As my final exam and temporary freedom from school approaches, and as I look forward to the two-week reading vacation I am taking at the end of the month, I can’t help but eagerly begin dreaming and planning how I will spend my suddenly expansive time for reading. No doubt, any list I make will be tossed aside and forgotten within hours, but that has never stopped me before!
- Keep reading, and dare I even hope? finish reading Clarissa
- Finish reading In the Land of Invisible Women. I am almost done so this one is easy to do.
- Finish reading The Journals of Jules Renard. I am enjoying this book and the gems that are his sentences. The book does not lend itself to sustained reading so if I don’t finish it, that’s ok, the pleasure will just be extended.
- Keep reading and hopefully finish Ugresic’s Nobody’s Home.
- Rescue Pride and Prejudice from my desk at work and finish the book curled up under a blanket with my cats and a hot drink.
- Get back to Harold Bloom’s How to Read a Book and, I hope, finish it because I would then like to start in on How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster.
- Spend pleasurable snippets of time with The Recognitions by William Gaddis and have fun discussing this unwieldy but delightful tome at Reading Gaddis
- I picked up User Error: Resisting Computer Culture by Ellen Rose at the library and have read the introduction. It holds the promise of being fascinating as it sets out to examine the idea of computer user as a social construct. I hope to read all of it before it needs to be renewed in a couple of weeks.
- My Bookman and I have so far listened to two of the five Margaret Atwood Massey Lectures. We love her dry and sarcastic sense of humor and she does too as she often starts laughing at her jokes before she has finished delivering them. I’d like to finish listening to all of them and read the book too since we found while trying to follow along that there is much added material in the book.
I will also very likely start reading some other book on a whim, probably a short novel to counterbalance the nonfiction and the heft of Gaddis and Clarissa. I will also spend time catching up on all the online essays and lit mags and blogs I have been neglecting. And as the year comes to a close and I wipe my reading slate clean, I will be formulating 2009′s reading goals that I will then disregard except for when the year is half over and again when it is about to end.
All this in a little less then four weeks. I can hardly wait to start!
I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve to make a list for next year after this year’s debacle. I admire your optimism!
We’re on the same wave length! I’ve also been contemplating what I’ll be reading during my break from work (just under two weeks) and what I’d like to read next year! I say go for finishing Clarissa–it will be such a relief to get through it!
I’ve been looking at finishing books too before the end of the year. I don’t think I’ll manage it because I keep picking up new (to me) books each time I take a book back to the library, so the piles never go down. At the moment I’m really looking forward to finishing Les Miserables.
For next year I think my “long” read will be The Count of Monte Cristo, and apart from that I have a few books earmarked for the What’s In a Name Challenge, but the rest will just come to me unplanned.
It’s such a nice feeling to see ends in sight, last pages to turn, reading projects to complete. Because then you can plan lots of lovely new stuff! You have some great reads on the go, Stefanie, and I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about all of them!
Sylvia, even if this year was a debacle, next year is the chance for a fresh start. I am ever the optimist
Danielle, isn’t planning reading for a long break from work fun? So much possibility. It will be a relief to have Clarissa done. Not that I haven’t been enjoying it, but it will be good not to see its bulk sitting by then bed.
BooksPlease, it’s hard to pass by the new books isn’t it? I know I will start reading at least one maybe more books when I am trying to finish a bunch. The Count of Monte Cristo sounds like a fun reading plan!
Litlove, it is fun to have the end in sight particularly for books that have been going for far too long!
True. I actually have a good feeling about 2009. I don’t know why but I’ll stick with it.
And you’re going to do all this inside of two weeks? Wow. Color me impressed.
“I will be formulating 2009’s reading goals that I will then disregard except for when the year is half over and again when it is about to end.”
Ha, I love this and so true. I always have grand plans – maybe not very concrete but I keep thinking I’ll read a lot more non-fiction, more classics, etc. and the big one, cut back on book spending but it’s all just talk
By the way, good luck with the final exam!
What a good idea to plan the rest of the year’s reading. I had hoped to have 75 books read this year but not sure I’m going to make it! Right now I just want to get my book club book read by the end of the week! Those all sound wonderufl.
I love this time of year, when I get to start wrapping up my projects and figuring out my new ones. The books on your list look wonderful, and I hope you enjoy your much-deserved upcoming break!
Sylvia, 2009 will be a very good year.
Peg, I wish I could do all that in two weeks. I won’t be able to but I like to dream big
Iliana, I wasn’t going to buy as many books this year but by March that one had been tossed out. I don’t think I will even say anything about that for 2009! And thanks for the good wishes!
Daphne, 75 is a lot! I’m always happy to make it to 52 but with school I haven’t been able to read as much, thought these final weeks of the year will go a long way to making up for it!
Verbivore, it is a good time of the year, isn’t it? I like the winding down feeling and the brief rest before diving in to the new year. Thank you, it’s very hard not to enjoy a break!
How fun to be able to plan for the break — and a well-deserved one too! You are SO close to finishing Clarissa; I’m sure you’ll get to the end soon and what an accomplishment that will be. It sounds lovely to read Pride and Prejudice too; perhaps i should re-read an Austen one of these days, just for fun.
I’m determined to make The Recognitions my first book of 2009. Glad to see that I’m not alone!