All About Books discussion

This year, I want to reduce the number of unread books on my shelves, and I want to read more varied. Therefore, I have set up this challenge for myself, where I have set up 6 categories:
- Norwegian novel
- English novel
- Translated novel
- Non-fiction
- Short story
- Poem

Every month, I will pick something from my shelves that fits each of these categories, and I'll try to read those books in the course of that month.

By the end of the year, I'd like to have read:
- 20 Norwegian novels
1. Vårofferet
- 20 English novels
- 20 translated novels
- 20 non-fiction books
- 5 collections of short stories
- 2 poetry collections

January reading plan:

Norwegian: Vårofferet
English: The Golden House
Translated: Manaraga
Non-fiction: From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68
Short story: at least one story from Hardanger
Poetry: at least one poem from Dikt i umsetjing

"Devouring books"

There are people who boast themselves for "devouring books" and make plans for the new year reading.

The language of eating is often used to describe reading habits. If pressed for an explanation, one might say that to ‘devour’ books is to do something positive.

It implies intense appreciation on behalf of the reader, and suggests that books in themselves are enjoyable and delicious, like warm pastries.

I think the opposite. I strongly dislike this metaphor. Reading to me is an adventure and a choice, an act of social power and personal responsability.

Ben Jonson’s play "Poetaster" (1601), provides a graphic example. He wrote that aspiring authors should read:

"Not, as a Creature, that swallowes, what it takes in, crude, raw, or indigested; but, that feedes with an Appetite, and hath a Stomacke to concoct, divide, and turne all into nourishment."

The language of ‘nourishment’ gives this distinction a moral inflection. If reading matter remains indigested, Jonson suggested, one’s spiritual economy becomes clogged.

His work shows how the reading/eating discourse became a rhetorical code for claims to literary, social and religious distinction.

He wrote this five centuries ago. It's still worth following his advice today ...

Poetaster

I like your categories Maria - good reading to you in 2020!

Thank you, and thanks for drooping in!

I just finished my first book, Vårofferet. I won't go into detail about it here, since there's no translation of it anyway, but I enjoyed reading it.

I'm going to spend the weekend reading a book I need to read for a class and that I also need to deliver at the library last week ...

Good luck with your reading goals Maria.