The starting line is fast approaching for 20 Books of Summer, the annual reading event established by Cathy of 746 books eleven years ago. This year sees two new hosts — Annabel @ AnnaBookBel and Emma @ Words and Peace — though the “rules” are still the same.
- Choose whether to read 10, 15 or 20 books.
- Either make a list in advance of the books you plan to read OR just read what takes your mood at the time.
- This is an ultra flexible and relaxed challenge! Change your list at any time — you could even ditch your whole list for something entirely different.
- Whether you choose to read 10,15, or 20 or something in between, it doesn’t matter. The number shouldn’t be viewed as hard targets. All that really matters is you enjoy what you read.
This will be my eighth year of taking part in this event. In the past I’ve spent hours planning what to read, compiling multiple versions of a reading list. All in vain as it turned out because no matter how carefully I curated that list, when it came to the crunch my interest in those titles waned.
So this year I’m taking the easy option and will just pick from the bookshelves that are nearest my bed.
Some of these books I’ve had for years, such as Rules of Civility by Amor Towles; others like Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are very recent additions. There’s very little logic to what’s stacked on each shelf beyond the rough grouping of “classics” on the second shelf and much further down, only just visible in the bottom corner of the photo, is a shelf of novellas.
There’s a smattering of books in translation, one short story collection from Africa and one or two crime novels.
I’m hoping that there’s enough variety to suit whatever mood I’m in at the time. I haven’t counted them but there must be 40 books or more on these shelves. It can’t be that hard to read just 10 of them can it???