52 books in 52 weeks - Want to join?

Happy New Year everyone!

I mentioned in my personal resolutions post that I wanted to read more in 2013.  Having thought about it more I've decided to set myself the challenge of reading 52 books in the year, an average of 1 per week.

I quite often have weeks where I don't get chance to read at all, but then on a good week I can fit in 2 or 3 books (I read 4 over Christmas week).  So I'm hoping I can manage 52 books by the end of the year.  I'm not counting sewing books for this, I tend to review 4 or 5 sewing books a month so that would already be my 52 books a year.

For the last 2-3 years whilst running The Sewing Directory I've been collecting up second hand books from the charity shops but haven't had time to read them so I have hundreds here in the house waiting to be read. 

I'm a big fan of historial fiction, I particularly like books by Jean Plaidy.  I've read all her Tudor series but have the Victorian series here ready to start.  Plus I was lucky enough to find about 30 of her original books from the 50s and 60s at the local market so have a whole shelf of them to read.  Some have been republished in the last 10 years or so but many haven't so it was a great find.

My first book of the year is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, I love books about the Tudors and this one came recommended to me by a few people.  I started it earlier and I have to say although I'm enjoying the story I find the writing style pretty hard going, it seems to meander a lot and it's hard to keep up with what's what.  I'm determined to finish this one but may not read any more of hers, will see how I feel by the end.

Natalie at the Yarn Yard is also doing this resolution too.  Does anyone else want to join us?

You don't have to decide up front which books you are going to read, just make a list as you read them so at the end of the year you can look back on what you'd read throughout 2013.  I've got a rough idea of what I want to read but will see where to mood takes me and what interesting new books come out during the year.

I was thinking maybe we could do a blog post every quarter to say how we are getting on and share which books we've enjoyed, and which we haven't to help people decide what to add to their reading list.

If you fancy joining in blog about it on your blog and post a link below.  I'll update this post to include all the links so people can find them.

If you are on Twitter please let me know your Twitter name and I'll add you to the Twitter list I've made.  Then we can all keep up with what the others are reading.  You can find the list here and my Twitter name is @sewingdirectory.  The hashtag we are using is #52books

I've not added a tab to the top of my blog so you can see what books I've read so far. 

Happy reading everyone.

Edited to add - Following conversations on Twitter mid year we're going to share some book recommendations based on what we've read first half of the year.  If people are up for it we may try and arrange a book swap too, we can send a few of our favourites off to someone else who is taking party in the 52 book challenge.