I’m going to try something new this year, and rather than just make lists of books I want to read, I’m going to be a little more flexible by applying a few rules instead. I don’t think any of these are especially onerous, so they should be pretty easy to stick to.

1. Read 2014 books as soon as I can after purchasing them – there’s a few due this year I’d like to read (see here), so I just need to actually read them this year. This may mean reading earlier books in the series in order to catch up.
2. Try to maintain a 50:50 male/female writer ratio – so after every book by a man I read, I have to read one by a woman (fiction only; non-fiction, graphic novels and anthologies don’t count).
3. Read more translated fiction – I want to read the rest of Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt trilogy, I’d like to read more Elfriede Jelinek, I’ve also got books by Roberto Bolaño, Leila Aboulela, Naguib Mahfouz and Tove Jansson already on the TBR, but I’d also like to try fiction from countries whose literature I’ve yet to read.

 
I’ll also continue to document my reading – I’ve one last “recent reading” post for 2013 to come – and I’ll try to single out works I’m especially taken by, much as I have done in the past. I ought to do the same for films too – I made a start in 2012 with a series of films you must see posts, but have only managed to post two a year since then. Having said all that, I don’t want to give myself to much to do as, well, I’ve got a bit of fiction writing to do too – you know, research and write the fourth book of the Apollo Quartet, All That Outer Space Allows; I’m also keen to get started on a novel I want to write; and I have a whole bunch of short stories I really need to get finished.

Incidentally, nine days into the new year and I’ve already started as I mean to go on – after finishing MD Lachlan’s Fenrir, I started on Minaret by Leila Aboulela (her second novel, and the second by her I’ve read). Only another 356 days to keep this up…