a resolution I can keep
Whether or not you are a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, the fact remains that many of us make them and few managed to keep up the good effort for more than a few days to weeks.
Then along comes an idea that is just made for signing up and actually completing. The Flashback Challenge, started by Aarti, a young Chicago book lover, is based on a Robertson Davies (you know, the Canadian novelist, author, journalist, professor) quote -
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
The Challenge is simple – go, sign up, and commit yourself to re-reading somewhere between 3-12 books from earlier times in your life. If really ambitious, there is nothing stopping you from reading more. Three books in a year, that is not an overwhelming number. You don’t even have to decide which books right now. Read during the year. If you have energy, you could even use each as the subject for a blog post; you could right a review.
I haven’t decided which books yet, but I am going to re-read classic children’s literature and what I consider true early classics of SF/Fan. Perhaps a bit of Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain or Kenneth Grahame (if your mind just went blank - Wind in the Willows was first published in 1908). Then there are the books I read as they were being published in my childhood and early teens by Andre Norton, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Walter M Miller, and Ursula Le Guin.
Yes, there are a lot of new and very interesting books being published. Perhaps by doing this and writing about it someone else will become interested in a particular book. It couldn’t hurt.
And you know what is really special about my plan? It is totally and completely vampire romance free…….
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