reading goals – Brown Girl Reading

Overview: My reading in 2019

Quote: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…. The man who never reads only lives one.”

– George R.R. Martin

2020 has rolled in with a bang and I hope it’s going to be a good one and an excellent start to a new decade. I thought I’d take this time to reflect over my year of reading. That’s the best way to get rid of what isn’t working and to introduce some new things to refresh. For starters, my reading last year could best be described as “catch up reading”. I was doing fine last year until I fell down the stairs and broke my malleolus bone in June. That’s when everything went to pot. I wasn’t reading and nor was I journaling. My broken ankle took up all of my energy.

However, I did get through a few audiobooks, Queenie ♥ and On the Come Up ♥♥♥♥♥ and a quarter of A Book of American Martys which I hope to be rereading and finishing at some point this year. Once I could go back to work in September, that’s when things became hectic. Rescheduling and planning classes became the highlight of my day. It took a few weeks to get used to my schedule alongside physical therapy visits twice a week.

In October and November, I spearheaded a read along of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. What a pleasure that was! This was a fantastic read that I highly recommend and that I will surely reread one day. My Penguin Clothbound edition comes in at 1,276 pages, making it the longest book I read this year. November announced Nonfiction November, which is when I try to read at least 3 nonfiction novels. That was a fail, I only read one but an excellent one, The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ by Marita Golden. At the end of November I had the honor of attending a joint literary event in Paris with La Cene Littéraire and Book and Brunch. The event was in honor of Elanthan John winning Le Prix les Afriques for Born on a Tuesday. I was there to help with translation and it was a wonderful time. Elnathan John was very interesting and gave us all food for thought
on discussing why he writes in English among other topics.

From there the 3rd of December was the book launch of the anthology, Where We Started: Stories of Living Between Worlds edited by Alecia McKenzie and Anna-MariaBamberger, where you can find my first published short story called Sanctuary. We were five writers present at The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore in the 6th arrondisement of Paris and four reading an excerpt from our short stories. That was aproud moment for me. If you’re interested in reading this short story collection you can click here to purchase an ebook. From there December finished fairly quickly. Here’s where the catch up reading took place, from December 21 – December 28th, I found myself reading 6 books to finish the year. I had to take advantage that I could lie around reading most of the day. It was cold and there was no wifi so what’s left to do but read because French tv sucks! So I finished my year with Before We Were Yours ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ which really surprised me. I was sure I wouldn’t like it and I actually found it really quite good. I then went on to The Girl with the Hazel Eyes ♥ ♥ ♥ ∨, debut Caribbean writer, The Nickel Boys ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥, Red at the Bone ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥, In West Mill ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥, and finally Happy Parents ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ (a much needed comic by Zep). I couldn’t have ended my year of reading on a better note.

My reading stats according to Goodreads:

The Longest Book:

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

The Shortest Book:

Princess Arabella is a Big Sister – Mylo Freeman

Average length:

273 pages (This number needs to be higher!)

My average rating:

3.7 stars

Highest rated book I read on Goodreads:

Dear ancestors: Poems and Reflections on the African Diaspora ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Books read: (Pledged to read 50):

Pages Read: (This number needs to be higher too!)

16,113

So what’s the plan for my reading in 2020? Well I’m trying to keep things simple and tie up loose ends.

Read books on my shelves!
Read #backlistbooksbliss ♥
Finish up series if possible
Finish up fiction books from Toni Morisson – Love and Paradise and reread Sula, Roxane Gay – An Untamed State, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – Purple Hibiscus and The thing Around Your Neck
Read 100 books! This one is going to be quite the challenge. I’m not sure I’m going to make it, but I figure I need the push to see if I can do it. If I don’t oh well. I’ll try again next year.
Continue reading Caribbean Lit

What are your reading plans for 2020?

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year! Thank you for supporting the blog! 🙂

If you’d like to pick up a copy of any of my recommendations please consider clicking my affiliate link for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated. It will help fund my incessant book buying, reading, and reviewing. Thank you!

