What do you plan to read in 2013?

Any topics/writers you are looking to cover/read? Anything you'd revisit?

For me it has to be more writing from Africa and Asia. I've got The Buru Quartet and one vol. of Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt, couple of Chinese authors...

Also wanna read some Henry Miller, pick up a writer or two that aren't read much anymore.

Maybe more writing on film, depends what I see 2nd hand..

Revisitations: Musil, Pavese, Bolano, the usual things I like.

This all looks way too ambitious. Haven't managed to finish much in two months.

More Anna Kavan, more Stefan Themerson. Stuff that is fun, and stuff that doesn't remind me of my academic failures.

How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston
also the new Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson WoT book

I will also at some point pick back up and finish The Scar by China Mieville

The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
sci-fi stuff like Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury
The Collpase of Complex Societies - Joseph Tainter
Don Delillo and Philip Roth books
The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker
PulpHead - John Jeremiah Sullivan
Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie

I may finally read (i.e. finish) Musil too. And Mann's Doctor Faustus.

I plan to read MORE BOOKS in 2013, which is why I'm posting on this board for the first time in about 5 years. Currently reading How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, which my brother gave me for Christmas with high recommendations. Also almost done reading the collected plays of Sarah Kane -- never seen one produced, not even sure I want to, they're tough enough on the page.

I have also declared this the year when I make a run at Ulysses, tho I haven't gone so far as to set a starting date for it. By Bloomsday, at least.

Other things on my to-read-soon shelf:

Austerlitz -- Sebald
The Rest Is Noise -- Alex Ross (dipped into this, but want to give it a full read
The Emperor -- Kapuscinski

On the lighter end, Dance With Dragons -- I read the first 4 in a row, been holding off on this but I'll get to it this year. And I have a few Alan Furst books I'd like to read, too. We'll see.

Authors: Ambler's time has come, I think;
Subjects: the Second World War would keep me going for the rest of my days I think; I've just finished one single-volume history, and just started another; WWII v Shakespeare v The Bible might be the ultimate literary question, I'm suspecting.
Places: the Mediterranean, maybe?
Eras: post WWII, as usual
Revisit: Updike's Rabbit series; I'd be on it right now if I hadn't forgotten to lift it as I left this morning. Now I'm on a train and ILX.

nabokov - the gift
mccarthy - blood maridian
natalia ginzburg - all our yesteradys
cortazar - rayuela (re-read)
jose saar - the witness
some more bolano
walser - short stories
di benedetto - zama

and more...

i'm going to read swann's way! i found the new lydia davis translation at a used book store. who knows when i'll actually get around to it, though. i mean, i've got all year...

I rarely plan ahead with my reading. I just troll around in bookstores and the local public library and grab whatever looks interesting. Or, if ILB points me at a book or author that sounds v interesting, I'll pursue it.

Raymond Queneau (We Always Treat Women too Well, Zazie, Skin of Dreams)
Alejo Carpentier (Kingdom of this World, Explosions from a Cathedral, Lost Steps)
Henry James (Roderick Hudson, American, Europeans at the very least)
probably Madame Bovary
probably Melville's Confidence Man
hopefully The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
maybe some Dostoevsky and some more Balzac
maybe David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, along with some Jim Thompson
some other stuff I'm looking forward to but am too superstitious to post on this thread, so will probably talk about it in the What Are You Reading Thread when the time comes around (unless that time is never)

hoping to finally read 'portrait of a lady,' which i started last year but got distracted from after about 20 pages. also hoping to read the rest of gibbon.

Alejo Carpentier (Kingdom of this World, Explosions from a Cathedral, Lost Steps)

Lost Steps is the fucking best book.

^^^

Subjects: the Second World War would keep me going for the rest of my days I think; I've just finished one single-volume history, and just started another

ha, this is me atm - just finished the hastings book, just starting on the beevor

Thomas Bernhard, more Ryszard Kapuscinski, the new Chabon, those last two or three Nabokovs (maybe?).

