My 2015 Reading Challenge Begins

As a child, I was a voracious reader; under the covers with a torch, in the corner at parties, behind a maths textbook at school – name a time and place I shouldn’t have been reading and you can bet I would have been.  I devoured the entire library at my first school with two years left to go.  But something happened when I was 18 and went off to University.  Suddenly I stopped reading for pleasure.  I worked my way through lengthy reading lists, of academic texts and journal articles, but when the work was done, I didn’t want to read anymore.

This persisted after I graduated and through my twenties.  In 2014, I decided that would change.  As it’s often said – all great writers read.  And if I wanted to call myself a writer, truly, I would have to start reading.  So, in January 2014 I charged myself with reading 12 books that year – one a month.  I set aside time each week to read.

I completed my challenge, skidding up to the deadline on New Year’s Eve as I raced through the last few chapters of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Stories.  I looked back over the list of books I had read that year and felt rather pleased with myself.  Except – I couldn’t really remember all that many details about the books I had read.

So when I set myself the same challenge for 2015 – 12 books in 12 months – I decided that, alongside the reading, I would also write a short review of every book, to serve as an aide de memoire at the end of the year, and ensure that all that reading didn’t go completely to waste.  And lucky for you, dear reader, I’m going to share them with you.  I may have some unusual recommendations you wouldn’t have previously considered, or I may steer you clear of something you’d thought was going to be interesting.  Who knows?

Book One

(Yes, I am aware that the beginning of March is a little late to be finishing only my first book, but January 2015 was something of a write-off in terms of leisure time for reasons I won’t bore you with.)

Doctor Who: Marco Polo by John Lucarotti

(A Target Book, published 1985)

Ok, I know, not exactly a literary classic to kick off with, but I needed an easy read to get myself back into the swing of things. I’ve been watching the Classic Doctor Who episodes from the beginning and this is one of the missing episodes, so I decided to buy the Target book instead.

Like all the Target novelisations, this doesn’t feature exceptional prose.  I don’t know how much of the dialogue is lifted from the original episodes, but at times it does feel like a script with the odd stage direction thrown in here and there.  There are some nice descriptions of thirteenth century China and Mongolia though.

In terms of plot, it’s fairly slow-moving and a little obvious, since we know that there is no way the Doctor is going to end up letting the mighty Kublai Khan keep his TARDIS, but the historical aspects of the story were interesting enough to keep me reading, even if I hadn't have been interested in the adventures of the Doctor and his companions.   I felt that Messer Polo himself came across as somewhat dense and easily fooled, but that may have been the intention of the author.

Lucarotti’s interpretation is witty at times and I could definitely hear the character’s voices in my head when I was reading.  However, one of my bugbears with this book, and with the other novelisations, is that Ian seems to come across as a bit of a chauvinistic pig and Barbara as a bit of a wet lettuce, which isn’t the impression I get from watching the programme at all.

Overall?  An easy read and not especially gripping, but, if nothing else, it got me to do a significant amount of background reading on a period of history I previously knew very little about.  Three stars.