What are your reading goals for 2017?

[ajvenigalla]

What are your reading goals for next year, 2017?

I'm proud to say that of the 50 books I've read so far, some of these 50 books included such titles as: Iliad, Paradise Lost, Odyssey, Samson Agonistes, Scarlet Letter, As I Lay Dying, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Bleak House - all great works. Some of these I might consider rereading next year.

But here are some of my goals:

(1) Read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace (but if I get to the former, I'd be OK), Joyce's Ulysses, Proust's Swann's Way (and maybe attempt on Proust's large masterpiece), and also works like Othello, and William Faulkner's greatest novels. Lolita, Don Quixote, The Idiot, Demons, The Pickwick Papers, D. H. Lawrence's novels, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel

(2) Try to relearn French, and also get back to Les Miserables; I stopped in the middle, and never returned to it for a while, so I could read other works. And maybe take a stab at learning Homeric Greek and classical Latin.

(3) Some philosophy: Augustine's Confessions, Plato's Symposium, Socrates, Aristotle's Nichomaean Ethics, Longinus's On the Sublime, Pascal's Pensées, Marcus Aurelius

(4) Try to read more of John Milton's major prose works. They're complex, but they're held up to be at least as great as, if not better than, his great poems.

These are just a few of my goals for 2017.

[Lendo]

My goal for 2017 it's the same i had for 2016: continue to discover new authors, read more books of the great one's and keep on having good readings.

And, concerning to this forum, i hope that someday someone post a review of a book written by a portuguese author! ;)

[Polliwog]

I have a short list started for 2017:
Bleak House
Paradise Lost
some collected works of C.S Lewis including The Problem of Pain and Miracles
The Brothers Karamazov

[Vota]

I'm currently reading Tom Jones (loving it!), but in light of the ridiculous and scandalous nature of the 2016 pre- and post- U.S. Election, I am considering prioritizing reading:

1. Politics - Aristotle
2. Political Writings of John Stuart Mill
3. Political Writings of Thomas Paine
4. The Federalist

I have read parts of each of these, but considering the turbulent times we are in, I think for myself, that now is as good a time as any to really develop a basic understanding of politics.

[jay20]

I want to try to get into modern popular literature. I usually have read post WWII French and American fiction, and nonfiction about things like international espionage, narco trafficking, and the mafia. I read John Grisham's The Litigators last year, so in the queue right now I have: The Partner and The Street Lawyer. Any suggestions would be appreciated, other than Grisham. Also, in nonfiction I have The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee and I'm two chapters into Leonardo: The First Scientist by Michael White. I'm trying to learn pre 20th century history - taking suggestions for popular history books.

[Poetaster]

Gosh, so much. Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon, The Silmarilian by J.R.R. Tolkien, a history of Florence because I'm interested in the city and the renaissance, Stoner by John Williams, Wuthering Heights because to my great shame I've not read it yet, and I want to get heavily back into classics because I just love reading and studying the Greeks and Romans.

[bounty]

vota---im reading tom jones too. it took me a while to get into it, but im really enjoying the author's facility with words and ability to express thoughts.

jay---from a contemporary popular literature perspective, ive enjoyed every book ive read by robin cook (medical thrillers), david Baldacci (crime mystery) and vince Flynn (counter terrorism.)

I have less "reading goals" per so, and more book goals---im hoping to hit up a few sales this summer to add to my library.

[Scheherazade]

I will read more Pulitzer winners and 17 authors that I had not read before.

Managed to read 52 books this year so would be thrilled if I read over 50 again.

[kev67]

In 2017 I want to read:


David Copperfield and The Way We Live Now, which I hoped to read in 2016 but did not get around too.
The other books on my shelves which I have not read yet (unfortunately I got two more for Christmas);
The second part of Don Quixote, so I can strike it off the list;
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (someone I follow on YouTube keeps raving about this book)
Old Wives' Tales by Arnold Bennett (neglected masterpiece apparently)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway (my father raved about this book)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Some of Derek Robinson's aerial warfare books.
Some other WW1 aerial warfare books.
Maybe Ruth by Mrs Gaskell, about a prostitute apparently.
One important American book, probably Hucklebury Finn.
One important French book, maybe The Count of Monte Cristo.
One important Russian book, maybe something by Dostoevsky.
Maybe Howards End by E M Forster
Various non-fiction books.

[mortalterror]

Read a bunch of medieval stuff, romances and sagas. Mahabharata, Tale of Genji, and the famous Chinese novels. Probably some history, religion, and philosophy too.

