The idea was to read 10 books in French, 10 in German and 10 in Russian, and I had a list of which ones I was going to read. Considering that, as of January 1 I read French with difficulty and German not really at all, it was an especially steep challenge. The books that I selected were major works of literature in the languages they represented (well, the Russian ones were not all well-known, since I had read most of those already).

I also vowed not to buy books in 2011, except a short list that included the new Martin, some books that were preordered and some books I knew would be coming out. It was a list of some 12 books.

The first part of the challenge to fail was the book-buying one. By my count, I received 185 books in 2011. Part of the reason that I purchased books so voraciously is that I decided to fill out my library in terms of books in French and German and (now) Italian.

The second part of the challenge to fail was the Russian-language portion of the challenge. It was clear that, between work picking up and the time that was going into bringing my French and German up to the level of reading mastery (i.e., reading with minimal to no recourse to the dictionary, with full grammar proficiency as well), the Russian could and would suffer. I ended up reading Anna Karenina, which in all fairness is a long book, and a short essay of about 60 pages.

The third part of the challenge to fail was the selection of books. I think Hugo helped do me in on that one. Although my German reading actually came very close to the list that I had set out for myself, it wasn't identical. I read 10 full books and one essay by Jung, and have about 85 books in German in my library to keep me busy. I read Der Zauberberg, which is an incredibly long novel, and I am very satisfied with my success in German.

For the French portion, although I read three of the ten books that I had chosen, I then got sidetracked with Druon. The first book was more or less fun and I found myself reading by inertia, with the content of the series becoming more and more tiresome as I continued. I didn't waste my time finishing Book 7 because it was so bad, so technically I read only 9 full books in French. To compensate the fact I only read the first third of Book 7 of Druon, though, I have read 500 pages (of 700) of the Louis XIV biography by Petitfils and am enjoying it. I probably would have finished it last year if I had not stopped reading the Petitfils book for a time to focus on learning Italian (a forced march through a grammar book and a CD-plus-book spoken course). I'm now 100 pages into a book on the history of Italy in the Middle Ages and plan on reading Il Nome della Rosa next. The task of learning new vocabulary is really all that's left in Italian (and knowing where the stress falls on that new vocabulary, a great deal of which I wouldn't have to even look up if stress were more predictable, though Latin is helping tremendously in guessing at the stress).

I realize that I set impossibly high goals for myself for 2011. However, I am glad that I did because in setting my goals as high as I did, I accomplished more than I think I could have if I had started with more reasonable goals.