One of the best things about a new year is that you can start with a blank slate in all perspectives. Every year I challenge myself to read more books. Not necessarily better books, because what is that even. Better is always in the eye of the beholder, or in case of books in the eye of the reader. Whenever I enjoy a book, it’s a win for me.
Last year for example I immensely enjoyed the ‘Summer trilogy‘ by Jenny Han, which is YA literature. The writing is beautiful and the three books kept my interest, so I stayed up until the early hours in the morning to keep on reading. I also really enjoyed ‘A Gentleman in Moscow‘ from Amor Towles. I am not really sure how all my books from 2021 fit into the reading challenge from last year.
As I have already said last year, I am not so much into following the challenge to the letter, but rather get ideas on what I could read. Sometimes though my ideas come from my travels, like my trip to Scotland in October. Stopping at a small bookstore in Stromness on Orkney, I picked up three new books which now top my TBR pile. The place is amazing btw, small but with a great variety and choice of books. Despite the size we stayed for 20 minutes to browse.
My saddest book news from 2021 was the death of Sharon K. Penman, my all time favorite author. Her writing and especially her research was superb, in all her books history came alive. Last year, before reading her last book in the Angevins series, a ‘A King’s Ransom‘, I reread ‘Lionheart‘, which helped me understand Richard Lionheart and the 3rd crusade. If you are interested in history, you should look into her books. And even if you are not, you might find that you enjoy her stories. What a loss for all history lovers.
But this post is most of all a lookout to 2022 and the new challenges ahead. Popsugar has come out with its challenge for the next year and also came up with some suggestions for each prompt, which you can look up here. I have to say, I already saw a couple of books which I would like to give a shot. So let’s see where the new year of reading is taking us and most of all, let’s talk about it. Since the pandemic is unfortunately far from over, we all have more time at hand to keep on reading. Yours, Pollybert
