Blogging Through Thursday

Do you prefer reading current books? Or older ones? Or outright old ones? (As in, yes, there’s a difference between a book from 10 years ago and, say, Charles Dickens or Plato.) – Blogging Through Thursday

I have no preference and rarely look at when a book is published until afterwards. I admit I haven’t read as many pre twentieth century classics as I would like to. I have read some Dickens, some Dumas, some Gaskell and a Henry Fielding which is mid eighteenth century.

Looking through the books I read last year the vast majority were written in the last thirty to forty years. Actually that is shocking I really must make an effort to read more books from an earlier era. I own loads of course I just never get around to reading them. Or at least that’s what excuse I give – the reality is that I allow myself to be distracted rather then challenging myself to read something different.

In fact, I promised myself to read more classics this year but so far I have read only four. Well… maybe along reading Japanese literature I will also challenge myself to read more classics as well.

I have many classics waiting for me – from Dumas, to Fielding, Austen, Gaskell, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky…

I keep an excel spreadsheet of all the books I have read and record information such as setting and genre along with read dates and days it took to complete. I have just added a year of publication column so I could see how old the books I read are.

It’s interesting being able to take a look at this kind of information and access my reading habits over a period of time. I can definitely see a gap in my reading I need to improve.