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Literary Goals in 2018

Hello All! I’m back and ready to write. I took a very significant break from this blog and from my YouTube channel. Needless to say, it was a lot. I was everywhere and nowhere and that wasn’t what I wanted. Having taken the time to reflect and to make some changes to my blog, I feel I’m more clear-headed about what I want to achieve through blogging. But before I tell you all about those goals, let me take you back briefly through my year reading in 2017 because despite not blogging I was reading.

Now my reading goals for 2017 were specific and sadly I didn’t accomplish them completely. However I’m still pretty happy about what I read and how much I read. I had a goal to read all of Bernice McFadden’s novels and I failed. I read all of her novels except, My Name is a Butterfly (out of print but is being released this year :)) and Finding Amos. I didn’t reread The Book of Harlan and Glorious. Although, I’m sure I’ll reread The Book of Harlan one day. As for the others I read for the first time, they were all very good and each had something special about them. They are like her children. McFadden really has a way with telling a story and inventing characters. Of all the ones I read I think Glorious is the book I least preferred and that was because I felt it was too short.

I encourage you all to take a year to read one author in order of publication. It’s a wonderful way to learn about writing and how an author hones her/his skills over time. We are all passionate readers but when we sit down to write we forget about the challenge of the exercise of writing. It’s not easy and it is quite a solitary activity for most of the time.

My next challenge was to read more Caribbean authors. Unfortunately I didn’t read as many as I wanted to, but I’m not giving up on that one. I also wanted to read more pages last year than I did in 2016 but failed at that too. I was short about 200 pages. Oh well but I read 59 books and almost got to the page count so I read more big books this year. That really showed for my Goodreads Big Book challenge last year when I read 13 and had pledged to read 10. I was really happy about that. I read some great big books and only 2 of them were disappointing – American Pastoral by Philip Roth and Small Great Things by Jodi Piccoult. Let’s just try not to dwell on those 2. Two duds out of 59 ain’t bad! Lastly I pledged to read at least one Russian novel and that just never happened. Every time I culled my shelves for something to read, I skipped right over the Russian novels – too daunting. One day…

Now on to my goals for 2018, I have set my Goodreads challenge to read 60 books this year. I usually set my goal at 50 and always go over. I hope this will push me to read more and watch less YouTube and television. I’m primarily looking forward to increasing my page count significantly. Next challenge will be to read more Caribbean authors. I hope to read at least ten. My last reading challenge is to participate in #readingblackout which is spearheaded by Denise D. Cooper at Art Books Live Denise D. Cooper on YouTube. She’ll be reading only African – American writers this year. I’ll be joining her for January, February, and March. I may join in again later on in the year. If you’re interested I encourage you to join in too if only for a month.

You know #readsoullit will be going on in February in honor of Black History Month as usual with a photo challenge on Instagram and a read along on YouTube. I’ll be posting on that shortly. Now another literary challenge will be for me to keep a bullet journal of my reading and my life and most of all to continue writing the novel I’ve been working on. I’d really liked to write more and to eventually get to the point where I finish something – short story collection, novel, etc. anything!

So that’s all on what I’m reading and on what I’m doing literary wise for the year. I hope I haven’t once again bitten off more than I can chew but I think I can make these challenges work for me. What about you? Have you decided to make any plans to read or to write something? Or are you one of those people who clams up once the challenge has been announced? If you are no worries. I can be like that sometimes too. You know I’m Fickle Fred. 😉

Happy New Year to you all!!! I wish you loads of excellent reading and writing in 2018!!!

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The Best Books of 2013

Well now that we’ve started 2014 and I’ve had the time to really reflect on my reading experience of 2013, I feel that it was pretty darn mediocre. I’d hoped to read more books that would wow me but that wasn’t the case. It was if I chose my books because they just fell in my lap. That’s not how I want to proceed with my book choices this year. You’ve already seen a select few of the big books I plan on reading this year, but just know that there will be more engaging and thought-provoking titles added to that list.

My reading goals of 2013 comprised:

1. reading more works of people of color

2. reading more classics

3. reading graphic novels

4. reading out of my comfort zone

I guess two out of four ain’t bad. I managed to do one and three, but only really read one book that was a little out of my comfort zone. So I know now what I need to concentrate on this year. I’d like to have a well-rounded reading year but most of all I want to read more books that really speak to me, move me. 2014 is the year of quality! I hope.

