Book-related New Year Resolutions

I posted in the other thread that I’d like to read more long books this year. I’ll also add: more poetry.

There were a few things I thought I’d get around to last year that I never did (I’m not v focused so it’s usually just what I feel like picking up at a given moment).

Closest I’ve had to a “project” the last few years has been (re)reading Stephen King as he’s been having a moment. It’s mostly been a good time but I’m about ready to wrap it up (so, I sense, is the culture at large); danse macabre nearly broke me. I have a morbid curiosity about blaze and black house, idk... I bought a load of cheap Elmore Leonard books last year and I started reading the George Smiley books for the first time, probably better avenues to go down

finish more of the many books i start, that's it really, it doesn't need oulipian elaboration

Start with the end, job done

Still working my way through David Pringle's 100 Best SF novel list. Still working my way through the Hugo/Nebula winners.

I was in the pub with David Pringle recently. Short version of another DP anecdote: I've also been on a boat with him, and a bunch of other Ballard nuts, where we quite literally couldn't get into Shepperton. It was the Unlimited Dream Company in reverse.

Black House is the follow up (decades later) to The Talisman (which I bought for a friend's kids this year and nearly rescued from the bookshelf at home except it's 900 pages)

Danse Macabre is great iirc (I might not rc)

I think if I can again pick up and finish Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries that would be good. Maybe Powell's Dance to the Music of Time as well.

For writers I've not read before I'd love to engage with George Eliot (just going straight to Middlemarch), portions of Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Simone Weil's essays. The latter looks to be the most achievable.

Ultimately I always want to be engaging with something that is good, that can give me the energy I have been lacking in at times last year.

this year i just want to read more books

got a copy of this intriguing-looking book called a hidden landscape once a week for xmas, gonna make it my resolution to crack the cover before next xmas

To try to catch up with the books I bought over the last whatever that I've wanted to read for years longer. & finish the several that I started but got lost into the piles beside my bed.
So definitely the Crime and Punishment I bought about 3 years ago. The Strength of the Wolf on US control of drugs etc which is probably older still.
& Mars Before 2000 which is at least from last year so not quite as bad.
I think some Pynchon too and bios of Hank Williams, Nina Simone, Sam Cooke and a couple of others.

I'd like to read more fiction by authors I haven't encountered before.

> 1) chekhov short stories (currently on volume 5 of 13)
> 2) rebus novels (10 / 20ish)
> 3) 87th precinct novels (20 / 50+)
> 4) 1847 / 1848 (wikipedia lists about a dozen english-language novels for each year)
> 5) dickens christmas editions (4 or so left)
> 6) iain m banks re-reads
> 7) thomas hardy
> 8) Guardian 100 books list from 2015 (the first 40 or so are public domain)

1, 3, 4, 6, 7) fail
2) 2 more, now 12/23
5) yes! finished all the christmas editions, and most of the journalism (Uncommercial Traveller, Reprinted Pieces). december is the biography from a few years ago and, hopefully, Bleak House re-read.
8) Robinson Crusoe

I was able to keep the resolution to read more books than I bought, but the pandemic kept me away from my favorite charity bookshops, which made this much easier than in a more normal year. I didn't read more poetry than the smattering I normally do, which is a shame. Maybe next year.

to try to get some books I giot out a while back finished before they have to go back in fenruary. perhaps if i managed to read abook per eye I could eventually catch up with all the books I have waiting to be read.
may buy a few more before I'm through though

I'd like to read more fiction by authors I haven't encountered before.

I also set a goodreads resolution of 26 books and I'm at 52 currently. Although there's a few I don't count as full books.

Think I might try to read more books I'll enjoy in 2021 - going through this year's list there were only a few (of 35ish) that I'd ready again.

(but I'm getting ahead of myself slightly there, leave that for new year's day)

Buy more short books - was looking for something to read to split up bleak House and everything was 400, 500, 600 and in one case 1200 pages long.

Every year I consider spending the year reading a book starting with each letter of the alphabet but have so far never done it. Am saving the Ray Davies memoir, X-Ray, just in case.

Read lots of fun stuff: SFF, crime, comics
Read the Critique of Pure Reason

Read a few of them instead of just using them to cover the bed with

Finish Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. I loved Vol.1 then shit happened.

Downloaded the goodreads app so I will know what I've read through the year.

Just read Swann's way,and intend to start the year working my way through the remaining novels in the series. Have been meaning to get round to Proust since my first year of university, half my lifetime ago

What’s a good Rebus to start with, koogs? Have struggled with Rankin’s on-the-nose style in the past, but wouldn’t mind trying again.

Hoping to work my way through some Pym and Ross Macdonald this year, the three Robert Shearman doorstops, and finally finish some longer novels I’ve left hanging - Middlemarch, It, Twenty Years After...

Also have a lot of heavy academic reading this year so i’m looking for good, funny, short novels to ease my load (something like Heartburn or Excellent Women or At Freddies)

The Rebus novels are in real time, ie he ages as things go on (which caused problems when he got to retirement age) and they do refer back to previous books, albeit lightly, so I'd say start towards the beginning, if not necessarily the first (which I remember as being less good). You can get cheap omnibus editions too, first 3, second 3, bundled together, often for pennies second hand on Amazon.

just reminded myself, I don't really do resolutions but a couple of notions I had for 2021: read some comics (I have fun home on my shelf & satoshi kon's opus on my tablet); buy fewer books (was originally thinking "stop buying books" but there are publishers, bookshops &c I would like to support in These Trying Times)(I am absolutely resolved not to buy any books thru amazon, except for my audible sub I guess lol); keep posting fun pics of what I'm reading to insta (I am terrible at remembering to do this tho)

look forward to being reminded of this at year's end having done none of it obv