2019 Reading Year In Review
Well hello and welcome back to slowscholarship.com, where we do things slowly (obviously) and pedantically (of course). I’d like to share the results of my self-imposed 12 Books a Year Challenge, as I have recently posted the last book-review(-ish) blog for that Challenge. I am going to read 12 Books again this year, it’s going to be my thing. I find I need this much time not only to read worthwhile books, but also to absorb them.
2019 Planned Books———————————–> 2019 Substituted Books
Jan – The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
Feb – Diary of a Nobody, W.&G. Grossmith
[Middlemarch] ————————————>The Unbearable Lightness of Being
April – Night and Day, V. Woolf
May – Wolf Hall, H. Mantel
June [The Blazing World] ———————–>The Idiot E. Batuman
July A Clergyman’s Daughter
August [Ich, Helena von Troja]——————>Alice in Wonderland
Sept – The Wasteland T.S. Eliot
Oct – The Persians, Aeschylus
Nov – Cold Comfort Farm
Dec – De Rerum Natura, Lucretius————–>Schadenfreude, R. Schuman
Therefore, for the most part, I stuck to my plan. I am quite proud of myself for seeing it through, and writing a bit about each book on this blog, even though I went overtime and into 2019. It’s not a problem. There were about 4 months scattered throughout 2019 where I read nothing or did not write anything, I think I am a bit more hooked and can stay on top of it this year, because now I do see that there is a world of books that I can relax with. At the end of the year I really did go for shorter books, as I realized in late December I still has four books to read. Hopefully this won’t happen in 2020, but I make no promises.
I had one DNF, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, which I have heard great things about, but nevertheless I will probably never attempt it again. I just could NOT get on with the narrator Lucy Snow although the language, the writine was absolutely beautiful. When Lucy criticises her colleague into the ground for liking pleasurable things, like nice clothes and fun books (when life should just be a misery) I began to take against her (although now I do think she is meant to be a bit mentally ill). By the time Lucy has a tirade about how she would rather see a flower growing wild then ever see it picked (and I think she was being offered flowers at the time!) her not-like-other-girls pose had grated to the point of unendurability for me.
There are some books which I suppose are not read for pleasure, and really are meant to teach you about the (fairly gross) headspace of someone who is difficult to like, but even learning something was not worth it to me. Blech!! Imagine the complete opposite of sunny Anne Shirley and you’ve got Lucy Snow who rather hopes for the worst. And she can’t get what she wants in love, because she’s too homely, and she starts a horrid romance with an annoying guy just like her (match made in heaven indeed) where all they do is snark meanly at each other—that’s when I had to bow out. No regrets.
My Rating System:
DNF – Did not finish and chose a new book
1 Star – It was an okay experience to have read this book.
2 Star – This book was really enjoyable.
3 Star – This is a great book I really loved and I will need to have a copy accompanying me my whole life. Deserves at least a re-read.
The 12 Books, Rated:
DNF: Villette
1 Star
The Canterbury Tales, Diary of a Nobody, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Night and Day, The Clergyman’s Daughter, Alice in Wonderland
2 Stars
Wolf Hall, The Idiot, The Wasteland (and Paris: a Poem), The Persians, Schadenfreude.
3 Stars
Cold Comfort Farm
There were other books too, you see, ones that were not planned but snuck in. Of these there were 7 good ones and 2 which I don’t consider high-brow (?) or taxing (?) enough or just which regard appropriate subject matter (they were both a little like the feeling of glimpsing road accidents, so wrong but you can’t look away). I will write about the 7 worthwhile ones in an upcoming blog post, also with ratings.
Things I discovered from this Year of Reading:
Not My Jam:
Chaucer in general, plaintive modern novels, womanizing male leads & sad Theresas (I knew this before, really), P.G. Wodehouse, taking-it-for-granted that socialism must be abused, self-praising one’s own pretty face (shudder), rich people in London (but rich people elsewhere are fine), reading in German (need to fix this!), Nonsense, talking animals, when babies fix everything.
Indeed My Jam:
Gentle supercilious humour, the idea of Virginia Woolf (perhaps more than the reality), Marxist ideals, FFM (forgotten female modernists), Modern poetry in general, satire, ancient Greek Classics (f yeah), books relating to academia (called it, I’m addicted).