A small slice of a Reading Challenge

Consider this to be the Introduction to my Landing Tales Reading Challenge, albeit a brief one (partly because it is getting late and I am tired after tinkering overlong with WordPress widgets). Over in the Prologue you will find a bit of background explaining the reason behind the Landing Bookshelves name and what I’m planning (nay, optimistically hoping) to do with the challenge in due course. Basically this whole blog will be an elaborate mechanism for tackling my ever-growing TBR Pile, by beginning with the landing book shelves. As I mentioned in The Prologue I will leaven the Reading Challenge reports with other arts and culture related posts from my various activities.

The whole Landing Reading Challenge hinges on the literary contents of my (or more properly, our) landing book shelves of which there are three in number. As I said in the Prologue, the book cases contain mainly classics, poetry, literary fiction and children’s titles, but there is also a selection of old reference and non fiction volumes. I plan to read my way through as many of the unread books as possible and maybe even re-read some old favourites as I go along. This is going to be a Reading Challenge without too many rules however, for various reasons. One of the reasons is that I have to admit that the reference volumes are the sticking point to my grand plan. Another reason is that the contents of the shelves may not necesarily be static as the books get re-arranged from time to time (I find that re-arranging livens up the tedium of dusting).

The largest of the reference volumes in the book cases is a copy of the Western Union Telegraph Code (International Cable Directory Company, 1917) and I really can’t see me getting very far with that. At a pinch I might get part of the way through a Dictionary of Banking  (Waverley Book Company, 1911) but a much more realistic reading proposition is A Second Treasury of the World’s Great Letters (Heinemann, 1950). I love reading old letters and I have previously skimmed through this collection. I think I might have to allow a certain amount of dipping into volumes in cases such as these where it is more pleasurable to browse than doggedly to read through from beginning to end.

So it only remains for me to decide how and where to start the TBR Pile. It might be simplest to employ the equivalent of sticking a pin into a map; I  could just close my eyes and grab whatever comes to hand. This will be either the shortest or the longest Reading Challenge I have ever done depending on my literary stamina.

Either way I will choose a book, get challenged,  and feature the results in the next post.

Watch this space….

P.S – Fill me in on any of your challenges (reading or otherwise) – I’d love to hear from you.  And let me know about your TBR Pile too…