With my retirement over a decade ago, I embarked on a new reading program for myself.  After a career which required me to read little beyond professional monographs, peer-reviewed journal articles, and technical papers, I decided that it was time for a change.  With retirement and more time to read outside of my specific field, I determined to diversify my reading by including as much fiction as I could accommodate.  At the same time, as I was not quite willing to give up my nonfiction reading, I expanded my new reading program to include unfamiliar (to me) fields of nonfiction as well.

With this new plan in place, I would diversify my nonfiction reading and add to it a vigorous dose of fiction to help me get re-acquainted with it after a hiatus of many years.  As to my fiction selections, I did not want to limit myself to any specific genre, author, historical period, or subject.  I wanted to leave this open and sample it all, for my taste in reading has always been very eclectic.  I just didn’t want to limit my choices, and with that in mind, and without any preconceived criteria, I began reading.  Everything was grist for my mill and my eclecticism was without bounds.

Now, years later, I can report that my reading program has been a success and continues unabated to this day.  What has not been a success is this blog!  I launched The Eclectic Reader at the same time that I began my reading program.  From the beginning, this blog’s purpose was to be a personal reading journal or record of my reading activities over the years.  I failed in keeping the record up-to-date and unfortunately, my reading got so far ahead of my chronicle of it, that I was forced to shut down The Eclectic Reader.

Last year, I took down the few postings that remained from the initial start, and today it is my intention to relaunch this blog.  The goal of The Eclectic Reader remains the same as that of the first attempt: to be a chronicle of my personal reading adventures throughout the years.  I hope that this time, my reporting will be able to keep up with my reading.  Starting this blog anew and catching up with the reading so far, will be a challenge, but I am going to give it a try!  This year, the task will be made more difficult by my plans to do some preliminary reading in three totally new areas for me.  I’m looking forward to do some thoughtful reading in Western philosophy, the English novel, and Shakespeare.  I am woefully deficient in all three of these areas and I hope to remedy that shortly.