Lotsa other stuff.

plan?? madness

Been wondering which single-volume on WWII to pick up so any recommendations would be appreciated.

just finished the hastings book, just starting on the beevor

Heh, I'm the other way round. They complement each other well imo - Beevor (The Second World War) is panoramic, Hastings (All Hell Let Loose) concentrates on personal detail. But my way round is the right one.

never really read any detailed wwii history before so it was all new to me but i was impressed by the way that hastings didn't seem to pull any punches when it came to his handling of british actions during the war - the bombing of hamburg, the indian famine, egotistical generals, all round poor performance of land forces etc. on all these things he was way more critical than you might expect a former sunday telegraph editor to be

but maybe that is the standard reading of events now?

best laid plans etc

i've got about 20 books stacked up on my bedside table right now, the ones on top i'll probably read over the next few months (fathers and sons, the oath by jeff toobin, nabokov's collected stories (ok i won't finish ALL of this), maybe finish portrait of the artist, finish huey newton's collected writings) but after that it's anyone's guess because my reading habits are quite given to caprice

Beevor doesn't mention the famine that I can recall, but that all comes through clear in his book too.

a bunch of assorted russians i have ended up with a backlog of. 'a country doctor's notebook' and tolstoy and lots of dostoyevsky and some kind of attempt at marx.

richard rorty's linguistic turn anthology and another go at avner baz on OLP and maybe scott soames' book on the philosophy of language. and then back to the start of soames' history of the analytic tradition and read, like, moore and stuff.

after that it depends whether i am get into any of the schools i just applied to i guess.

i finally read the davis translation of swann's way last year. i may actually buckle down and read the rest of in search of lost time this year.

i always start out the year planning to finally get to all the classics i've never gotten around to, and i always finish the year having read the usual mishmash of half-disappointing new stuff and genre foolishness and random crap.

is 75 books in a year unrealistic? 6.25 p/m. it's my target and it's necessary.

mishima's 'the sailor who fell from grace with the sea' is first up.

15 leisure books is a realistic goal for me

gravity's rainbow

loving the musil intentions :) i have tonka and other stories but yet to start it.

this year:

more short stories, using the incredibly useful ilb thread
might delve into chekhov
been reading a lot of structural stuff about drama/plays/novels and how they work or are put together, so will probably continue to do that.
maybe ulysses, i have it and it's untouched. read portrait of an artist this year and enjoyed it a lot.

probably Melville's Confidence Man

love this book.

i'm going to read swann's way! i found the new lydia davis translation at a used book store. who knows when i'll actually get around to it, though. i mean, i've got all year...

― 1staethyr, Friday, 4 January 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For all of you screamers and creamers out there Radio 3 is doing a Paris 1913radio essay series. Click on the link and there is a 15 min programme (presented by Michael Wood) tomorrow on the first reactions to Swann's Way. Broadcast tomorrow, but it should be on the website for a week (might work for americans? don't know).

Finish Against The Day, which I'm halfway through. Less intensely-written and propulsively superfucked - less crusading - than Gravity's Rainbow, but if anything just as mindblowing in its layering of plot with parascientific concept with nailed-on political or humanistic metaphor, and astonishingly lucid in its sensing of the forces that drive Modern Man. Whereas GR tantalisingly poked, prodded and only gently teased away the boundaries of even magic realism, ATD seems to have made complete peace with being a parallel-world fuckabout where the rules of nature are Pynchon's and science itself has adapted to become a better means of artistic expression. Which is obviously great.

