Monday, January 2, 2012

In which we discuss resolutions for the new year


Whether we write them down or not, we all make New Years Resolutions. So let's have'em. Out with your 2012 reading resolutions! Mine are relatively simple, because I'll foul up anything even remotely complex. Here they are:

#1) Read more women:

Some of my all-time favorite books have been written by authors like Harper Lee, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, but anybody who's read my 2011 reading recap will see that I've been swirling in an eddy of literary testosterone for the better part of a year: One female author, out of twenty-eight read last year. Yikes.

In fact, let's just look at eminent American authoresses for a moment: if you were to ask me right now to tell you the difference between Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers, the best I could come up with is that Flannery O'Connor raised peacocks in Milledgeville, Georgia- and that's because I live in Georgia. I hope to remedy that in 2012 (the cluelessness about women authors, that is- not the living in Georgia.)

#2) Read an Agatha Christie Poirot novel:

This second goal supports goal number one, but it also gives me one last chance to actually read a Poirot mystery before David Suchet acts out the final handful of stories on my TV. Not high literature, but hey, I've got to switch things up from time to time.

#3) Read a foreign language novel in the original:

Little-known fact about me: I speak Slovene, along with about two million other people on earth. But the only adult book that I have actually completed in the language is a cheap translation of a Barbara Cartland romance that I bummed off my wife when I had run through my own reading material at the beach one year.

I did read Camus' L'Etranger in college French, but that was more a linguistic adventure than a literary one. So, this year I vow to finally get over the hump and tackle a great work of Slovene literature, probably Boris Pahor's Trg Oberdan.

What are you're reading resolutions for 2012?

2 comments:

  1. Finish Infinite Jest, Read Great Gatsby (I know, it's essentially a crime)

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    1. If you've started Infinite Jest, you're further along than I am. I've heard it's fantastic.

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