Once again, Memorial Day is upon us. Although the world has been turned upside down in the past few months, some places are beginning to return to normal. Slowly but surely, cooler heads are prevailing. And one way to speed the process of recovery is to get back into your routine.
Thus, here at the unofficial start of summer, it’s time once again to start the Summer Reading List Challenge! This will be the 5th year I’ve done this particular self-imposed challenge, and I’ve refined the rules over time, polishing them into something simple yet daunting.
The rules aren’t so much rules as recommendations. Guidelines, except that that has become a loaded term lately.
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The goal is to read 3 new books between Memorial Day (May 25) and Labor Day (September 7) in the US, the traditional “unofficial” bounds of summer. (Anyone in the Southern Hemisphere reading this: yes, you get a winter reading list.)
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A book is anything non-periodical, so no comics, graphic novels, or manga. Anything else works. If you’re not sure, just use common sense. What’s important is that you’re honest with yourself.
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One of the books should be of a genre you don’t normally read. For example, I’m big on fantasy and sci-fi, so I might read a romance, or a thriller, or something like that. Nonfiction, by the way, also works as a “new” genre, unless you do read it all the time.
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You can’t count books you wrote, because they obviously wouldn’t be new to you. (Yes, this rule exists solely to keep me from just rereading my books.)
That’s it. You have over three months. I’ll be posting my progress here at Prose Poetry Code, as well as on the fediverse at mikey@letsalllovela.in when that server actually works.
Have fun, enjoy the summer, and keep reading!