After that, roughly in order of how I imagine I'll read them (I had a lot of fun with Amazon in November - all of these are in my bookshelf, waiting):

Moby-Dick
Concluding by Henry Green
Remainder
Women And Men by Joseph McElroy (gotten as a Christmas present by my wife - the 4th-longest English-language novel ever written and apparently a doozy)
Mason & Dixon
The Recognitions
JR
Infinite Jest
Pale Fire
Svevo's Conscience
The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch
Lolita
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake
Netherland (maybe not in the same bracket as the rest of these but cricket you know cricket)
Chimera
Ada or Ardor

Should be done by 2016

Oh, and chuck in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon somewhere in there too

maximalist hyperliterature, it's the new pink you guys

who r u

those are some long books man

Normally full of plans, this year not. Feels odd. Will probably end up with last year's mix of c17th stuff, The Canon, poetry, ilb recommends, arbitrary non-fiction, greek, the bible, but right now starting the year reading O'Reillies to try and get a saleable-looking technical head back on me.

I bought Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks today (from the amazing second-hand stall that's on Brick Lane most Sundays, great selection, any Londoners might enjoy it.)

So that's added to my list.

seymour hersh on nixon/kissinger; daniel yergen's history of oil the prize; dispatches; robert hughes' the fatal shore; at least one book i swear from the increasingly high pile of FDR bios now occupying their own corner of the bedroom; rereads of crime and punishment and the bros karamazov; vols 2 and 3 of gibbon; vols 2 and 3 of isaac deutscher's trotsky trilogy; the last third of 2666 that i got distracted from by finals last year; perennial third-or-fourth-in-the-queue light in august; RICK PERLSTEIN'S REAGAN BOOK OMG; whatever other stuff appears over the course of the year to push everything i've just listed into 2014 (except rick perlstein's reagan book).

also the new Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson WoT book

this

nothing else

well fuckin obviously!

Lol imago, yr list would serve very well indeed as mine for the next decade

Of imago's books, I count seven I've read and three I've been defeated by.

I'm going to read them all if I live long enough. Working on my own novel as well* - a busy year awaits.

My concern is that I don't have a single female writer in my list. I know my remit - to read the most questing, adventurous, all-synthesising novels - has a fulfilment that is more obviously male in its genesis, but there must be works by female writers that approach the limits of experience in their own fabulously original and inventive ways. Suggestions please!

*Fizzles, get on with it too, if you don't I'll hound you off the internet! I want 50,000 words by March

orlando - virginia woolf
history - elsa morante

idk if i should add further lbs to that top-heavy pile of epistemic bigness, but if a political equivocation is permitted, what i will say is the memoirs of hadrian by marguerite yourcenar would sit well such company

Hmmmm... maybe Letty Fox: Her Luck by Christina Stead.

Henry James

― gullible lochinski (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, 5 January 2013 06:01 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thomas Bernhard

― Magic Miike (R Baez), Saturday, 5 January 2013 17:14 (Yesterday)

JR
Pale Fire

― imago, Sunday, 6 January 2013 11:53 (11 hours ago)

hopefully i will read some books, any books, maybe even a book by virginia woolf that i found lying around

big sam beckett

imago now but first lemme write this

cheers folks, all noted

going to try and read a novel for the first time in a long time, i think achebe's things fall apart. finishing anything wld be good.

Still on the imago query...

Black Lamb And Grey Falcon by Rebecca West - It's nonfiction, a vast 1000+ page purported guide to Yugoslavia on the brink of WWII, but really it's about a whole lot more; I've read a nice chunk of and got waysided - I hope to get back to it soon enough.

Suggestions please!

The true answer is Miss McIntosh

I managed 50% female writers last year and no reason I shouldn't again. Allende, Munro, Le Guin, Murdoch. Started off with The Bicycle Book by Bella Bathurst, lightweight but pleasing, great chapters on The Tour and Graeme Obree.

imago, you cld add The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein to yr list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_Americans

Henry James

― gullible lochinski (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, 5 January 2013 06:01 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thomas Bernhard

― Magic Miike (R Baez), Saturday, 5 January 2013 17:14 (Yesterday)

JR
Pale Fire

― imago, Sunday, 6 January 2013 11:53 (11 hours ago)

― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Sunday, January 6, 2013 11:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

enjoyable interaction of post content, display name

now there's an adumbration of some exciting, challenging opinions

if only there were a word for those

why are those books bad

imago you could go for Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage.

not that i will likely end up reading any of them this year but at least once they have been shown to be bad books then that will actually be a good thing

i don't think they're bad, i just read it as "you know, henry james, nabokov, JR ... things that are pretty much jokes" and though that was funny

i suppose you could also argue that what they do w/r/t form, all of them, constitutes a joke or a shaggy-dog story or some kind of humour, tho nabokov is the only one explicitly aware of that

woof have you actually read pilgrimage? is it awful?

things done wrt form that constitute some kind of humour is scarcely a smaller category than things that are jokes pretty much

xp

No, never touched it. Couldn't resist offering an option that a) would seem almost irresistible to Imago because it is a gigantic out-of-the-way modernist epic by a female author and b) would most likely lurk on his bookshelves for all eternity as something he must get around to next.

http://kirstenjane.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/viragos.jpg

man

i. i thought it was way longer
ii. of course it's in virago (the same editions seem to still be in print!! only now they're £20 each, jeez)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Although Joanne Winning is not the first to advance the notion of "lesbian modernism" as a current running through female artistic cultural production during the early twentieth century, her reading of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage as an embodiment of this impulse does much to deepen our understanding of the difficulties and rewards inherent in such a project. Winning's book will be of use to Americanists as well as to feminist scholars generally, since its insights contribute to the establishment of a promising framework for defining and understanding other lesbian modernist texts that do not announce themselves. Although the only biographical evidence available identifies Dorothy Richardson as heterosexual, postmodern and poststructuralist insights of the last two decades enable Winning to emphatically remove lesbianism from the "essentialist" location based on lived experience and to adopt, with critics such as Elizabeth Grosz, a more fluid "model of fragmented, dissimulating lesbian subjecthood and textuality, located in the fissures and interstices of cultural expression" (8).

I have no real plans to read specific books (except for Black Swan Green which I have to re-read for a book club discussion). In fact I'm going through a spell, as I do from time, when every time I finish something it's a bit of a struggle to think what to read next. I could be done with stumbling on a couple of new writers who turn out to be favourites and have written a lot.

The rest of the Neil Young, Pete Townshend autobios, the Led zep oral history. Dear Boy about Keith Moon
2 books by Iceberg Slim that I finally picked up in London after wanting them for years Pimp & Trick Baby
White Goddess by Robert Graves
an omnibus of Joseph Conrad that I've had out of the library for 9 months.

a book on Magritte I bought last week

the book by Tav Falco that came out last year
bios on Ian Dury, Edith Piaf, Neil Gaiman, Karen Carpenter

every book I started over the last few years and didn't finish.

'Fakin It' which I did finish but want to reread.

probably several others which will come to me later.
& I'll probably continue going to charity shops and picking up must read books that will just sit around the flat for a while.
Just remembered I picked up a book on The History Of The Arab Peoples that looked pretty essential when I saw it for €1 as well

I'm thinking I may read the rise and fall of the third reich unless anyone can suggest something better on the subject

having fun with memoirs of hadrian. these from the bookshelf:

minima moralia
atomised
hamlet
two plato's
downcast eyes: the denigration of vision in twentieth-century french thought
the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire (abridged)
red plenty
moby-dick

then I want to read heidegger's essays on technology. bataille. klossowski.

Some books in my book box:

VS Naipaul - A Bend In The River
TF Powys - Mr Weston's Good Wine
JF Powers - Morte d'Urban
RK Narayan - The Painter of Signs
John Meade Falkner - The Nebuly Coast
Wyndham Lewis - The Revenge for Love
Mildred Cable - The Gobi Desert
Stefan Zweig - The Post Office Girl
Montaigne - Essays
Byron - Letters

A couple of Christmas presents:

Alan Partridge - I, Partridge
Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Also some Anna Kavan after Emily's mention above and a bit of googling.

