OK, I decided that what this blog needs is a new feature. So here’s a new feature. Over there on the sidebar — go ahead and look, you might need to scroll down slightly, so I’ll wait for you to come back…waiting…waiting…OK, we’re back — you’ll see a little poll. I’ve been waffling on my 2009 Guy Gavriel Kay Re-read project, as to whether I should just plow through everything he’s ever written at once or alternate other books in between. I’ve decided on the latter, because I want a little bit of time to reflect on the preceding GGK book each time I come to the next one, and because I fear the latter books in his output may suffer during this project if I don’t “clear my literary palate”, so to speak. Thus, I will read other books in between each GGK book. But what other books?

And that’s where you come in, readers! What I’m going to do is each time I begin a GGK book (or thereabouts, roughly, kinda-sorta speaking) I’ll choose two options for the next thing I read, which will then appear in a poll over in the sidebar — it’s right near the top, just below the link to The Promised King. Readers will vote, and whichever book gets the most votes will be the one I read after the current GGK tome. (I may keep doing this after I get all the way through GGK, picking my own books and then polling results for the alternating books, depending on how this experiment goes.)

If the books are tied when the poll closes (I think it’s set up for a week), I’ll flip a coin between the two books. Now, what kinds of books will I offer as options? Well, sometimes I’ll choose literary works; other times I’ll choose graphic novels, or works of classic SF, or just about anything I can think of. For the inaugural Make Me Read! poll, the choices are:

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

and

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

Why did I choose these two? No particular reason. I just have copies on hand neither of which I’ve read yet. So I leave it up to you all! Which one do I read after I finish The Fionavar Tapestry later this week? Vote in the sidebar!

(I should point out that I’ll only be doing this for my fiction reading; I tend to be all over the map with my nonfic, and I may need to set aside the poll winner for a bit if review novels come in that need to be kicked out of the way. I do need some wiggle room, but this should work.)

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4 Comments

  1. I voted for The Bell Jar. It’s not an easy read by any means, but it’s a powerful book. I should pick it up again myself. Hemingway often becomes tedious to me after a little bit.

  2. I once read For Whom the Bell Tolls and This Side of Paradise in the same waking period, in that order.

    Great fun!

    Hemingway’s best book on The Movable Feast, because he wrote is later in his life. As such, it’s his take on his early adulthood from the comfortable distance of decades and perhaps some accumulated wisdom and regrets. You can feel the regret in the prose.

  3. I have always wanted to read GGK, (him being Canadian and all), so I wonder if you might propose a starting novel of his for newcomers to read.

    Doug

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