Bringing New Life To the Reading List

All through this last month I have been collecting new books to read and some sound quite exciting. But then I went to add the books from this last month that I hadn’t read had time to read and my projected reading pool for October almost ran off the page. What to do? Should I cut back on new books or on old books or perhaps spit the difference?

I decided that a good Fall cleaning was in order so there are many new books to read and some day I’ll hopefully get back to those old titles.

Each month I have been reading more and more books in digital form but I still included a couple of paper and ink books for nostalgic pleasure. But now I am looking toward a future move to much less spacious digs so I am getting strict about those real books on the bookshelves: replace with a digital edition or donate to the community bookstore. In some instances I have an edition or title that is unique or special and in those instances I have been setting them aside, hopefully for reading before I have to pack them up or give them away. Living here in South Carolina I don’t have too many friends or acquaintances who share my tastes in reading.

But maybe you see something in the October list which you want to read also. Let me know.

Bold=Active, Red=Extended, Green=New, Blue=Completed (0), *=eBook

1. Arrow of God — Chinua Achebe *
2. The Blue Guitar — John Banville *
3. The Place of Dead Roads — William S. Burroughs *
4. Nostromo — Joseph Conrad *
5. Time Out of Joint — Philip K. Dick *
6. The Big Money — John Dos Passos
7. Boswell: A Modern Comedy — Stanley Elkin *
8. The Mansion — William Faulkner
9. Independence Day — Richard Ford *
10. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl – Barry Lyga *
11. Afloat — Guy de Maupassant *
12. The Bathing Women — Tie Ning *
13. The Dragon Scroll — I. J. Parker *
14. The Fencing Master — Arturo Pérez-Reverte *
15. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values — Robert M. Pirsig *
16. Tinsel — Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran *
17. The Great American Novel — Philip Roth *
18. Zeina — Nawal el Saadawi *
19. Not Quite One of the Boys — Vincent W. Sakowski *
20. Why Darwin Matters — Michael Shermer *
21. Momento Mori — Muriel Spark *
22. The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel — Sam Torode *
23. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace *
24. This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It — David Wong *
25. Villain: A Novel — Shuichi Yoshida *

And a couple of in-process stragglers:

• Lucky Jim — Kingsley Amis
• Skullcrack City — Jeremy Johnson *
• Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque — Joyce Carol Oates