A new year has dawned. The time has come for writing resolutions, starting diets, and vowing to drink less. Since this coming year promises to be more than a little challenging on the university front (among other things I have to write an 18 000 word dissertation on a yet-to-be-decided (and has-to-be-chosen-by-the-end-of-February) topic) I’ve decided I won’t be writing resolutions for 2014. Instead of promising to lose weight, take up yoga, or learn a new language (all things at which I do not excel) I’m going to start one teeny, tiny little reading challenge. I’m taking up the Classics Club challenge, where members elect to read at least fifty classics over the course of no more than five years (see, I told you it was tiny). Since you’re invited to set your own goal, I’ve decided to aim to read one hundred classics by the beginning of 2019. This means that even if I fall behind this year I’ll still have time to make it up in the years to come.
I’m hoping that doing this will mean that come the end of January I won’t find myself in a bookshop, offensively colourful new yoga mat in one hand and celery stick in the other, wearily trying to decide between Do-it-Yourself-Italian and Learn-by-Sound-Spanish, either of which will inevitably end up, one month later, covered in dust and shoved under my bed so it doesn’t clutter up the bookshelf. Instead, I will be reading books that have been on my shelves for years, that I have downloaded for free off the internet, or that I have borrowed from the library (which is a wonderful way of saving shelf-space, though if I’m entirely honest there’s been more than one library book that’s ended up in the dark space under my bed – but only by accident, never by design, I swear).
I can’t promise the results will be pretty, but if you want to follow along with the challenge, here are some links:
The full list | All Classics Club Challenge posts | The list at Goodreads
(majoring in literature) 
2 replies on “New Year’s Resolution”
Your resolution is music to my ears! As an English teacher, I lament the dearth of books read by teenagers, by anyone… I read a huge number of classics when doing my literature degree but all were from the English speaking world, so I embarked on a my own reading challenge to read the French and Russian classics (have neglected others!)
Please pass on any recommendations or reviews :)
Will do! I must admit a lot of the titles I’ve read so far are mostly English. I’ve tried to pick a few more translations, especially Russian and French, but there is an overwhelming number of English books I still want to read as well.