A Literary Call to Arms!

Even if you don't believe in New Years Resolutions, everyone tends to have their hopes and goals for the year. Something they want to have done more or less of by the end of the year, somewhere they want to be by the time another three hundred and sixty five days rolls around, even if it only manifests in general drive and ambition - A year is a fairly reasonable time to expect some kind of change. There's an illusion of length to it, but at the same time something in the back of your brain knows it's no time at all. This never ending tug of war between 'Ah, it'll be fine, we can do it tomorrow!' and 'No, what if tomorrow never comes!' is something that's familiar to us all, especially those who have spent any length of time as a student, and can more often lead to something being put off indefinitely than a snappy call to arms. My particular bugbear over the years has been reading. I used to devour books by the tree-load, my main characteristic if I was introduced to somebody was 'Oh, he reads. A lot.' with the emphasis very much there. I'd start a series, and not stop until I'd eaten my way through it all. More recently I started to shift my habit away from books, towards comics, but with the price of print comics ever rising, and me not quite being comfortable with reading them on digital platforms, even my comic book reading has slowly fallen by the wayside.

It's an aspect of myself that I find terribly depressing, yet at the same time can't seem to work up the willpower to correct. Now don't get me wrong, if I want to tear through a book series, I still can. Before A Dance With Dragons was released, I gave myself a good month to re-read the other books in the series so far before the newest volume hit. I did it in a week. I also managed to tear through the last half of Dracula in a couple of days, knowing that I wanted to see exactly where Mina's character was by the end of the book before I wrote a single word to this blog, and honestly... It felt good to be back in that mindset, and really good to be reading again. 

So good, in fact, that I've decided that I can use this platform for some mild personal betterment. 

Year on year, I always promise myself that I'm going to devote more time to reading and never do. Well, my dear friends, with your help, I shall! As of next month I'm going to be launching a monthly segment to the blog, where any one of you can suggest something for me to read, I'll pick the one I'm most interested in and once I've read it I'll do a little write up of anything I find interesting within it. There's only a few requirements I ask you to follow.

Please keep it to single books only. Not full series. You can suggest a single book within a series if you like, but I'm not going to sit here and promise that I'll get through a whole trilogy or more in a month.

While a general description of the book is entirely optional (you can give one if you like, but I figure that's something I can look up) what I would like with every submission is a suggestion of something that you'd like to see me give my perspective on when I tackle the write up. This can be pretty much anything you like, so long as it's related to the book, the author or the writing process, but I do want you to keep in mind that I'm not a literary critic. There are things I may miss, or gloss over, or simply not have the knowledge outside the narrative to do full justice too (see the last blog, and my confusion over the Order of the Dragon, which could have been rectified by a touch more research on Vlad the Impaler himself) but I'll give it a good go, and strive to produce something entertaining for you all at the very least!

I don't want to rule out non-fiction entirely, as who knows? I might learn something genuinely fascinating! But I do feel like keeping it to fiction and being able to discuss plot points, character motivation, etc. is going to give me more to sink my teeth into. So I'm not going to ban non-fiction, but just bare in mind unless the suggestion really catches my imagination, I'm probably going to favour fiction.

So, to summarise - If you want to bring a book to my attention, simply post the title of the novel and a suggestion for something to talk about in the eventual blog post somewhere that I can see it and I'll pick the one that most catches my eye every month, and get reading. It's that simple, and I'm sure isn't going to leave me vulnerable to a whole world of pain and torment. Because I can trust you guys, right?

Right?

Anyway, I'll be getting this whole thing started next month with one of my own picks! Seeing as February is the month of love, I'll be reading that epic tale of romance, intrigue and fishmen - H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth and pondering on what makes the Deep Ones such a popular presence in the Mythos that has built up around the writers work over the decades.

 I'll see you next month for that (and no doubt, a few posts inbetween), in the meantime though - Get those suggestions rolling in!