Reading Resolutions for 2008

I’ve never made a book list resolution before—probably because I read plenty without one, in and out of school. Last year I checked off several classics, such as:

Wuthering Heights, Puck of Pook’s Hill, The Divine Comedy, Gulliver’s Travels, Canterbury Tales, A Tale of Two Cities, Frankenstein, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Henry V, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet

But this year I’m determined to include quite a few non-required classics, and here to help me is my handy dandy


My Audible List for 2008
KJV Bible
Iliad, by Homer
Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers K, by Feodor Dostoevsky
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Great Gatsby, by John Fitzgerald
The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens (because Soobie reads it in The Mennyms)
Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

Other Misc.
The Mind of the Maker, by Dorothy Sayers
Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton
Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
House of Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Brave New World, by Adolph Huxley
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff
Antony and Cleopatra
Merchant of Venice
Comedy of Errors
Two Gentlemen of Verona
All’s Well That Ends Well

At least five old Newberys


Beginning these lists had a definite Pringles effect. Oh well—seventy-five-foot ambitions never hurt anyone … did they? Besides like, um, Haman.

5 comments:

Erin said...

Have you read MANALIVE by G. K. Chesterton? I'm halfway through it and it is Blowing. Me. Away.

batgirl said...

Ooh... ambitious! Good luck to you:)

I like my current method of listing books I've read as I finish them. Then I see a growing list and feel that I've accomplished something (as opposed to have a big list I haven't read yet!)Of course we all have our lists, even if we don't write them down!

Noël De Vries said...

Erin, I'm a Chesterson virgin ... tried his Father Brown mysteries years ago but never really got into them. I just know that I'd love him if I actually sat down with something--it's the sitting down that I'm having trouble with! I'll add Manalive to my list. :)

Janet, I kind of decided halfway through that these were books more "books I'd like to read before I die" ... finishing this year would be a miraculous added bonus!

Sookie said...

I very much reccommend 1984 it's a little bleak, but sends a true message about communism.
I like Killer Angels, and that's saying something, since I can't stand war novels.

Noël De Vries said...

I really enjoyed Killer Angels, too, and completely share your distaste for war novels. I refused to read Anne Frank until two years ago!