Shelfie Skelfie Challange

It's look back at the year time again. Every New Year I set myself a challenge for the year ahead. Last year I set two challenges, one large, one small. One I achieved and one I failed.

I'll start with the one I failed on. It was to play chess at least once a week. On January 1st 2015 when I set it I thought it was small but would be good for me.   Because my husband worked away during the week I reckoned it would be a skoosh to play my phone. I enjoy playing chess and with my phone set to easy I could even be assured of a win. In the first couple of months I did play, but there is something quite demoralising about sitting alone on a wet, dark February night before a log fire, playing a Blackberry at chess. I gave up, there seemed no point to the challenge and I never regretted the decision to quit.

Shelfie 31st December 2014

The second challenge was greater and harder - I would not buy a book for myself in 2015. This might not seem hard for most folk but I am a confirmed biblioholic. I can't stop buying books!  At the beginning of 2015 I had a whole bookcase filled with books I had bought over many years and never read (I have more in another bookcase, but more of that later). Over the course of the year I would work my way through the bookcase and use the local library.

I am happy to say I did succeed in not buying any books (ebooks included) for myself, although I did buy a few gifts and download one free ebook to allow me to take part in a Global Reading Salon event.

So how big a challenge was this really?  It was huge!  So difficult. The first thing to happen was I attended two great lectures at my mountaineering club. The first was given by John Allen, about the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team. His book Cairngorm John sounded brilliant but I couldn't buy it. Luckily one of the other club members owned a copy and loaned it to me.

The second lecture was given by hill runner Manny Gorman. This was a worse situation because Manny is a friend, I really wanted to buy his book. I had to apologise to him and explain the situation.  He came up with the solution. My novel Ways of the Doomed was due to be published in June 2015. We would swap books. Perfect.

This leads me onto the main problem I had. Many of my friends are writers who, like me, were launching books in 2015.  I wanted to support them as they supported me but couldn't buy their books. I leave this year with a list of books I must buy from these friends.

Shelfie July 2015 (books on top left are loans and gifts)

Everyone has been very understanding of my challenge. Many people bought me books as gifts, other loaned me books.  My local library has been a saviour providing me with much needed research books and new releases I couldn't live without.

I have to admit that I haven't finished all the books I took from the bookcase during the year. The larger tomes like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Alan Bennett's Untold Stories are at my bedside but are ongoing reads along with shorter works.  I consider this challenge to be a success.

Shelfie 31st December 2015 (still some to read!)

In 2016 my reading challenge will be to work my way through the rest of these books and my 'Want to Read' list in Goodreads, (including some of the books from other shelves) but for now I will be heading out when the bookshops open in January and I will buy myself a book.

Guest Post by Alice-Catherine Jennings, Poet, Reader, Medievalist

Epic-mania in the Global Reading Group: How It All Began

We all have those books, right? The ones that are always on your “must read” list but never quite make it to the top—year after year.  Mine was The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. It seemed like every time I read a poem, a story, a novel, Dante’s name would pop up.  Good grief! There was even a reference to The Inferno on Mad Men.

It was time to get to the bottom of this Dante thing. Oh, I wasn’t totally clueless.  I had read snippets of it in high school. I knew it was about sin and punishment and that Hell had nine levels. Yet, what else was I missing? Why do so many writers refer back to this epic work of literature?

This would be the year, the year to read Dante. The timing was perfect. It was March 2013 and it was Lent.  I could begin now and end on Easter Sunday.  I had a deadline but I needed a support group. My memories of Dante weren’t favorable. I thought the reading would be a slog—something that one endures because it good for you, like getting your teeth cleaned.  I needed people to keep me accountable.

But where could I find these other readers? My family said, “No way” and close friends said they were busy. They had other books to read. It was time to clean their closets, file their nails.  I decided to look further afield, to mine my Facebook nation. I posted and posted and sent out invitations. At first, the response was tepid but steadily it grew.  

Forty-five! I could not believe it.  By the start date, my original idea had morphed into a literary salon of forty-five members. It was all so exciting. We would journey to Hell together, with Dante and Virgil (more on him later) as our guides.

We considered form, mythology and structure. The architects in the group gave us their version of the construct of Hell. We thought about the worst of the worst and whom we would put in Hell’s lowest circle. All in all, it was a terrific read.

At the end of month, the group asked, what’s next? “What’s next?” I never considered the reading group to be an ongoing thing. I just wanted to read Dante. Anyway, that’s how we got hooked on the classics, especially the epics. Dante led to Virgil and Virgil to Homer and Homer to Beowulf and so on. The list of future salons continued to grow—and, so too did the readership. For the Beowulf salon, there were over 65 members. The average group size, however, is 35.

At last count, there have been more than 350 participants (including many, many repeats) from 15 different countries worldwide.  Although I do not know everyone personally in the salons any longer, I do sense a personal connection to each and every reader.

What attracts folks to the classics? I imagine there are as many reasons as there are readers but I suspect there is a yen for an opportunity to reflect on the things that are elemental, universal and important—the things that make us human. And, the stories are good, really good.

Each month The Global Reading Group reads one classic work of literature. For the schedule and how to join, visit: www.alicecatherinej.com.

Alice-Catherine Jennings is a student in the MFA Program in Writing at Spalding University.  Her poetry has appeared in In Other Words: Merida, Hawai’i Review, Penumbra, The Louisville Review, Boyne Berries and is forthcoming in First Literary Review East. She is the recipient of the U.S. Poets in Mexico 2013 MFA Candidate Award. Alice-Catherine divides her time between Austin, Texas and Oaxaca, Mexico.