You’ve got one of these lists too, don’t you? Things you’d like to read, either because you want to or because you feel like you should? That latest potboiler everyone is talking about? The classics? Dostoyevsky? Shakespeare?
Maybe you’re gonna take a second (or third or fourth) stab at Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged? James Joyce’s Ulysses? Tolstoy’s War and Peace? Don’t forget Tolkien’s Silmarillion.
Yeah, me too. And yet the more I read, the more these lists seem to grow. What can you do? Besides read, that is.
Of course you can see what I have immediately on tap — currently reading or just finished and plan to write about — in the box over at the right. As for the rest of it …
Plan to Read and Review
Barring any unforeseen circumstances — the Rapture, my untimely demise from meteor strike, etc. — I will most definitely peruse these tomes.
- Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
- The winner in each category of the 2011 Locus Awards. Because I’m an unabashed nerd. Of course I’ve already read a few of these.
- Who guitarist Pete Townshend’s memoir.
- Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex
by David Henry Sterry Oh, c’mon, you know you want to read it too. - The Skeptical Romancer: Selected Travel Writing by W. Somerset Maugham. He’s one of my favorites.
- Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite. She’s another favorite of mine, and this is the only thing I haven’t read of hers.
Possibly Maybe
These have piqued my interest to one degree or another, usually because of a review I’ve read or a friend’s recommendation.
- Beauty by Roger Scruton
- The Art of Instinct by Denis Duton
- The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt by Jon-Jon Gourlian
- Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman
- Starve Better, by Nick Mamatas
- Paying For It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John, by Chester Brown
The Classics
Here are the classics of Western and Eastern literature that I should have read by now but haven’t. Yet(?).
This could be quite a long list if I were to include them all. Here’s just a few definite (?) highlights (in no particular order) I will get to. Someday.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibon
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- Anything/Something by Honore de Balzac
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- The Dhammapada (The Buddha’s Path of Truth)
- The Bhagavad Gita
Upcoming Reviews
Just a few books that I’ve read recently that I would like to review here. Soon, if I don’t slack, this pile should disappear.
- Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
- Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Other Topics to Cover
Other things reading and literature related I’d like to pontificate upon.
- A comparison, contrast and critique of the Lord of the Rings movies with the books. I’m a ginormous Tolkien nerd.
Read Before & Will Again
This could be another really long list, so here’s just a few highlights for the time being.
- The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Anything by William Gibson
- Anything by Arthur C. Clarke
- Anything by Caitlín R. Kiernan
