More Reading In South Carolina

A significant change in the construction schedule for my new digs in Florida have added almost four months to the time available for reading before I must pack up my books (the keepers). I still am being told that I will have room for my books at my daughter’s house but I still want to keep them to a minimum. This means discarding or donating books I have read, will probably never read, or have such tiny print that they might hasten the demise of my watery vision.

So, although I have been reading mostly on the iPad or iPhone, I intend to swing back to the classic ink and paper books on my shelves, not for the nostalgia of smelling the musty pages and juggling a hefty tome, but solely to reduce the number of boxes of books the movers will have to contend with (and charge me for).

One thing I may do is a new inventory of my severely cut-back book shelves. If it’s not too extensive I may turn it into a simple list on this website and eliminate the Bookshelves entry on the Menu. As I replace more and more books with digital copies this makes more and more sense.

But for now, here is the projected reading list for April 2016 (remember, no asterisk means a real book, a magnifying glass, and possible intra-pagination drooling):

Green=Newish Titles; *=digital copies

1. The Automobile Club of Egypt — Alaa Al Aswany *
2. Case Histories — Kate Atkinson *
3. The View From the Seventh Layer — Kevin Brockmeier
4. Fledgling — Octavia E. Butler *
5. The Big Money — John Dos Passos
6. The Mansion — William Faulkner
7. Independence Day — Richard Ford *
8. Dreaming In Cuban — Cristina Garcia
9. Middle C — William H. Gass *
10. She Drove Without Stopping — Jaimy Gordon
11. J — Howard Jacobson *
12. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: A Novel — William Kotzwinkle
13. The Sleep Garden — Jim Krusoe
14. Razor Wire Pubic Hair — Carlton Mellick III
15. La Place de l’Étoile — Patrick Modiano *
16. Wonderland — Joyce Carol Oates
17. The Fishermen: A Novel — Chigozie Obioma *
18. Towns Without Rivers — Michael Parker
19. Night — Vedrana Rudan
20. On the Natural History of Destruction — W. G. Sebald
21. Maigret and the Dosser — Georges Simenon *
22. Uncentering the Earth — William T. Vollmann
23. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace *
24. This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It — David Wong *
25. A Memoir of Misfortune — Su Xiaokang

And reading still in progress

• Chromos — Felip Alfau
• Complete Stories — Clarice Lispector *
• The Fortune of the Rougons — Émile Zola