Reading Plans for 2022 and Beyond! 

To the casual observer (or casual reader/visitor in this case) my reading can see a little chaotic, unstructured or just plain bizarre. But, deep, deep down there is something approaching a plan or at least some sort of structure to my reading. Part of that can be divined by the list of Labels over on the right-hand side. These are topic areas that keep coming up time and again or – for those closely observing – topics that I anticipate will be appearing more often in future. Then, of course, we have the years long ‘staples’ that I’ve been working on for a while and am honing ever closer to ‘perfection’ - before I change my mind completely and dash off in another direction. So... 

Following the Labels 

My grand ‘World Tour’ of my labels has stalled in Greece (I can think of worse places!) but will be moving along again as soon as things have settled down a bit. Two more books to come from there before moving onto India and Ireland. If things go really well, I might get as far as Italy this year. 

The ‘Knowledge Streams’ 

Although the three knowledge streams are still a definite focus for me - ‘England Alone’, ‘World War to Cold War’ and ‘USA:WTF’ - last year was a bit of a bust in all three areas. I ‘started’ the England Alone pile and have another one in the area coming up but it’s off to a slow start. ‘World War/Cold War’ hasn’t really got off at all so far but will start this year with the D-Day landings and the Liberation of France. Gotta start ‘somewhere’, right? ‘USA:WTF’ is a much more, non-linear, target to pin down and I’d had a few scattershot entries in that area. There will be a somewhat more focused set of books – roughly 6-8 – coming up this year. 

Wild Cards 

I’m still enjoying the ‘wild card’ feature I introduced a while back and this will continue. The ‘probabilistic’ side of things – where I essentially role a dice each time I finish a book to see if I will insert a random read – is on hold for a while due to other constraints (explained below) but will be coming back later in the year. 

Finishing/Progressing Series 

I’m still working on this and am coming to the end of the Sharpe series of books and will also be finishing off a few more trilogies shortly. I’m planning on reading the rest of the first Dune trilogy this year as well as finally starting a re-read of the Foundation series. I’ll be progressing as many other unfinished series as I can including a few more in the Agatha Christie ‘Miss Marple’ series of books.  

Bigger Books & reducing the Review Pile 

I’ve been making an effort both to read bigger books (my aim was for an overall average page count of 350pp) and of getting the review pile down to a reasonable size. I have been so successful that I’m suspending reading particularly large books for a while before my review pile crashes into the floor and I have nothing to review. Presently holding at 4 books – or 2 weeks of reviews – I'm working on pushing this back up to 6-7 so that I have some ‘fat’ in there to allow me to take a week to read a large book or really concentrate on a difficult read without the ‘danger’ of having nothing to report on for a while. That being so, I’m presently concentrating on shorter or faster reads for a few months. Things will appear to be somewhat more chaotic than usual! 

Awards 

I’m enjoying reading Award Winning books so this will definitely continue especially as it's introducing me to new authors and books that I might not have picked up to try. 

Continuing as Usual 

Naturally on top of all of the above I’ll be read my usual eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction from a whole host of genres and sub-genres as fancy takes me. I’m aiming to read 5 classics this year which should be easily achieved. I’m trying to read books – both fiction and non-fiction – based before the 19th Century which is challenging me. I am, being me, ‘playing’ with my reading by coupling fiction/non-fiction combinations which look like fun. Plus, I still haven’t quite finished my ‘Man Vs Machine’ set but should be mid-year at the very latest before moving onto a set of novels based in and around WW1. It’s going slower than expected but it is going... If I get HALF of this done, I’ll be both pleased and impressed. I guess that we’ll see.