Who & What: The ‘To Read’ Debate

Should you have a definitive list of what you must read? Should you have a pile next to your bed that new books go under and not on top of? Should you read as you buy? It’s up to the individual, myself personally (remember I never said I will say you should or shouldn’t do something) I chop and change I have a very flexible to read selection, in space where it can grow or deplete or be switched around at will.

I did however say in my last blog that I have not set myself any goals other than to read more of the classics. There are some authors I would like to have a crack at I never have before. For example; I like to call myself a book lover but am ashamed to admit that I have still never read a Dickens novel, I know that’s shameful isn’t it. So I decided that I would write a list of the genre’s and authors who I would like to read. So Dickens will be on there, how could I not now after my shameful admittance?

Before I give you my list of literature for 2008 I’d just like to say I am not going to make this law as I believe what your ‘to read’ list will be ever changing. Someone might recommend something, or I might see an article on a certain author and so being higher in my consciousness I will put them higher on the pile. There is also always the major fact, what you want to read changes. After reading say War & Peace you might not want to start reading another 900 pager. Our tastes change and as they do so do our ‘to read’ piles. So my rough guide for reading 2008…

- Read more short stories, I have never really been a fan of these and don’t know why

- Read Dickens (see above)

- I always slate Jodi Picoult and I have never read her and so maybe I will give her a whirl. I am not a book snob by the way, I just for some reason probably an unreasonable one taken offence to them

- Tess Gerritsen, bit of gore

- Revisit some old favourites, I would like to re-read The Woman in White, then again I could actually just read The Moonstone which would be a new read

- The Odyssey

- Give second chances both to novels I started and just lost interest (We Need To Talk About Kevin) and authors who I have read one novel of and then written off such as Martin Amis (London Fields was a bloody awful book).

- Hardy and Trollope (not Joanna) another two classic writers I have never tried

- James Bond

- Books I think are hard, maybe not Ulysses yet, but maybe a Gabriel Garcia Marquez

- Non fiction, something else I avoid

- Biographies, same again

Now I feel somewhat depressed, maybe I am not the reader I thought I was? Oh dear.