What to expect from this blog next year

Another year has sped past, and my commitment to this blog is still burning strong. I'll be studying for a Master in Creative Writing and Communication at Tabor College here in Adelaide next year, which I'm quite excited about, although completing course assignments will have to take priority over blog posts. But I'm pretty confident I can still deliver one post per week all through 2022, especially if I get a run-on during holiday time. At the moment that day fluctuates between Fridays and Mondays. If you've stuck around with me so far, I hope you'll continue, and to give you some of idea of what to expect, I've made these five points for next year. 

1) I feel as if I'm on a roll with childhood and young adult classics. They present wisdom in optimistic and encouraging ways, so you can expect to see many more of them. I'm sure we take on board far more in subsequent readings, and that applies especially to kids' lit. If we've read them before, we get to compare our current opinions with those of our junior selves, to gauge how far we've come. As C.S. Lewis said, 'No book is worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally - and often far more - worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.' 

2) I might try to squeeze in one or two more doorstop sized books, or tomes. I always feel proud whenever I get through an 800+ page novel. These are perhaps the book nerd's version of extreme sports such as mountain climbing. Ticking off a behemoth like War & Peace or The Brothers Karamazov or Middlemarch or David Copperfield (all of which I've done) is our equivalent of reaching the Everest summit. 

3) There'll be more book lists, although I don't know what they'll be about yet. It's one of the fun things about reading widely. I enjoy those sudden links in my mind which send me running for a pen to figure out whether or not I've identified something that should be a 'thing' rather than far fetched waffle. And many times I still publish the list, for even if it is far fetched waffle, it's still fun. 

4) I've recently created separate pages for favourite authors I've read a lot of, and you'll see them high in the right hand toolbar. I figured that since these guys have given me hours of enjoyment and reflection, they deserve pages of their own. So far, these include Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Bronte sisters and C.S. Lewis. I may add Louisa May Alcott and others down the track. 

5) I'll keep adding occasional discussion posts too. They may include reflections about theology and the Christian faith. It's what I've been studying over the past year or two, and it's very interesting.

I shared the photo above on Instagram just before Christmas, with this quote to go with it. 'Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A book, resting unopened in its slot on the shelf, full of majestic potential, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.' David Quammen. 

Although most of those you see on my shelves have been read and loved to have earned their spot, I do buy into his sentiment. 

Happy New Year. As always, I hope I can provide many recommendations for books you might never have considered reading, which are destined to become favourites.