Resolution

When it comes to reading and writing (among other things), I have always been an ambitious dreamer. But a doer? That I am… not so much. I always say I’m going to read “books that I know are good for me” (e.g. Moby-Dick or Absalom, Absalom!) but instead find myself sucked into the inescapable vortex of, say, a 4-hour Nancy Drew readathon. Or I’ll write the first paragraph of a story and then it will wither away in the dank depths of my computer’s once-yearly perused “Writing Projects” folder.

But this year will be different! I mean it this time! You know why? I paid a whole 26 dollars for this domain name and the recommended privacy fee, so I mean serious business. I’m going to read books, and then I’m going to write about them. Maybe not articulately, maybe not even coherently, but write I will.

Why am I launching this blog into the black hole that is the Internet, you may ask? What is the point? Well, my reasoning is that on the Internet, at least you can pretend you are talking to other people about whatever you like to talk about. Discussing books with yourself can get kind of depressing after a while… And—might I dare to hope?—maybe at least one person will go read something they end up enjoying because of something I’ve said.

The year has commenced with much promise: I finished George Saunders’s Pastoralia in one day, on January 1st no less! (Will write about this soon.) Terrified this was a fluke, I promptly plowed through Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, which I thoroughly enjoyed. (Hope to write about this too.)

While some sort of strict reading list or schedule would result in me keeling over in despair (I tend to overreach), here are some things I hope to read in 2014:

• The rest of Roberto Bolaño’s fiction [Not completely unrealistic—finished 2666 last summer. Phew! I’m going to leave his poetry for another year…]
• Everything George Saunders has published so far
• Everything David Mitchell has published so far [Still can’t get over Cloud Atlas…]
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt [Everyone says it must be read.]
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell [Who doesn’t like alligator wrestling?]
• The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
• Food Politics by Marion Nestle [Food is a perennial interest of mine, actual eating of course included.]
• The Modern History of Iraq by Phebe Marr [Thanks Sara!]
• Cairo: Histories of a City by Nezar AlSayyad
• Bough Down by Karen Green [Thanks again Sara!]
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
• Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History by Jennifer Roberts [Jennifer Roberts is my hero.]
• Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar [Apparently Bolaño thought he was awesome.]
• Voss by Patrick White (Need to finish—probably one of the most awe-inspiring books I’ve ever encountered, but for no particular reason it’s taken me over a year and half to get halfway through. Yikes…)
• Ulysses by James Joyce [Audiobook version read by Jim Norton & Marcella Riordan (because a certain professor said it’s the way to go).]
• The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (obviously) by Eudora Welty [In progress…]
• The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann
• At least one Henry James novel [Never read one!]
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck [In progress…]
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley [In progress…]
• Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin [In progress…]
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray [In progress…]
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad [Never read—kind of embarrassing.]
• 1984 by George Orwell [Also never read—REALLY embarrassing.]
• The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich
• The Good Earth by Pearl Buck [Because it’s my mom’s favorite book.]
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton [Because it won the Man Booker Prize and, more importantly, it’s set in New Zealand.]
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

I’m sure there are other books, but I can’t think of them at the moment…

Anyway, here goes!