybody have any speficic reading goals for 2010? Big, small, if it's something you're aiming to do, it goes. Or am I just the weird one out? ^-~ (Hope the question doesn't break any rules, but it is book-related.)

I've set myself a few goals this year, though they're not particularly spectacular.

- read Corvus by Esther Woolfson
- read my coursebooks before term starts
- read more non-native English books

Not too many goals and most should be easy to accomplish, but... Well, they might not be. The last is going to be the most problematic. While I'm not a native speaker, I do read solely in English. Most of the books I have/want are, thus, by native speakers of English and I'd love to have a little more variety in my reading. Broaden my horizons and all. I'm not aiming to make a large chunk of my reading English translations, though, just to make that chunk larger than it is at the moment. ^-^

So. Anybody else have reading goals for 2010? ^-^

(Also, hi! I'm new to the community. ^-^ A really short intro of me/my tastes would be: "I read fantasy and I try to stay as far away from horror as I can. I like my night's rest. I'm trying to branch out my reading into other genres a little more. Other than that, I'm a student of English, focusing my courses on - surprise! - literature." Nice to meet you all!)

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Sorry for butting in here, but studying Tamora Pierce from a feminist perspective sounds awesome. <3 Almost makes me wish I'd studied Eng Lit at college/uni.

It was pretty fun. ^-^ I wish I could write more essays on topics that truly interest me. I may, one day, write one on Holly Black/Melissa Marr purely for the fun of it too.

Holly Black/Melissa Marr I'm not familiar with, unfortunately, but yeah, I can imagine it was fun. ^.^ Out of curiosity was it the Tortall books or the Circle of Magic books you studied? Although I imagine both would have been good for studying.

They're both YA authors. Think 'Twilight' but with fairies instead of vampires and werewolves and a better grasp of the craft of writing, I suppose. The basic consensus online seems to be that if you've heard of the one, you've heard of the other and you either like the one or you like the other.

I've only read Song of the Lioness. I never really got along with Pierce's style (I'm a prose-snob), but I had a lot of fun with the essay. ^-^

Twilight I've heard of - impossible not to, really - but it's been a while since I read any YA authors other than Tamora Pierce so I guess I'm out of touch. ^.^

Ah, okay. :) I'm the opposite, I suppose, because I can reread those books again and again, especially when I just want light reading. I do love Alanna, though, so analysing those books must have been interesting. :)

Naught wrong with that. ^-^ I'm partly fascinating purely by the basic pattern of their books. They're very similar. (Not similar enough to accuse either of plagiarism or aught, but similar enough to make a comparison seem like a fun things to do.)

I know I'd have loved her works as a child, but I only learned of her works... three years ago? Maybe four. Too long a time to learn what I don't like and why. It was pretty fun and interesting to look at them, though, I do admit that. It definitely made me look at why the story did work for me extra closely.

*nods* I'm like that with Mercedes Lackey. Came to them at around 12/13 and loved them but if I found them now I probably wouldn't enjoy them as much. I still love the world of the books but some aspects are, hm, problematic.

*nods* Makes sense. I've no idea how I stand on Lackey's series. From what I understand they're quite different from the one novel(la) I read and loathed. I got a short kelpie story I'm pretty happy with out of it, though.

Hm, which one did you read? Some of her standalones don't always work for me, but I tend to be happier with her Valdemar books.

The River's Gift. It's promptly put her on the (very small) list of "authors I will never, ever give a second chance" and I haven't yet heard or read anything about her works to make me rethink that. (Then again, there are no words for my hatred of that book. Kelpies are nasty creatures. They eat you when you get too near and give them half a chance. They do not go "Oh, you pulled a nail out of my hoof! You are my Twu Lub and we shall live together forEVVA and I shall never again eat anyone or anything without your prior approval, Mary Sue! I wub you so much!" *gaghissspitbristle* I want to know what folktale convinced her that was a brilliant idea. I really, really do.)

I haven't heard of that one. o.O Weird, I thought I knew most of hers, even if I haven't read them. But wow, that sounds... special. And makes you wonder if she'd researched kelpies at all. :/

(I was just expressing my concern about having missed this comment when the email arrived.)

Be very, very grateful. It's one of those books that got saved from the slushpile purely because the author had long since established a name as one who sells. I may have remembered some of it to be worse than it is, but not by a whole lot.

I suppose it's possible the book actually refers to another type of water-horse altogether, but that'd be some really sloppy research. The good news is that the book gave me my own kelpies to write about. ^-^

*grins* That's okay. Sometimes I even miss comments with the emails sitting in my inbox, espcially if work's killed my brain. ^.^

*winces* Ouch. But yeah, I think that happens more when you're well enough known. One of her books that I enjoy has a couple of errors that simple editing would have fixed and they make me wince every time I read it. :(

I love when that happens. Even if a book isn't that great it can sometimes inspire some really fun stuff to write about.

