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Reading challenge - 2015 - 2017

Reading challenge - 2015 - 2017

A "Reading Challenge" floated about the 'net some two years ago. At first I'd been thrilled by the idea: of course! I always want to broaden my horizons. But upon seeing the weird selection criteria like "a book with at least 500 pages" or "a book written by an author with your initials", I'd realized it doesn't suite me at all: I'm not impressed by the arbitrary criteria, and the most challenging part seemed to be fitting the books I'd have read anyway into them. I'd bring my usual (even if subconscious) selection biases with me.

So after pondering it a bit, I came up with an alternate scheme: I'd ask my friends on Facebook to recommend me:

  1. short stories (so I'd actually have time to read them),
  2. that are available for free,
  3. that they liked, regardless of the genre or topic

Many people interpreted those freely, and I got a lot of recommendations for books, collections of stories, et cetera. Skipping some of the books, I compiled the rest into a bundle, added some stories of my choosing, and sent it to my Kindle.

Last year, when I considered my challenge, I've abandoned this idea, thinking that the same people would probably respond. This time around, I've decided to catch up with my long unfinished reading.

2015

The majority of the stories were, in no particular order:

  • I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov. (This was a collection, but a really good one. As expected from Asimov.)
  • The Vampyre - A Tale, by John William Polidori. To quote Goodreads:

The Vampyre was the first vampire story in English prose, and as such had a wide-ranging influence, almost singlehandedly creating the now-popular image of the vampire as an aristocratic seducer.

So well worth the read for the historical importance alone.

  • Seraphina - The Audition, by Rachel Hartman.
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy de Orci
  • The Crocodile - An Extraordinary Incident, by Fiodor Dostoyevskij
  • Sanguine Skies - Kremík. This one was written by a friend for a competition; he didn't put it anywhere online, though. Pity, because I quite liked it.
  • Chmúra a Uatsn na stope Svätému Grálu fyziky, by Róbert Hric. This one is in Slovak and sorry, I'm not even going to attempt translating it.

A couple also served as language practice. Here with original names:

  • Morální aspekty zavařování snů, by Eliška Pavlásková. The name translates to "The Moral aspects of pickling dreams".
  • Гробовщик, by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. The short story is translated as "The Undertaker".
    As a great testament to my language skills 🙃 serves the fact that I'm still not a hundred percent sure what that word even means. English translator translated it as "The Undertaker", the Slovak and Czech translations are equivalent to "The Owner of a Funeral Parlor" and the Russian Wictionary seems to define it as "one who specializes in manufacturing coffins". So I'm going with that, I guess.

Only while writing this post have I noticed that I've completely missed the note recommending "Life and death of Harriett Frean", by May Sinclair. I'll have to add it to this year's challenge, then. :)

I'd enjoyed most of these stories, and even if I hadn't - I'd at least have tried something new.

2016

Last year, I decided I'll just stick to my classic "read 50 books" challenge. I've ended up reading a little over 70, but most of that were audiobooks. Seems I have way too much time where I can listen to a book, but can't read a paper one.

Since it's quite a lot, I plan to look at the entire list and refresh my memory; maybe I'll discover something I've missed.

2017

This year I decided to keep it simple and finally finish some of the books I'd started reading, but somehow never finished, plus some of those I'd borrowed and would like to return.

Among these are:

  • The Manga Guide to Calculus, by Hiroyuki Kojima and Shin Togami. I've bought this a few years back out of curiosity, not expecting much, even though it had good reviews. But I was surprised: the 'story' part was fun enough to make me want to read more of it, and the 'math' part actually made me understand math.
  • Grimms' Fairy Tales, by Brothers Grimm
  • Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelly
  • Paradise Lost, by John Milton
  • A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
  • Life and death of Harriett Frean, by May Sinclair
  • Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Omnibus 2), by H. P. Lovecraft
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
  • The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
  • 2014 Campbellian Anthology, assembled by M. David Blake. It's an awesome anthology, "containing more than 860,000 words of fiction by 111 authors". Some are veritable gems. I'd kept short notes on each of the story as I'd read them, and intend to continue.
  • Údolie ľalií, by Alexandra Pavelková (SK)
  • Zmierenie alebo Dobrodružstvo pri obžinkoch, by Ján Palárik (SK)
  • Some other story of Pushkin's, to practice Russian

It may not be a very long list, but some of those books will be challenging for me, and the Campbellian Anthology is so large, I don't actually expect to finish the whole thing this year.

I'm really looking forward to all of them.

Cover image taken from here.

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