What are your reading resolutions for 2010?

[DB Cooper]

Some books that I plan on getting to in 2010:

Gravity's Rainbow-Thomas Pynchon: Ive read four other Pyncon books, its time to make the leap.

Ulysses-James Joyce: I will probably take this one slow, ten pages a day.

Javier Marias Your Face Tomorrow trilogy: Read the first one, time to get to the other two.

The Recognitions-William Gaddis: Been sitting on the shelf for a while. Ive heard so many good things that I absolutely must get to this.

Eastern European Lit- More specifically Polish and Russian. Stocking up already with some Gombrowicz. Ive been combing the forums for titles of interest. Suggestions?

Short stories- Nabokov, Kafka, Chekhov, George Saunders, maybe others?

[miercuri]

I'm not making any plans anymore. Making them is as good as sabotaging them, so what use?

[Liam]

Making [plans] is as good as sabotaging them, so what use?

I don't know. When my b/f and I plan to have sex in the evening, we usually end up doing just that, .

Don't worry, I get you. I stopped making plans and resolutions a long time ago (well, ok, around my 22nd birthday). The only thing I can be sure of is that I'll be reading lots and lots of "secondary" literature in preparation for my MA thesis.

[kpjayan]

Hoping to finish, 3 mammoth novels, which I have been shunning for a while, in 2010.

a. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
b. Hopscotch - Cortazar
c. Don Quixote - Edith Grossman translation.

[miercuri]

I don't know. When my b/f and I plan to have sex in the evening, we usually end up doing just that, .

I was hoping you an your bf were a bit more spontaneous than that

Good luck with working on your thesis though! I also have to start thinking about what my graduation paper will be, I'm already half-way through college.

[Heteronym]

I never decide what to read in advance. My real resolution is to buy less books next year and instead read the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of books I have piled up in columns next to my bed. Only after will I buy more books.

[sumaira]

i am gonna study critiszim comprising theater and stage setting.and it takes time so in 2010,it'll be enough to red them.

[DB Cooper]

Hoping to finish, 3 mammoth novels, which I have been shunning for a while, in 2010.

a. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
b. Hopscotch - Cortazar
c. Don Quixote - Edith Grossman translation.

Ive read 2666 and Hopscotch, and I heartily recommend both of them. You wont be disappointed.

[DB Cooper]

I never decide what to read in advance. My real resolution is to buy less books next year and instead read the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of books I have piled up in columns next to my bed. Only after will I buy more books.

I should do this but there are so many tempting books out there its hard to stay disciplined. I probably have (at least) a years worth of unread books on my shelf but something interesting always pops up.

[Daniel del Real]

I have several, and as always some may never come to reality, but I'll try:

1.- Read one classic a month. 2009 was dedicated entirely to XX century or contemporanean writer. I read only 3 or 4 older books. This has to change for 2010 since there are many classics I still have aside. I want to read Melville, Dostoievsky, Dumas, Stoker, Dickens, Zola etc, so although I'm still going to dedicate my reading time mostly to XX century and contemporary writers, I want to get a little space for XIX century novel

2.- Finish Bola?o's works. As may of you already know, I love what Bola?o does. So far I've only read 7 of his works (5 novels, 1 short stories and one poetry) so there are a lot of them I have to read: Nocturno de Chile, Amberes, Una Novelita Lumpen, Monsieur Pain, La Pista de Hielo and his "new novel" to be released in 2010, El Tercer Reich (all novels) Putas Asesinas & El Gaucho Insufrible (short stories) and some books dedicated to his conferences, and diaries (La Universidad Desconocida, Entre Par?ntesis & El Secreto del Mal).

3.- Keep on with contemporary writers in Spanish Language. I developed a high taste for writers like Mar?as, Vila-Matas, Mars?, Castellanos Moya, Bellat?n, Volpi, Zambra, Nettel and of course Bola?o. Hope to follow that path that brought me so much joy, for 2010.

Hoping to finish, 3 mammoth novels, which I have been shunning for a while, in 2010.

a. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
b. Hopscotch - Cortazar
c. Don Quixote - Edith Grossman translation.

I praise your resolutions for 2010. Those three have to be among my top 20 books ever, if not Top 10. Hopscotch is not that long to be considered a mammoth but it's definitely the most complex of the three.

