Over the last few weeks and first couple of months of this year, I’ve been revising my reading plans again and again. I started simple and then perhaps naturally made my resolutions more complex as I continued. Now I’m returning to my resolution to keep it stupid simple with “no 10-point, three-parter resolutions with promises of marathons and how much mileage I’ll run, promises of challenges and how many books I’ll read and promises of living the holy life and how many times I’ll attend Mass.”

However, does keeping it stupid simple mean that I don’t plan ahead? No. I still plan, but maybe not to the extent I had been planning. A few weeks ago, I revealed my 2012 TBR (to-be-read) list. On that list, I had more than 40 books. I’ve now cut that list to a mere 14, many which I’ve downloaded on to my Nooks and a few others I have on hold at the library. The rest I’ve relegated to just my general TBR list…or as it is in GoodReads, “to-read” list.

Also in regards to challenges, on Sunday, I said I’m free to read whatever I want, any old time, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up completely on challenges. What it does mean is that I’m allowing myself to be free to revise the challenges as I see fit, just as I have done in the past with memes. With the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, for example, I’ve decided that when I do read her books, the ones I really want to read are the Hercule Poirot mysteries, so when I do pick the challenge up again from time to time, I’m going to continue reading Poirot novels from where I left off.

Another example is the Shaken, Not Stirred audiobook challenge. I am going to listen to this month’s selection of Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories and participate in the online discussion on Twitter Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. about the audio book. However, I won’t be watching the movie with the group. Part of that, I admit in this case, also has to do with poor planning on my part, in that I agreed to participate in another online event, watching Sunset Boulevard with another group at 10 p.m. Saturday night, before I realized I remembered the Shaken, Not Stirred event. The end result will be the same: freedom within the structure of the challenge, but with my own twist on the rules.

Also in the future I’m reserving the right to skip months, most likely not next month’s event since the audiobook still will be Quantum of Solace, but will be a different movie: For Your Eyes Only. That way, I can take advantage of my Audible membership and not be locked into buying only Ian Fleming audiobooks narrated by Simon Vance every month. I would like to explore the audiobook format and this will give me the opportunity to do just that.

All this to say, that my reading plans are a work in progress. Even as I’m revising to make them more simple than they were previously, I’m also conversely, perhaps ironically, making them more complex than they were previously. Such is life: a constant state of revision, where things become simple, then complex, then simple and so on and so forth. Maybe it’s only apropos that I’m discussing revising my reading life as this is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, a time to focus on revision. Of course now, if only I can turn this unwavering gaze toward other aspects of my life…

So have your reading plans been revised since the start of the year? If so, how? If not, how do you use your plans to get where you want to go?

At the start of the year, I also resolved to keep it stupid simple with “no 10-point, three-parter resolutions with promises of marathons and how much mileage I’ll run, promises of challenges and how many books I’ll read and promises of living the holy life and how many times I’ll attend Mass.”

What have I done since last summer’s declaration? On the reading front, I’ve joined and rejoined challenges…let me think about this: one, two, three, four, FIVE…five too many? As I sit here on the couch, with a stack of Agatha Christie books piled beside our coffee table, and a stack of books –a combination of books I’ve borrowed from my brother-in-law that I still have to read and books I bought from a local bookstore Friday– sitting on the bookcase next to me, I’m thinking, “Yes,”  is the answer to that question and that I’m in over my head. Those books aren’t counting the poetry, Huraki Murakami and James Bond books and audiobooks I’ve promised to read/listen to.

While I still might read some of the books/audiobooks (or just audiobooks, period) included in the challenges, hence my still staying in the metaphorical pool, I’m going to read them on my own schedule and not anyone else’s. I appreciate all the founders of these challenges bringing to my attention to the authors and genres aforementioned, but ladies, I’m not very good at following rules, at least in terms of blogging and reading. Whenever I have participated in memes, I almost always subverted them in some way to fit my own (evil?) devices. The only planned books are the ones I’m reading now, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2, which I’m reading on my dinner breaks at work, and Maisie Dobbs by Jaqueline Winspear, which I started on Friday after downloading it as an e-book loan from the Free Library of Philadelphia.

All this to say, I’m declaring again, “I’m free to read what I want, any old time.”

Also along with that, I said, “I’m not going to play by their rules anymore.”

In that previous post, I used a remake of the song, but now, thanks to John Bray pointing out to me the error of my ways, I’m using the original:

Do you ever feel you’re in over your head with reading challenges? Are you free to read what you want, any old time? Or do you like the structure reading challenges provide?

I also was reading Jefferson Bass’s first Body Farm novel, Carved in Bone. Jefferson Bass is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass, a forensic anthropologist who founded the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility, the Body Farm, and Jon Jefferson, a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker. I said it started a bit slow, but was getting better and that for that reason, I wouldn’t stop reading it.

WRONG and WRONG!

In the first case, as I wrote Sunday it’s not that I wasn’t enjoying Nesbø’s book or the series overall. I just decided that I need a little break from all the heaviness in these crime thrillers I’ve been reading and also that I don’t want to “gobble up” all of his books one right after the other. They are very good and I’d rather savor them a bit before devouring them. So on Sunday, I took a break by reading/listening to Tina Fey’s Bossypants on audiobook and finished it Monday night. I encourage you to listen to Fey narrating her own work, because it is hilarious. I admit like Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up, I enjoyed the parts before the author became a star or in particular the SNL parts, except for in Fey’s case, the Sarah Palin part, which was very good.

In the second case, with Carved in Bone, I finally decided to abandon it after I wasn’t “feeling” it. It didn’t get better and the story really wasn’t going anywhere, so bye-bye, Jefferson Bass. I’d say more, but I don’t feel like wasting my time on a book I didn’t really like.

So now what? I think today I’m going to take out a few Agatha Christie books and return to the ongoing Agatha Christie Reading Challenge  which I haven’t participated in since June. Next up: Murder in Retrospect, a Hercule Poirot mystery. I also am going to continue my reading of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2 during my dinner breaks at work because the short stories most of the time seem perfect for a half hour read. I will get back to The Devil’s Star shortly, but just not today or maybe not even this week.

Do you change what you’re reading based on seasons? I think perhaps for me, the dark, dark crime fiction I’ve been reading is not conducive to winter. That’s why I’m changing to lighter fare, yes, even Agatha Christie is light when compared to Jo Nesbø.