I set myself a challenge for 2023 – read a randomly-chosen book from Project Gutenberg every month! So that’s what I’ve done, and an odd experience it has been. I should explain that the books were not completely random, in order to sift out books that would be unreadable for me. I chose the most likely-looking candidates from randomly-generated lists. The only time I engineered one of these was for a Christmas-themed read, where I chose one from a list of books in the category. Project Gutenberg has been going for a long time and is a huge repository of electronic versions of out-of-copyright texts. It has a lot of classics and popular older books, but a lot of obscure works too.
Best reads: Flash Evans and the Darkroom Mystery by Frank Bell, A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil and A Japanese Blossom by Onoto Watanna.
‘Meh’ reads: Two Little Pilgrims’ Progress by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Satan’s Diary by Leonid Andreyev, Windmills, Picturesque and Historic by F H Shelton, The Violin by George Hart, Madam by Mrs Oliphant and Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts by Rosalind Northcote.
Worst reads: The Story of the Mince Pie by Josephine Scriber Gates, Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome and Lady Hollyhock and Her Friends by Margaret Coulson Walker.
I think this was a worthwhile exercise, as I found three authors I’d like to read more of. I may do this again, on a casual basis, but first I want to read all of the Oz series, which are available on there.