The Sunday Salon (Pondering my reading) -- May Day, 2011

I wasn't planning to put up a post today - It's busy at home, my family's leaving this week, and I'm overwhelmed by the clutter in my life that for the first time, I'm considering doing a rash decluttering and not using the "Everyone's just as cluttered" excuse. I am losing control of my structure and routine and I certainly need to stop assuming that I am some kind of a superwoman who can do it all. So, today was supposed to be the day when I do some major cuts except I'm lazy and it's Sunday and it's Monday/workday tomorrow so who wants to bore it up today. And so I'm blogging!

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It's May and it's officially the time when you yell it's summer and start planning all those long escapes and getaways! That's the kind of thing I could have done in grad school, but with a job the escapes tend to be shorter. A few of my friends in Raleigh and Blacksburg and I are hoping to get out and have some fun in the sun (although the sun's my nemesis). There's BEA to get excited about for most of you, but I'm not going - I can't afford a mid-of-the-week escape, maybe I'll plan it for next year.

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Being the beginning of May and a third of the year in, I've also been looking at my reading so far, and what I plan for the rest of the year. Lately, I've read a lot of ARCs that I'm tired. I didn't realize reading could do that to me, but the pressure is high. Some of my reviews have been coming up days after the release and for the first time, I actually have a review backlog that's close to needing more than two hands to be counted on. Besides, some of my reading projects have been stalling. I know the reading projects can be added pressure, but they are all about books I want to read and have been talking about for years. Much as I like reading new releases, I want to be able to do that without pressure. Now, if all this sounds like a preamble to an admission that I won't read review books anymore, then that is definitely not what I mean. I will, of course. I'm already mighty choosy about what books I accept for review. I'm just going to be pickier, and really really think about a book and whether I have time before I accept it for review. Also, I find that I don't easily add a book to my goodreads to-read shelf as I do to my maybe-sometime shelf - that's probably a good way for me to decide if I want to read a book.

With that said, I'm hoping for a richer reading for the rest of the year. Helen and I are planning to read Shantaram starting June. (If anyone's interested in reading with us, let us know - more on this will be coming up in a later post on both our blogs.) One of my online book clubs is reading Les Misérables, which has been a must read for me for ages. I'm currently waiting for my copy to arrive via goodreads swap so that I can start it. I'm also hoping to read The Shadow of the Wind this month, another of the books that has languished on my shelves. That's three chunksters in one paragraph!

In addition, I'm hoping to rediscover some authors. There are some books I've rated high because the author's writing was spell-bindingly magical, but then I never read another book by that author because, well, we all know why that happens. So lately, I've been thinking to read another book from a potential favorite author - at least one a month. The motivation for this comes from my desire to read another title by José Saramago, a truly amazing writer, who sadly passed away last year. When I first heard about him, I was convinced that he and I wouldn't get along together. But then I read The Elephant's Journey last year and was amazed at how much I enjoyed the story - it was his writing that truly held me. There are writers who write beautiful literature and then there are writers like Saramago who can make the simplest stories come to life. Whoever thought that a medieval story about elephants and mahouts and soldiers traveling from one place to another would impress me that much. That's not something I would read on the weight of the synopsis alone.

So, while I ponder these plans and reevaluate my priorities (and declutter my life), have you been thinking about your reading lately? And let me know your amazing plans for the summer.