Tuesday, January 18, 2011

In Case You're Wondering



In case you're wondering about my reading plan, bravely announced on January 4, I admire my stack of books. Needless to say, I haven't stuck to this list.  I have added and subtracted desultorily.  

Finished:  Nadine Gordimer's A World of Strangers. Gordimer's stunning second novel examines the changing political views of a cynical Englishman in Johannesburg.

In Progress :  Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, R. F. Delderfield's Theirs Was the Kingdom, and Helen Vendler's Emily Dickinson:  Selected Poems and Commentaries.
 
 All great!

Rejected:  Yiyun Li's Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.  Li is a 20-under-40 at the New Yorker. I admit I think the New Yorker has gone downhill.  The first story in the collection, about a Chinese lesbian soldier, seems chilly and distant. 

George Meredith's The Amazing Marriage.

Added to List:  Olivia Manning's School for Love (Finished:  I posted about it Sunday).

Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower:  The Fall of Anne Boleyn and Jean Plaidy's Murder Most Royal (a biography and a historical novel. I haven't gone insane: Plaidy's historical novel actually complements the biography.)

Robin Black's If I Love You, I Would Tell You 

Middlemarch


 Antonya Nelson's Bound

So I'm curious:  how many people stick to their reading plans?  My list is mutable. I read Nadine Gordimer and get interested in political fiction.  Or I see something at the bookstore and break my vow not to buy books.  

I wonder how people are doing on spending, too.  YOU'RE MY HERO IF YOU DON'T BUY BOOKS!  I'd never buy a book if I weren't bewitched by book reviewers (who get free books so are unreliable because they want to make friends or enemies, and it's hard to sort out what's what :) ).

4 comments:

  1. This is the first year I have created a list and it is because of all the unread books on my shelves. I started to blog about it to keep me honest. :) So far, so good - I am 4 and a half books into 2011 and all are ones I have owned for awhile. I have made 1 purchase year to date, but that's amazing for me!

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  2. Amanda, that's great! Keep going. One purchase is plenty when you have shelves of books, as I know well. Now that's what I should do.

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  3. I have no reading plan beyond the next book, and if there is a book that comes up and grabs my attention it right away may become my next book.

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  4. Your reading plan is like mine, Tony. I like to read according to my interests.

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