When I was younger I was never intimidated by big books, but I suppose 'big' is very subjective. For me, a really big book is anything that's 600 pages or more, and yet when I was younger reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was nothing, nor were the chunky latter two books in Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy. Lately the biggest book I've read is the conclusion to Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles, Winter.
For some reason, as I've gotten older, I've begun to find larger books incredibly intimidating and I'm not 100% sure why. I think I've been so eager to read as much as I can in one year because there's always so much I want to read and too little time to read it all in that I've let the big books on my TBR gather dust. Well not anymore! Some books have been on my TBR for far too long, and if I could cross even one of these books off my TBR this year I'd be a very happy bunny.
My lovely friend Natalie @ A Sea Change has sung the praises of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell many times, but I still haven't read my copy despite owning it for a few years now - it has footnotes, for Heaven's sake! I've heard so many readers praise it as a masterpiece, however, so I need to read it soon.
I'm not the biggest fan of Stephen King's writing, especially when he writes about the supernatural - so far Misery is the book of his I've enjoyed most - but I adored the 2017 adaptation of IT so much that I'd really like to give the book a shot. It's just so huge...
This year will mark nine years since I bought my copy of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. Nine years. I love a good ol' revenge story and I've actually tried to read this one a couple of times and haven't been able to get into it. One of these days I need to give it another try and, if it still isn't for me, it's time to send my edition off to a more loving home.
Despite being a proud northerner and a lover of Victorian literature, I'm ashamed to admit I've yet to read any Elizabeth Gaskell. One of these days I'm going to read North and South because I love the 2004 adaptation starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe, but Wives and Daughters is the one that's really calling to me because I've heard so many good things about it. I particularly like that it features a friendship between two stepsisters at the centre of it - step-families have something of a bad reputation in fiction!
I fell in love with Italy when my friend Elena and I visited Rome in 2015, and I've since been lucky enough to visit Florence and Bologna, too. Italo Calvino has selected and retold a variety of stories in Italian Folktales - there are just so many crammed into one book that the idea of starting it makes me feel a bit nervous! I think it's a book I might have to work my way through over an extended period of time.
I've said time and time again how much I want to start Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, particularly as I'd like to watch the TV adaptation, but the series is so long and each book is so big that it seems like such a huge commitment. One of these days, though, I'd at least like to cross the first book off my TBR and see what I think of the series.
The shortest book on this list, Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings is still a fairly chunky one at just over 600 pages. I was very kindly sent this one for Christmas by Lorraine @ Insanity Sandwich and was thrilled to receive it as I'm very eager to explore more Asian and African-inspired high fantasy. This is one I'm hoping to cross off my TBR very soon!
Another one I've had on my list for a few years now, as a historical fiction fan I'm ashamed to admit I've yet to read any Sharon Kay Penman. Here Be Dragons is a novelisation of Joan, Lady of Wales (also known by her Welsh name, Siwan) who was the illegitimate daughter of King John and was married to the Welsh Prince Llywelyn the Great (or Llywelyn ap Iorwerth). I've been fascinated by her ever since I learned about her which is particularly frustrating because so little about her is actually known. This is another one I'd like to cross off my list sooner rather than later!
Are you intimidated by big books? Which larger books would you like to cross off your TBR?
Last year I made a fairly substantial list of resolutions and, sadly, three of them I failed: I didn't manage to read a series (although I tried); I didn't read the rest of Shirley Jackson's novels; and I completely failed at not buying any books that weren't published in 2017, although that was always going to be tricky. I did, however, manage to go cruelty-free with my makeup, read more than twelve authors of colour and my work/play balance was much better than it was in 2016.
This year I'm not really giving myself any strict resolutions because they just don't work for me - even going cruelty-free was more of a life choice than anything else - but there are a couple of things I'd like to do that I thought I'd talk about now that 2018 is officially here!
Rather than giving myself resolutions I've decided to make a '30 Before 30' list which, as the name implies, is a list of 30 things I'd like to do before I turn 30 in 2021. Some of them are little things - such as baking a rainbow cake - and some of them are a little more challenging - such as visiting every continent, which is mainly going to come down to whether or not I can afford all those holidays. The answer: probably not, but a girl can dream.
The main bookish challenge I've set myself, though, is to have read 100 authors of colour by the time I reach 30. I recently went through my Goodreads shelves and realised I haven't even read a quarter of that amount which, considering I'm 26, is appalling and really makes me realise just how white my childhood reading was. Thank goodness diversity in children's books is being promoted so much more now.
I've made a list here and, each time I read a new author of colour, I'm going to add them to that list so I can keep track of my progress. This is for individual authors, not for books written by authors of colour, so I need to have read 100 different books by 100 different authors of colour. That's not going to stop me from reading more work from authors of colour I already love, of course!
My only other resolution, which is something I'd like to do this year and beyond, is to stop being intimidated by the bigger books on my shelves. It's so easy to become obsessed with the amount we read and ticking as many books off our TBRs are possible, but I want to really enjoy reading again and I want to go back to being the kind of reader who would see a 700 page book and get excited, not nervous that it would take up too much time and halt my reading progress.
There are quite a few books on my shelves that have been waiting to be read for a while now and I keep putting them off for shorter books, but not this year! I'm going to be talking about some of those books in another post on Friday, so come back then if you'd like to know more about them, and if I can cross even one of those off my TBR this year I'll be a happy camper.
And if I don't read any big books or I don't read as many authors of colour as I'd like to (though I hope I will!) I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Reading's supposed to be fun and reading challenges are supposed to be fun, too.
Have you made any bookish (or non-bookish!) resolutions for 2018? What are your reading plans for the year? Let me know down below!