[Vladimir777]

I'm probably not nearly as well-read as most of the people on this board, so here are some of my reading goals for 2017:

1.) Finish reading Moby-Dick (on Ch. 100)
2.) Finish reading the King James Bible (read the Old Testament already)
3.) Start Shakespeare
4.) Read more in general (probably only read something like 8 books in total last year), both fiction and nonfiction
5.) Read some of the books I have ABOUT reading and literature
6.) Read more poetry
7.) Try to read some of these classics of world literature: Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Don Quixote, War and Peace or Anna Karenina (I read 900 or so pages of War and Peace, but never finished it), Ovid, Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment, etc.

Will think of more later.

[BeachBooksBlog]

To finish Joyce Ulysses (I'm on Ch. 12) and start reading Moby Dick.

[Vladimir777]

To finish Joyce Ulysses (I'm on Ch. 12) and start reading Moby Dick.

I think you'll definitely like Moby-Dick. I've been reading through it slowly, but it's actually not that challenging of a book, and with lots of hilarious and also beautiful lines in it.

How is Ulysses?

[bounty]

boy Vladimir, I should have read moby dick then with you so that you could have helped me see some of those "hilarious and...beautiful lines in it."

I absolutely loathed the book.

[Adolescent09]

I have to get through Sir Thomas Moore's 'Utopia' but last year I finished Darwin's 'The Origin of Species'. I liked 'Confessions' by St. Augustine and I am trying to get more in touch with my spiritual side so I might tackle 'City of God' and read Dante's 'Inferno' again. I read Milton's 'Paradise Lost' years ago and loved it so this year I'll attempt 'Paradise Regained'. I loved Thomas Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' so I'll also attempt 'Tess of the d'Ubervilles'. I read Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' in middle school but never got around to 'Sense and Sensibility'. I too loved 'Bleak House' by Dickens and I'm going to read 'David Copperfield' and 'Our Mutual Friend'.

[Adolescent09]

boy Vladimir, I should have read moby dick then with you so that you could have helped me see some of those "hilarious and...beautiful lines in it."

I absolutely loathed the book.
The banter between Ishmael and Queequeg and their introduction to Captain Ahab in the first 200 pages is indeed hilarious and poetically aesthetic but about 500 pages in after several chapters on the intricacy (and monotony) of whale sightings, whale behavior, whale catching methods and cetology in general, the book definitely becomes a drag. Unless you get all the philosophical and theological metaphors (which are very interesting), you'll interpret 80% of the book as whale history lessons.

[Vladimir777]

boy Vladimir, I should have read moby dick then with you so that you could have helped me see some of those "hilarious and...beautiful lines in it."

I absolutely loathed the book.

I think I didn't like it when I read (parts) of it in college, but maybe taking my time helped this time around? Mostly, though, I started reading it, because at the time I was living on Nantucket (I don't anymore, but lived there for about half the year), so I was pretty immersed in the whole historical context of whaling, etc. Ishmael is really obsessed with Nantucket in the book, as you might remember.

[Vladimir777]

The banter between Ishmael and Queequeg and their introduction to Captain Ahab in the first 200 pages is indeed hilarious and poetically aesthetic but about 500 pages in after several chapters on the intricacy (and monotony) of whale sightings, whale behavior, whale catching methods and cetology in general, the book definitely becomes a drag. Unless you get all the philosophical and theological metaphors (which are very interesting), you'll interpret 80% of the book as whale history lessons.

Yeah, honestly, the majority of the book is about the subject of whales and whaling, as opposed to the central narrative of actually being on the Pequod, chasing Moby Dick. It probably helps that I learned a lot about whaling both from In the Heart of the Sea and the Whaling Museum in Nantucket, and that I'm an animal person myself, so I generally find the chapters about the actual descriptions of the whale to be pretty interesting.

If you're looking for mostly narrative, though, it's pretty rough going. The narrative stuff is all very exciting and richly detailed, but there are so many non-narrative chapters interspersed. I'm not lying when I say the VAST majority of the chapters are non-narrative.

That being said, anytime Ahab says anything, it's pretty much staggering (kind of like Satan in Paradise Lost, which I saw you mention on the previous page). Some of the philosophy stuff Ishmael spouts off can be pretty boring or kinda senseless to a person like me who doesn't know much philosophy, but overall he's a pretty great and funny narrator.

[bluosean]

Ive been wanting to read Sir Walter Scott for a long time. This year is that year I think. After I read Ivanhoe I will be happy.

