2020 Blogging Projects #1: Currently Reading List

One of my resolutions for the New Year is to start writing regularly at Shared Universe Reviews. In order to help me stay focused and to help accomplish my goals, I’ve thought up three projects. This is the first.

I have a secret shame that isn’t so secret, since it’s broadcasted on the internet. However, the internet is so full of publically shared secrets that I’m sure this particular guilt trip of mine is flying so low under the radar that I’m certainly the only one that knows about it. Yes, you guessed it, it’s my To Be Read pile of books. Specifically, the number of books I’m currently reading which easily surpasses a dozen books. As you can guess, I’m not actually reading over a dozen books with any kind of regularity. They’re mostly books that have been abandoned that I still want to finish reading (as opposed to books that have been deliberately abandoned, a rare event thought it does happen).

I keep track of my TBR books using Goodreads. I have 17 books that I’ve started to read and haven’t finished, according to their Currently Reading tag. The majority of those books I was enjoying and stopped reading for one reason or another, often distractions. I’m a very distracted reader. I can’t wait to get on to the next great book so sometimes I stop what I’m reading and start reading the next thing. The result is often that the first book get abandoned.

One of my goals for blogging again in 2020 is to pick up those books again and keep reading. Some of them I will literally just pick up where I left off and keep going, either because it’s still fresh in my mind due to being abandoned no more than a few months ago. Others because of the format of the book (the anthologies or the encyclopaedic style of The World of Ice & Fire). Most of these I’ll have to start from scratch.

From the list of 17, I think most of them have a very good chance of being read and written about in 2020 since they overlap with some of the other New Year’s Resolution projects I’ve thought up to help me get back to writing at SUR. Those other projects include reading 30 volumes of comics that I own that have yet to be read. The other is the Book Bingo card which will include an entire column on the bingo card dedicated to books that are on my Currently Reading list at Goodreads.

Despite this, a few titles on this list are worrisome and have a chance of not being read in their entirety. I’m thinking the Year’s Best anthologies edited by Hartwell and Cramer, and The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by the VanderMeers. I have no writing goal directly related to them, though I supposed I could do Short Story Sunday segments with them. Even so, The Big Book really is big and that could keep me busy reading and writing for a year all on its own. Here’s another reminder that all of these writing projects are far too ambitious and I’m setting myself to burn out or run away scared before I even start writing anything.

Here is the list of books on my Currently Reading list, in no particular order. Books I started reading more recently are in bold text.

1) Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation by Yoshiyuki Tomino

2) Pyramids (Discworld, #7) by Terry Pratchett

3) Cartoon History of the Universe I, Vol. 1-7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great by Larry Gonick

4) The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, Elio M. García Jr., and Linda Antonsson

5) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

6) Year's Best SF 16, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

7) Year's Best Fantasy 2, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

8) The Big Book of Science Fiction by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

9) Tales of the Batman: Len Wein by Len Wein et al

10) Les Voleurs du Marsupilami (Spirou et Fantasio, #5) by André Franquin

11) The Iliad by Homer

12) The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with assistance from Christopher Tolkien

13) Great Dialogues of Plato by Plato

14) Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings by René Descartes

15) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

16) Cannon by Wallace Wood

17) L'école des Robinsons by Jules Verne (English title Godfrey Morgan)

Not many readers I know personally have a similarly small attention span when it comes to reading books. I tend to jump around a lot. It’s gotten worse since having children as I find I have less time to read, but my desire to read as many books is the same. It makes me impatient and instead of finishing what I’m in the middle of reading, I slam that book shut and pull down another one from the shelf.

Do you have similar reading happens or are you completely dedicated to whatever book you’re in the middle of until you’re done? Do you have any reading goals of your own for 2020? Tell me in the comments section.