Carnegie Reading Time Of Year Again…

I’m trying to get through the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal Shadowing titles just now



Carnegie 2012 Shortlist

  Grab and Go

What that means in reality in an extremely distributed reading group geographically who all do completely different things is mostly we all grab titles from within our own localities according to our own means. Therefore we’re all reading different things at different times.

So I make lots of public library grabs from my local libraries when the shortlist announces and back that up with a sheaf of reservations into the central library system for my area.  I also try and get things read and returned within a few days so titles are back in circulation for all those other Carnegie Shadow’ing folk out there.




just finished Shortlist read

 This is supplemented by the occasional secondhand purchase if I basically think I’m going to run out of time and not get everything, and read, within Carnegie timelines. 

We all read in whatever order we get ahold of things, post reviews, make the occasional passing comment, send emails back and forth to each other on our progress and where we've got to…. Come June there’ll be emails back and forth trying to figure out our overall preferred choice between the group.



a mid-process read

 The Schedule

I kind of view a Carnegie Shortlist as a schedule. This year I started slightly late (immediately after Easter), but the goal remains to be finished reading by end of  May  (always wise to give myself a safety net of a few spare weeks at end to rectify if something goes awry).  I basically try and average a book a week around my other commitments so I know I’m on target.

The reason I do it this way is that this is my third year and my first year of it was a total frantic mad panic comparatively right at the end fortnight trying to find titles and get through them.  A scramble I did not wish to repeat. I promised myself I’d be organised about it from then on, and basically have been.

what I'm about to read next

Progress

So of this years list I’m currently about to start book seven of eight.  

One book a week more or less going to schedule. So, well on plan, and leaving myself Patrick Ness to finish on as I adored the Chaos Walking trilogy.

So that will be my 'Finishing Treat' as it were!

I loved this one...

Why I Do It

I do Carnegie essentially because it’s a splendid excuse to do some systematic reading of new material, a way of catching up a bit with current children’s authors, part of the CILIP community, and it’s a Shortlist of a size that I know is do’able. 

Plus I never did have any time for tags such as ‘children’, ‘teenage’, adult’ in terms of my own reading.  For me the only criteria I apply to my reading is will I enjoy it, or find it interesting, or is it something that takes me outwith my normal comfort zones.



one of my first reads...

 Discovery

So what I like about Carnegie as an adult is I still discover new authors that otherwise I just would not come across, keep slightly better up-to-date with the genre by it, and it forces me to read a broad category of material in a short time, some of which I would never think to go near otherwise.

There are many many book prizes and shortlists out there. I could read any of them. But Carnegie is a particularly enjoyable and convivial one with a large community. Basically it’s far too much fun to be left solely to children alone…!