So, in no particular order, let’s take a look at my top ten best books of 2013:

Firstly we have the books by authors of colour or about people of color:

Well as you can see that’s half of my favourites list. All I can say is these five books really stuck with me and enlightened my reading experience as well as taught me some things. I was taken aback by the passages in Black Like Me. The descriptions written by John Howard Griffin, a white man who was just being a black man for a few months struck me to my core. If Beale

Street Could Talk weighed on me heavily as well reading about the injustices of the seventies, while in the back of my mind knowing these situations are still happening today. Cutting for Stone was that epic African novel that surprised me at every page. I really couldn’t anticipate what was going to happen next or where the author was leading me. I felt like I’d traveled stretches of kilometres to Africa to meet and follow Marion and Shiva from their beginnings to adulthood. That was a rich and informative reading experience that taught me a lot about Ethiopia, a country that I almost visited over sixteen years ago. Kindred took me back to the days of slavery, filling me with fear and disorienting me in a world where the codes didn’t correspond to me or Dana the main character. Lastly, but not least The Cutting Season brought me back to my home state of Louisiana. The story brought out anticipation and fear of the unknown – who killed that young woman on the plantation grounds called Belle Vie? I could feel the heat, the humidity, and smell the earth. Darkness engulfed me and Caren the main character. Running through it for fear of what she might find or worse what or who might be waiting for her.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman was the only classic I read last year. That is if you don’t count Harry Potter and the Philosopher’ Stone and If Beale Street Could Talk. Those two could technically be considered modern classics. Ok enough of me trying to stretch my non-existent list of read classics. In spite of it all, I can thank my book club for choosing this one. For without them, I’m not really sure when I would have read it, in spite of it being on my physical and mental TBR for aeons. I could also place this one under number four of my reading goals because it definitely got me out of my comfort zone. In the beginning I didn’t think I’d make it through, but at the halfway mark something changed. I became more invested in the story, not to mention that the writing style changed for the better. I also started to get used to those omniscient footnotes that lead me through the story that was going on above like a dog on a leash. Undeterred by it all I finished and loved it! Now that doesn’t often happen to me. I usually give up if I can’t get into a book by page 150. It was a worthwhile reading experience and I persevered to the end! So I definitely have to read more classics this year.

The next two novels were my comic relief of the year. I don’t often pick up comical books and that’s probably because it’s not a genre that I’m really familiar with. I was compelled to pick up Where’d You Go Bernadette since everybody was talking about it in the blogosphere and about its unorthodox style of being written in email and letter form. I like epistolary so I thought why not. It turned out to be a great choice. I read it in one afternoon and laughed out loud a bit. Oh Bernadette! She was a mess! I liked her though. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff Christ’s Childhood Pal was the same. It took me longer to read but boy did I have some laughs. The wittiness of that novel is just simply brilliant! It’s a must read if you haven’t gotten to it yet.

Now you know I’m not that over the moon about Young Adult novels and any time I read one it’s so that I can suggest it to the students I tutor in English or to my daughters, and of course because I suspect it might be good. I ran across Speak because I saw a couple of bloggers talking about it. I read it in one sitting and fell in love with the way the story was told but most of all with Melinda’s voice. Superb! A reader couldn’t ask for a better narrator, especially a young adult reader.

Last but not least, my absolute favourite and best read of 2013 was The Sense of an Ending. What a fantastic way to talk about memory! I got so much from this little tiny 150-page book. Unbelievable! There are so many themes packed into this book. I was asking myself what took me so long to pick up a novel by Julian Barnes. Nevertheless, I finally did and it was also thanks to my book club. Book clubs can bring out the best and sometimes the worst in one’s reading however in my experience it’s been great at 100%. Check out this wonderfully woven story of middle-aged Tony after school, marriage, children, and divorce. Memory can be deceiving after the fact and at times spot on…

Well that’s my wrap up of my top ten books of 2013. I hope you enjoyed reviewing some of them with me. Clicking the titles will take you to the reviews. So how about you guys? Was your reading year a 3.0-3.5 like mine or better? Let me know below and don’t forget to include your favourite books of the year. I love getting recommendations from you! Happy reading y’all!