Literary Challenges
Blog tags, reading challenges, and bookish memes — a record of participation in the literary blogosphere.
The Bookish Time Travel Tag
I was not tagged, but I noticed this literary meme on the wonderful blogs of Sandra at A Corner of Cornwall and Jane at Beyond Eden Rock, and wanted to participate — a delicious walk through my many ages.
What is your favourite historical setting for a book?
The Victorian period. There is something irresistible about gaslit streets, stiff collars, and the moral weight of an age wrestling with industry, empire, and the interior life. Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot — they all inhabit that world with such vivid particularity that returning to it feels less like reading and more like visiting.
The tag invites readers to reflect on the eras they most love to inhabit through fiction. For me, the nineteenth century has always held the strongest pull — its contradictions, its energy, its extraordinary literary output. The Victorian Challenge of 2017 was a natural extension of that affection, as was the Poetry Reading Challenge of the same year, both of which deepened my engagement with writers I had long admired and introduced me to voices I had overlooked.
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." — L.P. Hartley
Blog tags like this one were a delightful feature of the book-blogging community in the mid-2010s — a way of connecting across continents through shared literary enthusiasms. They encouraged a kind of playful introspection that social media rarely affords.
Challenges & Tags
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The Bookish Time Travel Tag
A self-initiated response to a circulating literary meme exploring favourite historical settings in fiction, with the Victorian period named as a particular favourite.
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Victorian Challenge: 2017
A year-long reading challenge focused on Victorian literature, spanning novels, poetry, and nonfiction from the period.
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Poetry Reading Challenge: 2017
A companion challenge devoted to reading and discussing poetry across a range of poets and traditions.
Why Challenges Matter
Reading challenges impose a gentle structure on the otherwise unruly habit of a lifelong reader. They push you toward books you might otherwise pass by, and they create a shared calendar with other bloggers — a sense of reading in company, even when the company is scattered across time zones and continents.
Looking back, the challenges of 2016 and 2017 shaped much of what this blog became: a space for reflecting on literature not as a solitary pursuit but as a conversation, however asynchronous, with fellow readers who care about the same sentences, the same stanzas, the same worlds between covers.