And books I've been meaning to read for years:

Tom Jones, Scarlet and Black, Dr Zhivago and The Man Without Qualities (after just having read Young Torless).

just dug out my 'things to read' from google docs that i forgot about before the end of last year. may be some irredeemable crap on here:

A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe
"Who's in Charge?, Michael Gazzaniga
The Arabian Nightmare, Robert Irwin
vacuum diagrams, stephen baxter
octavia butler, dawn or patternmaster
Natural History by Justina Robson
Light Music by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Cyteen by CJ Cherryh
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
the locusts have no king (or) a time to be born, dawn powell
simak city
gore vidal - Myra Breckinridge
m john harrison, light
The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
david brin existence
Thinking in Numbers: How maths illuminates our lives by Daniel Tammet
john crowley engine summer
Turbulence by Samit Basu
In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw
Nicola Griffith's 'Ammonite'
Death in Spring Merce Rodoreda
“The Love of a Good Woman,” by Alice Munro
decline and fall gibbon (david wormesles edition)

anyone know of previews of whats being anticipated this yr? i'll read the george saunders and prob tao lins book but thats all i know abt. i swear i googled but could only get like young adult or james patterson type lists

The Arabian Nightmare, Robert Irwin

That looks good..

xp
This should sort you out Johnny:
http://www.themillions.com/2013/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2013-book-preview.html
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/01/winter-2013-books-preview/60579/
http://conversationalreading.com/interesting-new-books-2013/

xp
Really like Irwin. Funny sort of figure, always doing interesting things but doesn't quite fit anywhere in Britain - I think his novels tend to slide out of sight because of that.

thanks woof

xp Whaddya know, I've read something of his before - Exquisite Corpse. iirc a standard tale of life and loves of vaguely troubled young man, framed by whatever hobby horse the author was riding at the time (in this case the surrealist movement). Unsuprising it slipped through the cracks. Anyway Arabian Nightmare has been ordered (+ didion, butler, gazzinga).

... and munro.

Not sure yet, but time and career plans mandate cutting all fiction in favor of history and travel literature. I have a gigantic backlog I have to work through.

I'm looking forward to Andre Aciman's new novel, Harvard Square. Other than that, I don't really know what's coming out. Sooner or later I want to get to Earthly Powers, by Anthony Burgess.

books purchased in the last few days and queued up:

parade's end - ford madox ford
chicago - studs terkel
poetical works - wordsworth
team of rivals - doris kearns goodwin
love saves the day - tim lawrence
every night the trees disappear: werner herzog and the making of heart of glass - alan greenberg

i've got a copy of earthly powers, too. should dig in.

Earthly Powers is good fun.

i'm gonna read more sci-fi. and more lee child books. and maybe some klassiks. wanna read hardy and trollope and dickens i haven't read. and austen too. and henry james i haven't read. but mostly more sci-fi. got a cool biography of Alice James yesterday. gonna read that too.

xps re irwin

I don't think his novels are earth-shattering, but they do things I like: understated, well-formed, a little tricksy, quite clear-sighted. Then again:

I really must finish Exquisite Corpse.

― woof, Saturday, April 3, 2010 11:56 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And still, I really must finish Exquisite Corpse.

It is more as an all-rounder that I like him - something 1920s about him – it's the bohemian + Orientalist combo I think. I quite fancy reading his last book, the memoir - his awkward cerebral hippy version of the 60s is intriguing.

I came up with a reading plan last night while enjoying Langrishe, Go Down - might try Anglo-Irish Big House/decaying gentility novels for a while. Bowen. Maybe I'll like Bowen.

how many Anglo-Irish Big House/decaying gentility novels are there?

nb this is probably worth seeing if you take that theme in earnest

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kxx71

That is kind of Banville's stock-in-trade - well, decaying gentility of middle-aged loser of Big House heritage.