[DB Cooper]

Im adding one more resolution. 2010 will be the year I get around to William T Vollmann. I read a little of The Atlas at a friends house and it was interesting enough to make me want to go further. Europe Central will be my first official Vollmann.

[Elie]

My two big ones are that I'm going to buy no more than 1 book for every 10 read (which believe me is going to be hard work!!) and reduce my unread books pile by at least 50%, although that will probably take longer than a year.

I'm also planning to read War And Peace this year. Had it sitting on my shelf for about 4 years and been too intimidated to touch it so far, but I read Anna Karenina this year and absolutely loved it so I am now quite excited about it!

[Chapman]

Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow, almost certainly, since it is already stacked for next-in-line when I finish Possession by A. S. Byatt, perhaps this year.

Then I'll be looking into Verdun by Jules Romains, from some time ago, to satsify a personal curiosity that has existed ever since seeing many books of his series on the shelves in my local boyhood library.

Beyond that, just the perennial search for interesting and imaginative books to expand my reading horizon.

[SlowRain]

Read more than I did in 2009.

[Igu Soni]

Stop reading and study. I'm going to have six courses next term.

[hdw]

Read more than I did in 2009.

Good idea, to keep your aspirations fairly general and vague. Every year at this time the papers are full of articles by doctors and psychologists, explaining why people usually fail to keep their New Year resolutions. Partly it's because 1st January is too random a date, partly people are too ambitious and get easily disheartened when they find they've set themselves unrealistic goals in an unrealistic timescale.

When I've managed in the past to lose weight, stop smoking, or whatever the goal was, it's not because I've automatically stopped doing something when somebody fired a starting-pistol. The realisation has just gradually crept up on me over a period of time that I'm sick of my waistband cutting me in half, or of starting the day with a hacking cough, so I just start being sensible and doing the right thing.

Harry

[obooki]

This year's was to read 100 books ... and with three days left I reckon I will do it (though perhaps it was never technically a resolution).

For next year, my resolution is to read at least 20 books in French - which will be a fair achievement, since I've never read an entire book in French in my life.

Also, I guess I should go with Heteronym's resolution and stop buying quite so many books and concentrate on reading the ones already purchased.

[nnyhav]

As I've said elsewhere, I'm still working off last year's ... but speaking of humiliation a la Lodge (as per opening of above link), latest TLS NB had a great bit:

In 2003, Sebastian D. G. Knowles looked at himself in the mirror; he was the author of a study of James Joyce; he was Professor of English at Ohio State University (specializing in Joyce). He had attended dozens of Joyce conferences. But he had never read Finnegans Wake. "Worse, I had never even tried to", Professor Knowles writes in the current James Joyce Quarterly. Guilt-ridden, he decided to confess his failing in a song to be sung at the after-dinner entertainment at a Joyce conference in Miami:
Am I alone?And unobserved? I am.
Then let me own, I'm an academic sham.
My reading of the Wake's a fake.
Up to about page nine I'm fine.
But the idea of reading every word's absurd.
[...] Knowles rendition was met "with great applause". As fellow Joyceans congratulated him, however, he realized they thought he was teasing some other fraud. "You've got the type down exactly", one said. When he protested, "The song's about me", they laughed. "Very good!" The upshot was that he was made editor of the Florida Joyce Series.

He's since read it, and "was recently made President-Elect of the International James Joyce Foundation".

[gonfler]

What are your reading resolutions for 2010?

My reading resolution for 2010 is to read first what I already have at home before buying and borrowing another one.

On my list:
Spring Snow by Mishima Yukio
Thirst for Love by Mishima Yukio
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
L'immoraliste by Andre Gide
Trois Contes by Gustave Flaubert

I am having difficulty understanding Death in Venice. Anyone here who read and liked it?

edit:

And... I realize I've never read anything Spanish. I mean Spain-Spanish. What kind of "introductory" novel would you recommend for the uninitiated like me?

Thanks.

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I was hoping you an your bf were a bit more spontaneous than that

Good luck with working on your thesis though! I also have to start thinking about what my graduation paper will be, I'm already half-way through college.

What's your major, dear?

[miercuri]

My major is English language and literature, but it is painful enough that I have to take a course in generative grammar. I know for sure that I won't be doing my paper on something linguistics-related, so it will have to be literature.