Books ahead

On Friday evening, Amy was over at a neighbor’s, so I spent some time downstairs in the library, looking at my books and pulling ones that I hope to read in the year ahead. I’m going to list them here so I can check back in December and see how far I deviated from plan. Also, so I can look like a smartypants:

• The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway (re-read)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Hemingway
• Tender is the Night – Fitzgerald (re-read)
• Money – Martin Amis
• Under the Frog – Tibor Fischer
• Chronicles, vol. 1 – Bob Dylan (re-read)
• The Learners – Chip Kidd
• The Aeneid – Virgil (tr. Fitzgerald)
• The Metamorphoses – Ovid (tr. Mandelbaum)
• The Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavic
• Life – Keith Richards
• Cultural Amnesia – Clive James (I’ve been winding my way through this for quite some time, and hope to finish it this year)
• Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
• Stories – Anton Chekhov (tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky)

That’s only 14 books, so I’ve left myself plenty of wiggle room. I don’t think I’ll start a major reading project this year, like tackling Caro’s biography of LBJ or re-reading Proust. I’ve been thinking about re-reading Middlemarch, or taking up David Mitchell’s newest one, and there are a bazillion other books downstairs to discover or return to, but this seems like a good starting point. I’ll let you know how it goes (like it or not).