Today I’m setting reading goals for 2024. I’ll talk you through my review and planning process. If you’d like to set some goals for the new year as well, I hope this gives you some ideas and motivation. If you’re interested in any of my goals, you’re most welcome to come along and join in the fun.
Firstly a quick review. How did I do in 2023?
English Classics
English classics was my first goal and half of the titles I planned were Victorian novels. However, over the course of this year I noticed that I gravitated heavily towards modern classics from the early 20th century instead. I read five novels from the early 20th century, only two from the 19th century, and three titles from the 18th century for Jane Austen July.
I will continue to read English classics and I think I’ll carry on in this direction: English classics from the early 20th century and English classics that come before the Victorian era. I want to introduce you to less familiar English classic titles.
Shakespeare & his contemporaries
Shakespeare was my second goal. I separated Shakespeare from general English classics last year as a goal of its own. It was the right decision. I read eight plays, various sonnets, and about five non-fictional books about his life and work. I also co-hosted Shaketember for the first time. It’s been a challenging and rewarding year in terms of getting to know Shakespeare!
I’ll continue reading Shakespeare’s plays as well as non-fictional works in the New Year. I read so many tragedies recently, that I’m craving for some comedies and fun.
A closely related but brand-new goal is to read Shakespeare’s contemporaries. This is inspired mostly by the Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate, when he said ‘Shakespeare became Shakespeare because of the death of Marlowe’ and also 1599 by James Shapiro where he put Shakespeare and Globe into context. They were friends, they were rivals. Shakespeare’s works do not stand in a vacuum outside of time and space. I want to know what kinds of plays Londoners were watching when Shakespeare came onto the scene.
Greek and Roman myth
My goal number four last year was to get into Greek and Roman myth.
I’m tempted to say I failed this one, because I didn’t read nearly as much as I set out to do; but to put it positively, I made a start! I planned to read epic poems, prose and plays by various authors but in the end I only finished the Iliad and half of Metamorphoses.
Compared to the beginning of the year, I’m happy to say, it’s still challenging, but I’m not intimidated by the genre anymore. A brief review on the Iliad and Metamorphoses, and why I managed to finish one and not the other. The Iliad is long and has many characters but it’s ONE long story and the number of the MAIN characters is limited. The audiobook helped a lot too. I enjoyed it way more than I expected and I made five videos on various characters from the Iliad. It was fun!
Metamorphoses reads like a collection of interconnected short stories and there are an infinite number of characters. A rough example would be something like, the author tells the story of character A telling B and a group of people a story about characters C and D. By the end of the chapter, I forgot about A and B, because the story is about C and D, so I had to go back and find out who A and B are. B’s father-in-law appears a few chapters later and starts to talk about E telling a story about F and G. And on and on it goes, I just couldn’t keep up. This translation helps a lot. When I’m in the middle of a story, I enjoy it very much. As soon as I put it down, I lose the connection between the chapters and it’s hopeless.
I’m kind of carrying on with this goal next year but I’m approaching it a bit differently.
I have two new goals for 2024.
Drama
I picked up plays quite naturally over this year, without planning to do so. As I watched Shakespeare’s plays in the theatre, I watched some other stuff along the way and I was never disappointed – theatre is really magical. In addition to that, this goal is also inspired by the Genius of Jane Austen by Paula Byrne. I read it in July and as part of Jane Austen July, I read Lovers Vows and enjoyed it more than I expected. I want to read more plays that influenced Jane Austen’s novels.
Little by little, I twigged that the play used to be a major form of literature in the past, it was the main form of culture and entertainment for centuries, across Europe, and it was popular before the novel was a thing. It’s a type of classic literature that has become less mainstream now. I went to half a dozen of bookshops in Edinburgh in November, in both secondhand bookshops and new book bookshops, drama usually occupies a tiny amount of shelf space, especially if you compare it to fiction or novels. I also find that category interesting, drama is fictional too, but the distinction might be historical?
I wonder if I’ve gravitated towards drama because the number of plays out there is probably smaller than novels? I look at the drama section and maybe subconsciously I think this is manageable, one day I’ll be able to read them all! I wouldn’t be able to think that about novels, just by looking around!
I’ve gone off-topic. I was saying, drama is an important part of classic literature and I want to pay more attention to it. There are overlaps between drama and my other goals like English classics, Shakespeare and his contemporaries – especially the second one, they’d be mostly drama. My goals and categories are not very scientific, they only show my intention.
I also want to see if this might be the way into classics around the world as well. For example, in addition to the Ancient Greek plays, I quite like to try Faust by Goethe this coming year and re-read Chekhov’s plays. I’d also like to introduce some Chinese plays to you. And who knows what else I’ll discover. I’m really excited about this goal. Any recommendations please leave me a comment!
Poetry
I mentioned how drama usually takes up a small section of any bookshops. Another thing I noticed is that drama and poetry often take up that small space together. I love huge bookshops but I get stressed and tired in huge bookshops too. But my recent bookshop trips were simple and focused because of drama and poetry – I’ve been very happy about that.
I find poetry incomprehensible as well as irresistible. I met a spoken word artist this year and that made a big impression on me and gave me a new understanding of poetry. As a result, I wrote a poem in the form of a sonnet about Richard III right after I finished reading Shakespeare’s play. It was a fun experience and I loved it. I wrote stories before, this was the first time I wrote a poem. It’s like a snapshot, one frame out of a film. I used to do photography so I immediately felt the similarity between capturing a moment in a poem and in a photo. All that is just to say my goal is to know more about poetry and read more poems this coming year.
I want to continue sharing my reading experience with you in 2024. This is the goal of my blog, being enthusiastic about reading classics together like schoolmates. Paraphrasing C. S. Lewis, I’ll speak as one amateur to another, I’ll talk about difficulties I have met, or lights I have gained, when reading classics, with the hope that this might interest, and sometimes even help you.
A Day of Small Things 