I'm just used to them all arriving neatly on time and the other comments did arrive fairly fast.

Ow. It's sad that it happens, though. Call me an idealist, but I don't think 'well-known' should be a free ticket to publishing bad books. I'm sure the book could've been at least average with some decent sense whacked into its plot.

Oh, definitely. ^-^ I'm having way too much fun with all the legend/folktale/fairytale inspired stuff my muse has come up with.

Oh, that icon's cute. <3 But yeah, I'm used to comments arriving promptly and when they don't I get frustrated. :)

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it should, more like sometimes it does. And makes me wonder if she was pulling a Laurel Hamilton and plain not bothering with an editor. :/

I love mythology, although I don't know nearly enough about it as I'd like to. I've still got books by Joseph Campbell from my first year at uni that I've never finished. *sighs*

I love Chi's Sweet Home. The whole series is adorable. (And dangerous and highly addictive, the more so because each episode is only three minutes long. Don't say I didn't warn you if you decide to look it up.)

I know. ^-^ But the book itself implies it. That's the sad thing. I hope she did the no-editor thing, then. I like my idealised vision of the publishing industry as an industry that cares about quality as much as it does sales. (I never mentioned this in my comments on Marten Toonder, but the second story in the anthology ends up with a machine that can calculate the value of everything and there's a scene where he demonstrates it with books "only the bestsellers will remain!". I was appalled.)

Mmmm, same here. Pesky memory. I have loads of mythology and folklore books, but I wish some of the details would stick better. :(

I may have to. And I'll return the favour by recommending the Simon's Cat videos on YouTube, because they're cute and funny and the guy absolutely knows cats. :D

I kind of hope she did as well. Otherwise it just depresses me that an editor looked over it and didn't spot the glaringly obvious mistakes. D: And agh, that scene sounds horrible. :/ Just because a book isn't a 'bestseller' doesn't mean it's not good. Sometimes really crap books are bestsellers. :/

Agreed. I have books on Celtic and Norse mythology and I'd like to add Eastern mythology to those but they're really hard to find in mainstream shops. :(

I love Simon's Cat! And yes, yes, he does. They're wonderful. <3

I think the idea of the story was to show people just how preposterous some material ideas/values are, but I'm still appalled at the senseless book violence.
Likewise, some really great books go out of print because they're not bestsellers. :( I'm not sure which is sadder.

Ooooh! Those are sorely lacking from my shelves as well. (Heck, I need more mythology/folklore books, period.)

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Completely unrelated (and, I guess, just ever so slightly stalkerish) that book on medieval women you mentioned in your journal? So on my wishlist. It sounds fascinating!)

*grins* Not stalkerish. ^.^ Admittedly I wandered over to your journal as well so I guess we're even? :) But yes, the book is amazing. I've just finished the section on Matilda of Boulogne and Empress Matilda - there were a lot of Matildas in those days - and was seriously impressed by how much they achieved, in spite of the constraints placed on women at the time. I'm looking forward to the sections on Eleanor of Aquitane and the time of the War of the Roses. :)

Afraid there isn't a whole lot to see (publicly) on mine yet. ^-^;

I admit I know very little about history. (It's fascinating, but I have a really bad memory.) But it just sounds really awesome. ^-^

I love history. <3 It was always my favourite subject at school but I was always disappointed that the range of history taught in schools isn't wider. I think from the time I was 14 until I finished university I had to study WW1 or WW2 in some way and it drove me crazy because I knew this stuff already and why couldn't we learn about other time periods?

*sighs* Actually, don't let me start a rant on that because I can go on forever about how there are other periods of history to study that aren't about the world wars and yet they are still interesting. >.

I loved one of the history modules I got to do in my last year: the beginning of the industrial revolution (in Lancashire, because the rest wasn't specific enough already). Such a nice change of pace!

If it's any consolation, I can go on and on about how crappy English education is over here. It's... How do you expect kids to learn proper English when the teachers haven't even mastered the language? (We'll just both back away from the educational topics very slowly, shall we?)

I can imagine! I had one module at uni about the industrial revolution with a focus on the Midlands, and while the topic itself wasn't that interesting I didn't mind so much because it was something different.

*winces* I wouldn't argue with you. Supposedly someone in my year (around GCSE time, I think) filled out an English exam in chat/text spelling. I don't know how true that is but it still depresses me. :(

(Might be a good idea, yes. :D)

Fun history is fun. ^-^ I quite liked the topic, but it was a calm and fairly straight-forward one to remember. (Unlike the Vietnam War, which was the second exam topic.)

At least that was a student's doing? I get to correct 'my' students' textbooks because they're faulty. It doesn't happen on a regular basis, but it's happened enough for me to remember.