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
