Reading Challenges 2014: introductory post

Happy New Year to all of you who use the Gregorian Calendar. 🙂

Seems I have some sort of lung infection thing as I’ve been coughing my guts out (quite literally) for the last few weeks and for the last few days haven’t been able to go up or down the stairs without having a coughing fit/ not being able to breathe for a few seconds.

I’m rooting for my lungs to get better as it’s put a damper on the festive period.

Enough doom and gloom! It’s time to roll out a list of reading challenges that look epic and that I’m going to try to make time for this year!

First of all, Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge, which I’ve already done a post about, but am excited enough to mention multiple times. 🙂

The aim of this 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.

I’m aiming for the ‘honeymooner’ level, which entails reading and reviewing 4 books that comply with the above guidelines. That’s one book every 3 months, which is do-able.
The 2nd challenge is The Eclectic Reader 2014 Challenge, the aim of which “is to push you outside your comfort zone by reading up to 12 books during the year from 12 different categories.”

I’m not entirely sure which books I’ll read for it, but if I can get my hands on a copy of any of the books in the Adèle Blanc-Sec series, then I’ll definitely read it for the ‘Graphic Novel’ category.

Or should I read Sandman?

Everyone recommends the latter and I do enjoy Neil Gaiman’s writing style, but then Adèle Blanc-Sec has got a really strong female character (namely Adèle) and strong female characters are always a pleasure to read.

Decisions, decisions…

The 3rd challenge that looks really exciting is Words and Peace’s ‘Books on France 2014’. The rules are simple: read any book related to France.

So essentially any book that is;

it can be set in France,
written by a French author,
written in French (not Canadian French), by authors from any country
about a French theme: French cuisine (how the French influenced American cuisine is accepted for instance), French fashion, etc.
it can be a book read for another challenge

There are 5 levels and I’m going to aim for level 3, called ‘passionnément’, for which one has to read and review 12 books.

The final challenge that really grabbed my interest is caffeinatedlife’s Everything España: a 2014 Reading Challenge.

As caffeinatedlife points out, even though Spain has produced some very fine writers, there aren’t as many challenges based around their works. I’m also taking part in this because although I read a fair amount of journal articles about Hispanic socio-linguistics, I tend to forget to read books that are set the country or written by a Spaniard as opposed to a Latin-American.

That will change this year as I’m going to read between 1-4 books in Spanish that are written by a Spanish author or set in Spain.

NB. If you want to take part in the challenge, you don’t have to read a book that’s actually written in Spanish, I’d just prefer to read books written in Spanish.

It sounds like very few books, especially when compared to the 12 French books I’m aiming to read and review, but I feel less confident reading fiction in Spanish, so even reading 3 feels pretty darn daunting right now.

I’ll officially sign up to the challenges and catch up with peoples’ blogs in the next 24 hours: have many things around the house to do before I go back to Uni. for the semester. DX