March Reading Challenge: Introduction

We are rounding the corner of the second week of March, and since the official start of spring is just two weeks away, I’ve decided to set goals that are about cleaning out clutter and focusing on organization since the beginning of the year has been a little hectic. These goals carry over to my Reading Challenge, as I’m setting out to read two books that have either been sitting in my bookshelf or have received many “renews” from the library. Adding books to my “Read” list is an official bookish spring cleaning activity.

For this month, I’m going to be reading two novels by authors towards whom my love has grown from childhood adoration to that of a somewhat-adult. The first, In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume, is the one I have renewed three times already from the library. It is time I finish it!

The second is Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, which I purchased shortly after it was published (along with the new edition of To Kill a Mockingbird) this past year, and it has sat beautifully on my bookshelf all this time. It will be with a slightly saddened heart that I read this novel, as the world lost Harper Lee just last month. However, it is lucky for us that she lives on through her writing, so I will not wait any longer to read it.

In addition to these, I will be starting to celebrate National Poetry Month one month early, with a couple of anthologies I acquired during college. I will be perfectly upfront about this: I am not a big poetry reader. I much prefer the directional prose and techniques employed in novels and short stories to the changing metres, iambic pentameters (I know this is only one of many types of poetic lines, it’s just fun to say), and sometimes just too overly abstract or dragged out stories and lessons. But I will admit I like some poetry, so I’m going to revisit two collections to see what I can discover. The first is W.H. Auden’s Selected Poems, selected by Edward Mendelson. You can see the edition I’m using in the photo to the left as well as on Goodreads. I’m also going to flip through American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, which momentarily I cannot find the correct edition on Goodreads, but mine is a Library of America College Edition, so that may be why (I’ll add it to Goodreads).

So there you have it, my March Reading Challenge. I hope you join in my discussion of these titles at the end of the month, join me in reading them throughout this month, or offer advice/suggestions on what I should expect and what I should read next. I hope your March is productive, exciting, and refreshing as we say “goodbye” to winter and hello to spring! Happy reading!