I wanted to write about a couple of reading challenges I've given myself. They're not part of my 52 for 52 Challenges. They're just kind of... some interests of mine that are guiding some of my reading choices. I also, every year, do a reading challenge called Around the Year in 52 Books. It's from a Goodreads group and every year they come up with a list of 52 prompts to fulfill using your reading choices throughout the year. I like to read at least a book a week and this gives me a good set of ideas to draw from when looking for books. These loose challenges are also something different from that.
Both of these kind of, sort of, follow from experiences I had while earning my college degree recently. In some ways, I was disappointed in my learning experiences and felt like some of my classes were too short to fully delve into the topics. The way these classes were set up, they were meant to be easily fit into the life of a working adult, so each semester was split into two seven week sessions. Ostensibly, they took the same material that would be in a longer class and just presented it all in a shorter period of time. Practically speaking, I'm not sure that's how it worked. I do think some content necessarily got lost in the shortening of longer classes. Then again, maybe it's just the nature of institutional learning. Maybe it's a me-problem. I'm an autodidact at heart and I think I learn better at a leisurely pace.
The first is an extension of a project I did for an English class. I was to create a public-facing piece of media on any topic of my choosing under the broad umbrella of literacy. I decided to create a blog about retellings. What I mean by that are fictional works that revisit older pieces of literature. Sometimes these works tell the story from a different point of view. Sometimes it takes the narrative further into the future than the original author brought it. There are all kinds of ways authors approach retellings. I read and wrote about a few of these (Wide Sargasso Sea which grew out of Jane Eyre and Vinegar Girl based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew) on a blog that I set up for that project, thinking I might continue with it even after the class was done, but I haven't. I don't expect that I will, but I am still interested in the concept. One book that I read after finishing the project that would have fit well was called Longbourn and it was inspired by Pride and Prejudice. It's the story of the servants of the house and takes place at the same time as the the events in Austen's novel. Those events serve as a backdrop, but the main story is completely different. I want to continue finding new examples of this and reading both the original work, if I haven't read it already, and the new spin. Currently I am re-reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in anticipation of reading James, by Percival Everett. (I read Huck Finn in school, but don't remember much.)
The second loose challenge has to do with children's and young adult literature. I took classes on both topics and while I felt the classes were okay, I wouldn't say I got as much out of them as I was hoping to. So, I decided that I am going to read all of the Newberry Medal winners in reverse chronological order. So far, I have read the winners from this year and last year. I am sure I have also read some of the older ones previously, either in childhood/young adulthood or later with my kids, but I intend to re-read them when I come to their year of winning. What will I get out of this? A better understanding of children's literature and what makes it good, which will be helpful in my own writing journey, as well as, I hope, just a good reading time in general.
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