I think there are quite a lot. At least enough for the Irish Lit academic industry to work with:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anglo-Irish-Novel-House-Irish-Studies/dp/0815627521

It might be a mistaken path, but Langrishe is awesome so far, & Loving by Henry Green is all-time, so I'll see. I mean I will prob get sick of an aged dame finding herself unable to talk to the stablehand w/ his ancient primitive faith (& then remembering a ball) sometime next week, but will give it a go.

I noticed that documentary sometime last month, & keep meaning to watch it.

Loving by HG is on my to read list for this year (in a triplepack with Living and Party Going).

From woof's first link:

The Dark Road by Ma Jian: Ma Jian, whose books and person are both banned from China, published his third novel The Dark Road in June (Yunchen Publishing House, Taipei); the English translation will be released by Penguin. The story: a couple determined to give birth to a second child in order to carry on the family line flee their village and the family planning crackdown.

Has anyone read Beijing Coma? Thought of it as heart in the right place, writing probably not as gd.

Slowly but surely:

My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard: The first part of Knausgaard’s six-part behemoth was the single most stirring novel I read in 2012. Or is the word memoir? Anyway, this year sees the publication of Part Two, which apparently shifts the emphasis from Knausgaard’s childhood and the death of his father to his romantic foibles as an adult. But form trumps content in this book, and I’d read 400 pages of Knausgaard dilating on trips to the dentist. There’s still time to run out and catch up on Part One before May rolls around. I can’t imagine many readers who finish it won’t want to keep going. (Garth)

Must try Half of a Yellow Sun:

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The author of the critically acclaimed novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, both set in Adichie’s home country of Nigeria, now turns her keen eye to the trials of cultural assimilation for Africans in America and England. In the novel, a young Nigerian couple leave their homeland – she to America for an education, he to a far more unsettled, undocumented life in England. In their separate ways, each confront issues of race and identity they would never have faced in Nigeria, where they eventually reunite. (Michael)

Might suggest this for ILB bk group oh wait:

Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai: The novels of the great Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai have recently begun to break through with American audiences. Thus far, however, we’ve only glimpsed one half of his oeuvre: the one that deals (darkly, complexly) with postwar Europe. Krasznahorkai has also long taken an interest in East Asia, where he’s spent time in residence. Seiobo There Below, one of several novels drawing on this experience, shows a Japanese goddess visiting disparate places and times, in search of beauty. (Garth)

That is kind of Banville's stock-in-trade - well, decaying gentility of middle-aged loser of Big House heritage.

yeah, I forget he does do this. I basically like Banville but couldn't get through that greek gods in a Big House one from a couple of years back. Was it even a Big House? Felt like it.

I like Banville but only feel the need to read him once every few years. Last time was in 2008 so maybe it's time again.

I'm more or less the same - I think I'm still on a banville break, though I've felt stirrings - actually, yes, even while typing my resolve firmed. Fancy some Banville. Shroud, maybe, quite like the look of that.

Think I'll try Eclipse. Am genetically incapable of starting with book two of a trilogy.

"how many Anglo-Irish Big House/decaying gentility novels are there?"

don't forget this one! love this book. introduction by...

http://anokatony.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/troubles-jg-farrell2.jpg

I've recc'd this a few times on this board. another Big House novel i love.

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm101791367/a-drama-in-muslin-george-moore-hardcover-cover-art.jpg

sebald has that incredible chapter of anglo-irish big house decaying gentility in rings of saturn

I was enjoying Langrishe, Go Down, but seem to have stopped. Fell out of a novel mood. Maybe Project BigHouse will wait.

Anyway, just thought I'd stick another 2013 preview in here as it's a good list:

http://writersnoonereads.tumblr.com/post/40535607589/wnor-2013-book-preview

2 more i didnt know abt until recently

curtis sittenfeld - sisterland
marisha pessl - night film

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052gz7g

^ Robert Irwin is one of the contributors in this programme about the Arabian Nights