Besides that, I have a small bookcase of books (I'm away from home and have only a very few). This is quite nice in a way, it seems like trying to read only a few can be accomplished. These are Francis Parkman's Collected Histories, Shakespeare's Collected Works, Shakespeare's Kings (a history of the Monarchs in his history plays), a Hazlitt book on Shakespeare's plays (I forget the name), The Collected Works of Pushkin, The Pickwick Papers, The Collected Poetry of Robert Frost.

Seems not so bad at all. Should I finish these I will be higher than a cedar of Lebanon. But we will see; sometimes life gets in the way.

[kev67]

I wonder if I should add some more H.G. Wells on this year's TBR list. I am not sure I like the man, but he was a genius.

[kev67]

The banter between Ishmael and Queequeg and their introduction to Captain Ahab in the first 200 pages is indeed hilarious and poetically aesthetic but about 500 pages in after several chapters on the intricacy (and monotony) of whale sightings, whale behavior, whale catching methods and cetology in general, the book definitely becomes a drag. Unless you get all the philosophical and theological metaphors (which are very interesting), you'll interpret 80% of the book as whale history lessons.

I think the monotony may have been intentional, to make you feel you've been on a long sea voyage. Similarly, quite a lot of Madame Bovary is intentionally boring, because she's bored. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

[Dantesque Dream]

Since I'm ingressing in an advanced course on Italian Language and Civilization, I will probably be devoted to Italian Literature during most of the year.


Read a bunch of medieval stuff, romances and sagas. Mahabharata, Tale of Genji, and the famous Chinese novels. Probably some history, religion, and philosophy too.

Interesting! I love Medieval Literature. I'm especially enamored of Medieval Latin, since it's the corpus I can read with greater fluency, followed closely by Romance and Middle English literature. I also love Germanic poems, especially the poetic Edda, although I have currently no command whatsoever of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon, and very little command of Middle High German. I'm especially amazed at the similarity of the insults in Lokasenna and similar excerpts from the Iliad, as well as by the similarity between certain aspects of Homeric mythology and warrior culture and that of the Norsemen. The centrality of insults and ribaldry in Lokasenna, however, and the relative centrality of this episode in the Edda and in their very beliefs on the fate of the universe is such a peculiar cultural and literary trait that I never cease to feel stimulated by thinking about it. Loki is such a fascinating character! Since the Edda is my favorite Germanic Medieval poem, Old Norse is probably the first Germanic language from that era I'm going to study, but I will probably have to postpone this undertaking for some years. I'm also interested in oriental Classics, although I'm certainly less knowledgeable in that area. I read Genji, but the only Chinese novels I have read from beginning to end were The Dream of the Red Chamber and The Scholars. I love both of them, but, from my limited knowledge of Zhou and Tang poetry, as well as of Chinese language (having had yet only one year of Chinese, I know only some 1000 characters by memory, and probably some 2000 - 2500 words) I imagine part of the wordplay and the beauty of the verse is lost in translation. The Dream probably suffers the most in this regard, since it is the most poetic and ornate of the classic novels. The Scholars, I think, suffers much less, and, being the funniest of the most famous Chinese novels, it's usually the first I recommend to my friends. Of the Mahabharata I have read only the Bhagavad Gita, which I found interesting. My translation is a religious non-poetic one, however, with a word by word translated glossary and a prose version of the texts, followed by religious explications. That version would be extremely convenient for studying Sanskrit if I ever find the time in the future to do so, as well as for understanding the meaning of the text for the Hare Krishna, who prepared the translation, but it’s not so helpful, unfortunately, for understanding the poetics of the text, which is probably the part I’m the most interested in. I would be interested in knowing your impressions on any of these books!

[Bookman12]

I don't have a set reading list as such, but I would like to try and be a bit more "adventurous" in terms of the kind of genre I read. I have a tendency to stick within the same genres, mainly thrillers and classics, so will make an effort to branch out in 2017.

[T_M]

While I may complete a dozen or two books a year, I only think in terms of the next three or four that I have on my shelf (or plan to acquire). So far this year, I've read Beyond Good and Evil, Love in Time of Cholera and currently in the middle of Nostromo. Next up will be A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 100 Years of Solitude, Either Or, and maybe something I haven't read yet from Dickens.

[Hkat]

I think I'll re-read Dickens and Jane Austen's novels and rejoice. And, for a bit of sauce, I'll reread Little Women. At my age, one must cherish the friends who are still available and these a;uthors are eternal.