Cheers to a Bookish 2023!

 

Source: Indian Express

Happy New Year! 2023 just landed and although I took some offline time in the last days, thus missed my ´year in review´ kind of post, it is never too late to greet the new year and make a short retrospective of the last 12 months.

After two years of pandemic, medical uncertainties and various professional challenges, 2022 was a very kind year. It was a year of embracing my shortcomings, keeping up with improving my self-love skills and from a bookish perspective, one of the best blogging years so far. I had the chance to read and review tons of good books, including in French and German. I collaborated with awesome authors through stellar blog tours. I was able to cover geographical areas and genres that I may have been unaware of only few months ago. As my everyday life - which included taking on the challenges of having a school child and the difficult transition from kindergarten to school, starting teaching languages - French and German so far, taking good care of my health - my reading evolved and despite being very reluctant to set up resolutions, I strive to be better - as a reader, parent, person and language lover.

What I expect to happen in 2023? I want to expand the pool of books in original languages I am reading. I do have some Spanish and Italian titles prepared and fighting hard to go through some Yiddish and Romanian books. I do have plenty of beautiful children books in Hebrew I will be happy to review soon. I do want to continue to improve my language teaching skills, therefore reading about teaching methods and approaches will add more interesting layers to my everyday reading. 

My plan is also to expand the coverage of literatures from areas less represented in the wide literary realm, and I do have already some books waiting to be reviewed representing remote areas like Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Ethiopia or Kuwait. In the last days I went through different lists of different ´personalities´ or newspapers featuring the favorite reads of the year and I´ve hardly spotted, if any, books representing the non-American/English realm. I may not make it to the New York Post reading list but still, featuring unjustly less represented literary voices is a duty for everyone with access to such titles. A small drop into the ocean, still something more than the average indifference writers out of the mainstream literatures are treated.

Reading more poetry was a goal relatively achieved last year, but I want to keep discovering more and more poetic voices. Modern writing, daring to differ both in form and content are part of my personal journey and can´t wait to give a chance to some new authors and works of literature. 

As for my writing, I may have some ongoing translations that hope to be published this year, and hopefully will be back on the writing market with some pitches and ideas, but I am rather trying to take my time and seize the right moment instead of putting a lot of pressure on myself to achieve fast, short-term goals. 

I wish a 2023 at least as good as 2022 but much better in terms of selfcare and professional goals. I am sure there is so much left for unexpected, surprising and extraordinary, beyond my grasp of my limited mind. 365 unwritten days just opened up. Time to write just another life story...