A Fall New Release Reading Challenge Because I Love Setting Ridiculously Ambitious Reading Goals

It’s fall, which means crappy Dallas football, pumpkin bread, long shadows, cooler evenings and busy season in the publishing industry, i.e. a bunch of blockbuster, literary and eagerly anticipated fiction and non-fiction books are released. Not only am I in a reading slump of epic proportions, one of my three goals this year was to read more widely and, I have to confess, I haven’t lived up to that goal even a little bit. Because I know the only way to bust through this slump is to set a ridiculous goal I will kill myself trying to achieve, I will choose a book, fiction or non-fiction, from the current week’s releases to read and review. Okay, maybe review. My critical thinking muscles have gone soft. Here’s hoping there’s a book this fall that will fix that.

You may be thinking, “A book a week? How is that ambitious?” and you have a point. What’s difficult in this challenge is me choosing only new releases. I usually wait until a solid consensus has been reached about a book before I dive in. This is like seeing a movie before checking Rotten Tomatoes. Here I am, living on the edge.

HERE BE THE RULES. OKAY, GUIDELINES

Alternate between fiction and non-fiction as much as possible.
Read literary and mass market fiction, two genres I tend to avoid.
Re-issues are acceptable; example, the 25th anniversary edition of The Alchemist.
Paperback releases of last year’s books are acceptable as well, otherwise I’ll have to take out a loan or turn tricks to fund this ridiculously ambitious challenge.
No books over 500 pages. A book a week is challenge enough.

THE FIRST BOOK

The Children Act by Ian McEwan. I’ve never read McEwan before. Unless you count starting and abandoning Atonement. The Children Act has two things going for it; it’s 240 pages and literary.

 

 

Like this idea? Feel free to join in.