Lots of reading, reading, reading…
My virtual crowd read a lot, which is hardly surprising since so many of them are writers and the rest of them are people I like and I suspect it would be hard for me to like someone who didn’t like to read. I’ve been admiring how many of these people are terribly organized! and disciplined! about what they read whereas I take huge stacks of books out of the library, dump them next to my bed and then read them or not depending on what free time I’ve managed to claw back from the week — and if I’m truly overwhelmed I read Terry Pratchett.
However, 2010 is still young, fresh and optimistic and this year I am going to be, if not more disciplined, at least more conscious of what I’m reading, in a zen kind of way.
To that end, I am joining The Story Siren’s 2010 Debut Authors Challenge, which means I promise to read at least 12 — if not more — MG or YA books published in 2010 by debut (see how this works?) authors. In the next post, I will make a Plan. Or if not a Plan, at least a plan. If you might be interested in playing along — and if nothing else, know that you’d be supporting new writers and filling their days with rainbows and their nights with mariachi bands — then check out the Siren’s posts here and here.
But that is not all! No, because if I’m in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound and I think I will actually occasionally mention what I’m reading and whether I like it and why. See, a little while ago on the Upstart Crow Blog, Chris Richman asked what we had most enjoyed reading in 2009 — and it would have been really convenient if I had ever made any record of what I’d read rather than trying to dredge it up from the polluted crevices of my memory, which grows ever more unreliable as I soak it in ginger wine and rum.
On the other hand, I believe — as I always have — that we are in some way the sum total of our experiences and those experiences include the books we read.* In that sense, I have never lost a book because it has embedded itself in some small part of who I am. I am the walking library of my life.
*Including some we wish we hadn’t. For instance, if I could carve out the bit of my brain that read Running With Scissors, I would.
