Newsletter: January 2005

Happy New Year! I hope that wherever you are you had a peaceful Christmas period, and that if Father Christmas came your way, he left you a book or two under the Christmas tree. Readers aged under twelve can tell us what books they received for Christmas on our discussion board - and, more importantly, what they thought of them. And if you received book tokens as presents, and haven't yet decided what to spend them on, why not browse enCompass for inspiration? Simply click on the appropriate age range, then choose one or two categories that appeal to you. EnCompass will trawl over 5,000 titles to provide a suggested booklist of things you might like.

The last book I read in 2004 was James Kelman's thought-provoking Translated Accounts - see my review by clicking on 'Book of the Month'. My first of 2005 is a collection of short stories by a young Scottish writer called Colette Paul, whose book, Whoever You Choose to Love, will hopefully be listed on enCompass soon.

Given that it's the time of year to reflect on what's been done and what's to come, I've decided to make a few New Year's reading resolutions.

1. Give up on books that I'm clearly not getting on with, rather than slogging my way through the whole thing. I've wasted many soul-destroying hours this way, when I could have been getting on with something better.
2. Explore contemporary literature from countries and continents I haven't read much of before: China, Turkey, Finland, and north Africa are all high up on my list, for various reasons.
3. Try not to read too many different things at once. Increasingly this year I ended up with two or three books on the go simultaneously - perhaps a novel and some short stories or poetry. But sometimes I've found that this doesn't do any of them justice, and it'd be better to concentrate fully on one thing at a time.
4. I must, I must, I must, try more crime fiction. I'm pretty sure I don't have the kind of mind to really enjoy 'whodunnit' stories, but I ought to try some other stuff. Thousands of loyal Ian Rankin readers can't be wrong, can they?
5. Ditto with (so-called) children's books. Philip Pullman and David Almond spring to immediate mind.

If you've got any reading resolutions of your own, why not email me and let me know?

Best wishes for 2005,

Susan

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