Just when I was lamenting the lack of Persephone Secret Santas or the Advent Virtual Blog Tours of Christmases Past, Andi and a couple of her friends stepped up this December with A Month of Favorites. I think it will be a fine way to look back over 2014, and what the year held for each of us in books, as well as an opportunity to gather new titles (and friends) for 2015.
I usually post an end of the year post with the kind of information asked for in Day 1, but I can let some of it slip here on the first day of the month. For example, what is your favorite genre?
2014 was a year that I particularly embraced literature in translation. While I have hosted the Japanese Literature Challenge for eight years, this year I have expanded my reading of translated literature to include books for Spanish Literature Month (this past July), and German Literature Month (which was just completed in November.).There is no kind of reading which expands my mind, or my horizons, like reading from other cultures. A spectacular case in point was reading for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. I am still thinking of the books written by Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Norwegian and Arabic authors that I read last Winter. As for my favorite titles or authors, I will reveal them in a later post this month. Some of them could even be mentioned tomorrow.
While I read on my nook, and my Kindle, and the Overdrive account on my iPad, for me there is no better experience than reading from a real page on real paper. True, the electronic book allows me to hold it in one hand with a cup of tea in the other, and by merely flicking my thumb in a forward direction I can turn the page. But those benefits do not outweigh the scent of a binding, nor the whisk of paper brushing against another page as it is turned.
As to a favored place to read? This month it would have to be by the lit balsam fir in our living room, casting a soft glow from the wee lights on its irregular branches. All I need is a real wood-burning fireplace…
No. I need nothing. My books, and a place to talk about them, are two of the greatest joys I know. And as we go forward together this December and beyond, I look forward to knowing more about yours.
(Find more introductions here.)
