Read Fast Before They’re Gone

Time is running faster and faster. I have about six weeks to clean out my bookshelves, packing the books I intend to move and sending the rest off to various donation points: Goodwill, the Library, the Sun City Book Club, a few friends near and far. Even though this seems like a daunting task, it is made even worse by recalling that I also have to move ever other thing I want to keep, give away, or throw away.

I have been spending the last few days burning out my paper shredder (the office is coated with shards and other detritus). My goals as I work have been getting soft around the edges: I started examining every piece of paper and then carefully shredding those I didn’t want to keep; now I look at the first few documents and assume the rest are the same.

But life is not just work, work, work, and I will continue with some level of loyalty to my reading. Perhaps I’ll have to cut back the next two months or so but then I should be able to focus my attention in my new digs at chez-daughter’s new house.

Here is the projected list of possible reads for the month of February:

1. The Automobile Club of Egypt — Alaa Al Aswany  *
2. Nostromo — Joseph Conrad *
3. Mascara: A Novel —Ariel Dorfman *
4. The Big Money – John Dos Passos
5. Independence Day — Richard Ford *
6. Middle C — William H. Gass *
7. New Grub Street — George Gissing *
8. The Sleep of the Righteous — Wolfgang Hilbig *
9. J — Howard Jacobson *
10. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: A Novel — William Kotzwinkle
11. Complete Stories — Clarice Lispector *
12. Temple of Dawn — Yukio Mishima *
13. Honeymoon — Patrick Modiano *
14. Hotels of North America — Rick Moody *
15. Patricide — Joyce Carol Oates *
16. Goth: A Novel of Horror — Otsuichi *
17. Doomed — Chuck Palahniuk *
18. The Antichrist — Joseph Roth *
19. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson *
20. Necropolis: A Novel — Jeet Thayil *
21. The Ogre — Michel Tournier
22. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace *
23. This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It — David Wong *
24. Vertical Motion – Can Xue *
25. The Fortune of the Rougons — Émile Zola *

• Chromos — Felipe Alfau
• Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages — Tom Holt *
• Ex Libris — Ross King