Books I want to read in 2006.
I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, which probably speaks volumes about my willpower, or lack thereof; similarly, I haven't consciously vowed to read "x" number of books a year, although I do tend to make extremely loose reading goals for myself, such as "Read more about ancient Rome" or "Read more about Africa."
Since I managed to squeak by with the "50 books a year" bit in 2005, though, I thought it might be helpful if I were to set down twenty specific books that I want to read in 2006. Keeping the number of books at twenty allows me a certain flexibility in case other books direct their siren songs at my shell-like ears; it also keeps the goal within the realm of possibility so that I'm not as likely to get all depressed and hate myself even more come New Year's Eve 2006 if I haven't managed to read all of them, or even most of them.
This list is pretty deceptive, though, in that I'm not including certain "must read" books (such as the last two books in B. Traven's Jungle series or some more Alan Furst books; I've only read his first four books, after all) or certain broad inclinations of mine: namely, to read more history but, even more, to read more science fiction, by gum. I was pretty disgustipated to see that, while I read a fair bit of fantasy novels last year (and yes, three of those were Harry Potters and five of those were in a series of a not-very-good pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs and A[braham] Merritt), I only read four sci-fi books: two alternate histories (Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream and S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers), a Star Wars book (Barbara Hambly's Planet of Twilight) and a Darkover book (Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey's Rediscovery). In other words, even the nominally science fiction books that I read had far more in common with fantasy or that red-headed stepchild known as "science fantasy" than they did with anything that Hugo Gernsback or John W. Campbell, Jr. would've recognized as science fiction. That has got to change for the better in 2006, even if it only amounts to finding some Heinlein that I haven't read yet, or finally gritting my teeth and reading some Fred "There's No Such Thing As Black Holes" Hoyle. (It's been a while since I've read A.E. van Vogt, and an even longer while since I've read Algis Budrys; if nothing else, I should really re-read Michaelmas since so much of it soared over my head the first time I read it. Hmm.)
Another broad inclination of mine is to read at least a couple of books about Africa, whether fiction or non-fiction. I've been sitting on the sequel to Maryse Condé's very interesting and informative novel Segu (French title: Sègou), The Children of Segu, for years now, even after all the trouble of hunting it down; and I wouldn't mind at all reading some more Buchi Emecheta. Of course, I could always read Mike Resnick's Ivory and kill two birds with one stone (i.e., science fiction and Africa; yes, I've already read Kirinyaga, thanks), so to speak; or I could buy Giles Foden's Ladysmith or Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika in good conscience. (If Foden's first novel, The Last King of Scotland -- about a Scottish doctor who becomes, against his better judgment, the personal physician of Idi Amin while the latter ruled Uganda -- didn't exactly knock my socks off, it was still a very respectable debut.) And when will I finally read more by M.G. Vassanji, the multiple Giller Prize-winning author of The Book of Secrets, which I really liked? His novels and short stories about the East Indian community of Kenya and Tanzania (the aforementioned The Book of Secrets; The Gunny Sack; The In-Between World of Vikram Lall; When She Was Queen; Uhuru Street; and, yes, even Amriika and No New Land, though these last two are set primarily in the U.S. and Canada, respectively) promise a view of African society and history not terribly well known in the U.S., at least.
*Sigh* So many books; so little time (and money!).
Anyhoo, herewith I offer -- The List. I've tried not to pad it with "Easy Reader"-type books (I don't need to resolve to read those, eh?), and there's only one instance in which I couldn't settle on a specific book by a specific author; but since that author happens to be the only sci-fi author on The List, I guess that's more or less copacetic.
Listed alphabetically by author, not necessarily in the order in which I want to read them:
Henry Adams -- Democracy
Thomas Berger -- Little Big Man
Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield (preferably the Oxford University edition, which means another trip to the bookstore; oh, darn...)
Fyodor Dostoevsky -- Demons
George Eliot -- Middlemarch
William Faulkner -- The Unvanquished
Ivan Goncharov -- Oblomov
Gunter Graß -- Dog Years
Robert Graves -- I, Claudius
Robert Graves -- Claudius the God
Peter Hopkirk -- Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia
Hari Kunzru -- The Impressionist
Rohinton Mistry -- Such a Long Journey
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o -- Devil on the Cross
Patrick O'Brian -- Post Captain
Richard Pipes -- Russia Under the Old Regime
Tom Reiss -- The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
Nancy Richler -- Your Mouth is Lovely
Robert Silverberg -- SOMETHING! (most likely either Tom O'Bedlam, Thorns, or Tower of Glass; I'm not ready to start the Majipoor series yet)
Anthony Trollope -- Framley Parsonage
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EDITED on Sunday, 7 May 2006 / 1551 EDT: Becuase it just might make sense if I read the fourth book in Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles series (Framley Parsonage) before I read the fifth book (The Small House at Allington), hein? Yeeeeesh....
