European Reading Challenge 2014

A new post! Huzzah!

This one is about Rose City Reader’s European Challenge. I’ve done it once before, back in 2011 (my goodness, it’s hard to believe that so much time has passed) and really enjoyed it as it led to the exploration of entirely different shelves of the library.

The aim is to read and review a minimum of 1 book that’s either set in Europe (irrespective of where the author’s from), or whose author is from a country in Europe. And darn, are the authors of some countries prolific: it’s now estimated that 10% of all Icelanders have written and published a book at some point. A statistic that seems a little less improbable when you hear that in 2010 alone, 1,100 of new publications in Iceland were written by Icelanders (the country has around 320,000 inhabitants).

Pointless but shiny statistics are shiny. 🙂

Just to keep things light and, well, not too daunting, I’m aiming for the ‘honeymooner’ level, which entails reviewing 4 books that comply with the above guidelines. That’s one book every 3 months, which is do-able.

My main aim is to get back into the habit of reading more widely as I do feel as though I’ve stagnated in the last 12 months- I’ve barely read 90 books that aren’t related to my course, which is slightly galling as in 2012, I managed 151. I shall conquer this, I shall!