It Was an Exhausting Year

It’s the end of the year and I have gathered together a reading pool that addresses some of the titles I have recently not read with some of the titles that I have perpetually avoided reading. Again, my quest is to remove a few of those big fat ones that haunt me month after month, year after year, and also to have a smattering of shorter titles to create a little breathing space.

I also am quite involved in watching many excellent and often challenging films on the Criterion Channel as well as brushing up on my Spanish with the help of Anna on Butterfly Spanish (YouTube). I’m busy in my old age.

This month’s reading list is going to be a challenge. Have you read all the really fat ones already?

1. The Sleepwalkers — Hermann Broch
2. Sputnik Caledonia – Andrew Crumey
3. Our Mutual Friend — Charles Dickens
4. Schultz — J. P. Donleavy
5. The Vicomte de Bragellione — Alexander Dumas
6. Daniel Deronda — George Eliot
7. Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
8. The Portrait of a Lady — Henry James
9. Until Proven Guilty — J. A. Jance
10. Seven Pillars of Wisdom — T. E. Lawrence
11. The Neon Jungle — John D. MacDonald
12. Cakes and Ale — W. Somerset Maugham
13. Forbidden Colors — Yukio Mishima
14. A Man Without Qualities — Robert Musil
15. Against the Day — Thomas Pynchon
16. Mysteries of Udolpho — Ann Radcliffe
17. Pamela — Samuel Richardson
18. A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
19. Authority — Jeff Vanderveer
20. Nana — Émile Zola