Since I managed to squeak by with the "50 books a year" bit in 2005, though, I thought it might be helpful if I were to set down twenty specific books that I want to read in 2006. Keeping the number of books at twenty allows me a certain flexibility in case other books direct their siren songs at my shell-like ears; it also keeps the goal within the realm of possibility so that I'm not as likely to get all depressed and hate myself even more come New Year's Eve 2006 if I haven't managed to read all of them, or even most of them.
This list is pretty deceptive, though, in that I'm not including certain "must read" books (such as the last two books in B. Traven's Jungle series or some more Alan Furst books; I've only read his first four books, after all) or certain broad inclinations of mine: namely, to read more history but, even more, to read more science fiction, by gum. I was pretty disgustipated to see that, while I read a fair bit of fantasy novels last year (and yes, three of those were Harry Potters and five of those were in a series of a not-very-good pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs and A[braham] Merritt), I only read four sci-fi books: two alternate histories (Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream and S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers), a Star Wars book (Barbara Hambly's Planet of Twilight) and a Darkover book (Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey's Rediscovery). In other words, even the nominally science fiction books that I read had far more in common with fantasy or that red-headed stepchild known as "science fantasy" than they did with anything that Hugo Gernsback or John W. Campbell, Jr. would've recognized as science fiction. That has got to change for the better in 2006, even if it only amounts to finding some Heinlein that I haven't read yet, or finally gritting my teeth and reading some Fred "There's No Such Thing As Black Holes" Hoyle. (It's been a while since I've read A.E. van Vogt, and an even longer while since I've read Algis Budrys; if nothing else, I should really re-read Michaelmas since so much of it soared over my head the first time I read it. Hmm.)
Another broad inclination of mine is to read at least a couple of books about Africa, whether fiction or non-fiction. I've been sitting on the sequel to Maryse Condé's very interesting and informative novel Segu (French title: Sègou), The Children of Segu, for years now, even after all the trouble of hunting it down; and I wouldn't mind at all reading some more Buchi Emecheta. Of course, I could always read Mike Resnick's Ivory and kill two birds with one stone (i.e., science fiction and Africa; yes, I've already read Kirinyaga, thanks), so to speak; or I could buy Giles Foden's Ladysmith or Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika in good conscience. (If Foden's first novel, The Last King of Scotland -- about a Scottish doctor who becomes, against his better judgment, the personal physician of Idi Amin while the latter ruled Uganda -- didn't exactly knock my socks off, it was still a very respectable debut.) And when will I finally read more by M.G. Vassanji, the multiple Giller Prize-winning author of The Book of Secrets, which I really liked? His novels and short stories about the East Indian community of Kenya and Tanzania (the aforementioned The Book of Secrets; The Gunny Sack; The In-Between World of Vikram Lall; When She Was Queen; Uhuru Street; and, yes, even Amriika and No New Land, though these last two are set primarily in the U.S. and Canada, respectively) promise a view of African society and history not terribly well known in the U.S., at least.
*Sigh* So many books; so little time (and money!).
Anyhoo, herewith I offer -- The List. I've tried not to pad it with "Easy Reader"-type books (I don't need to resolve to read those, eh?), and there's only one instance in which I couldn't settle on a specific book by a specific author; but since that author happens to be the only sci-fi author on The List, I guess that's more or less copacetic.
Listed alphabetically by author, not necessarily in the order in which I want to read them:
Henry Adams -- Democracy
Thomas Berger -- Little Big Man
Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield (preferably the Oxford University edition, which means another trip to the bookstore; oh, darn...)
Fyodor Dostoevsky -- Demons
George Eliot -- Middlemarch
William Faulkner -- The Unvanquished
Ivan Goncharov -- Oblomov
Gunter Graß -- Dog Years
Robert Graves -- I, Claudius
Robert Graves -- Claudius the God
Peter Hopkirk -- Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia
Hari Kunzru -- The Impressionist
Rohinton Mistry -- Such a Long Journey
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o -- Devil on the Cross
Patrick O'Brian -- Post Captain
Richard Pipes -- Russia Under the Old Regime
Tom Reiss -- The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
Nancy Richler -- Your Mouth is Lovely
Robert Silverberg -- SOMETHING! (most likely either Tom O'Bedlam, Thorns, or Tower of Glass; I'm not ready to start the Majipoor series yet)
Anthony Trollope -- Framley Parsonage
================================================================
EDITED on Sunday, 7 May 2006 / 1551 EDT: Becuase it just might make sense if I read the fourth book in Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles series (Framley Parsonage) before I read the fifth book (The Small House at Allington), hein? Yeeeeesh....