reading resolutions

As January draws to a close, it's really my last chance to blog about New Year's resolutions, so here they are before the time runs out.


1) Blog more. This is one of those things like 'exercise more' or 'eat healthily' that crop up over and over again but rarely eventuate. But all the same I'd like to blog more regularly this year. And leave comments on other blogs, rather than lurking as usual.


2) Read at least one book from every continent (apart from Antarctica). My reading tends to be very dominated by, roughly in order, England, the US and Australia. So in order to mix things up a bit I've set this target, I think it's pretty easily achievable but I don't really have a plan of attack. Any recommendations (particularly for books from Africa and Asia, which I don't come across often) greatly appreciated! It can be difficult to define a book's 'nationality', so I'm using these guidelines- author's nationality + setting of book + language originally published in must all be from a country in that continent. There are a whole bunch of different ways you could do this, I thought this way would be interesting.


That's it really. We'll see how I go with those. In the mean time, in aid of 1 I have been thinking about posts on trilogies, folk tales and brunch. Not sure how many of those will make it into coherent post form, wait and see!

Comments

  1. Unknown3/2/11 18:59

    I'd recommend, Song for Night (Chris Abani), its the story of a West African child soldier.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Catie4/2/11 11:11

    Do you have a copy I could borrow? :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown6/2/11 22:13

    Yep, I'll bring it to church with me next Sunday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12/2/11 14:15

    yeah, more blog posts. Hear, hear!
    although, if you get a house I can see that there might be a host of distractions.

    On the topic of the thread - I think we have a variety of ethnic writing, mainly in the form of collected folk tales from Mongolia, China etc. The novel has a longer history in the west than elsewhere, so perhaps that contributes to the relative difficulty of finding foreign writing.

    How about "The Tale of Genji" from Japan? It was written about a thousand years ago, and is available free online. Also there is (available free online) the autobiography of the first Moghul emperor of India - The Baburnama. Said to be famously direct and personal in approach, and not at all shy about revealing the author and his peccadilloes. (Does the plural of "peccadillo" have an "e" I wonder?)
    If you are interested in either, I can email the relevant pdf file.
    D.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Catie14/2/11 11:16

    More blog posts- not doing well at that one so far!

    I always find folk tales from all over the world interesting. I have heard of 'The Tale of Genji', I'd be interested to read it, and that autobiography sounds fascinating. At the moment I am reading the writings of a court gentlewoman from late 10th/early 11th century Japan, which is very interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous16/2/11 00:55

    The Tale of Genji is on its way.
    D.

    ReplyDelete

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