A year's worth of Classic Fiction to Study - and Entertain...

Why Stephen King says writers should read daily - a year of study for you.

The Fiction Writer's Challenge: I frankly don't know if anyone can actually do this one. It's a study course with 26 (or so) classic fiction books. If you can get through all of them in an average of 2 weeks, then you'll have covered the gamut of styles and plot twists, characters and story elements which all the truly great fiction writers have used for the last couple of centuries (at least) - all in a single year of reading.

The point was to set up a series of books and a simple program so that while authors read daily, they'd be able to surround themselves with quality editions of the top-selling fiction works of the ages.

And if sitting at the Masters' feet weren't enough, these are all available first as epubs, so you can carry them with you wherever you go - on smartphones, tablets, ereaders, or anything with a screen.

The trick is that it includes really long-winded books such as Les Miserables, War and Peace, and a few others that are otherwise meant to balance tipping bookshelves.



I'm next going to blog reviews of each of these, and meanwhile publish a handy trade paperback edition along with a study guide - that has expanded margins and a spiral binding so you can stuff it in your knapsack, shopping bag, and/or briefcase for ready study anywhere you want. That binding allows you to turn it inside out in order to fit on cramped tables - even those tiny bistro things in coffeeshops.

Because in order to read all these books, you might have to immerse every spare moment of time to get through them. Reading anywhere and perhaps everywhere you go or wind up.

I just wrapped up the last of the ebook versions, and am not even half-way through the work needed to present these properly.  Creating the first ebook version of each (along with the research to narrow down the top fiction bestsellers, create new covers, publish through 4 distributors each, etc.) seems to be the easy half of what is needed.

You can then follow my reviews to get more data on each of these books. Of course, I'll work to set these up as an ecourse, so you get notices of what you should be reading by now every other week.

If I didn't have another huge project breathing down my neck, I'd join you in this. To be sure, I already have a huge amount of reading. (You see, I also downloaded the next 2 years of classics to read - so don't think I'm slacking off on you...)

But I am looking forward to studying all about these books and their authors just to do the 26 (or so) reviews for you.

Good luck with this challenge, then. And to both of us.