Excited? At first I imagined a whole new year with a fabulous new pool of books to read, but then I realized that I had too many titles leftover from 2014 that we still vying for my interest. So, although I did switch around a few titles, my January reading list looks very familiar. Note also that I have reduced the size of the pool by 20% as a nod to the reality that I am slowing down and need to focus more on my reading … git ‘er done, so to speak.

I start the new year out with three books being actively read:  The Dalkey Archive by Flann O’Brien, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. Due to the length of a couple of those novels, I will probably intersperse a few lighter novels along the way

1. They Were Counted — Miklós Bánfy *
2. G. — John Berger *
3. Group Portrait With Lady — Heinrich Böll
4. The Women — T. C. Boyle *
5. The Big Money — John Dos Passos
6. A Bad Man — Stanley Elkin *
7. Independence Day — Richard Ford *
8. The French Lieutenant’s Woman — John Fowles *
9. Where You Once Belonged — Kent Haruf
10. The Interrogation — J. M. G. Le Clézio *
11. Middle C — William H. Gass *
12. A Pair of Blue Eyes — Thomas Hardy *
13. The Old Capital — Yasunari Kawabata
14. The Drop — Dennis Lehane *
15. California — Edan Lepucki *
16. Defiance — Carole Maso
17. The Dalkey Archive — Flann O’Brien
18. Doomed — Chuck Palahniuk *
19. Martereau — Nathalie Sarraute
20. The Room — Hubert Selby Jr *
21. The Book of Other People — Zadie Smith *
22. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
23. Salamander — Thomas Wharton *
24. Black Boy — Richard Wright
25. Thérèse Raquin — Émile Zola

There’s also a reading pool for the entire year but again, I am looking at all the books I didn’t read in 2014 before making a strong advance on new books for 2015.