What do you plan to read next year?

[kev67]

I am thinking of reading:

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (French classic)
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (Russian classic)
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell (Victorian classic)
Villette, Charlotte Brontë (Victorian classic)
Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope (Victorian classic)
Ullyses, James Joyce (Irish, modernism)
something by Ayn Rand (American Capitalism)

I'm not sure what else. I might read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, as it's been a while since I read a western. I might read Paradise Lost by Milton. May read something by Thomas de Quincy. May read something by Sir Walter Scott as he was extremely popular once. May read some Edwardian books like Kipps by H.G. Wells. Might give D.H. Lawrence a go. Think I may read a few more classic crime books like The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, and something by Patricia Highsmith.

I will read some straight entertainment books too, and probably The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns.

[Jackson Richardson]

Good luck, kev, and have fun. I’ve read all the Scott novels in my time and here is my tuppence worth.
His first seven or so novels are set in Scotland at the periods of the social and political changes that had shaped Scotland as he knew it. These are worthwhile. Then he wrote Ivanhoe set in a medieval England that owed more to his imagination than any serious historical awareness. The rest of the novels (apart from Redgauntlet) are not up to standard.

Scott’s prose style and manner need a bit of getting use to for contemporary readers and we will never get the sense of excitement they clearly had for C19 readers. However I found them worth the effort.

To begin, I’d recommend his first novel, Waverley, or Rob Roy. Once you are use to Scott’s conventions, Old Mortality and The Heart of Midlothian are his masterpieces to my mind. And Ivanhoe is a good read.

There’s the extraordinary sense of reading someone who was rated up with Shakespeare just within living memory and was the most popular British novelist of his time but has nearly sunk without a trace in popular culture. But they didn’t have the movies when he was writing.

[kev67]

Thanks for the tip. I guess he wrote adventure books. I may give Waverley a go. The only one of his stories I know anything about is Ivanhoe. It's slightly interesting because it has a Jewish heroine or love interest in a Mediaeval setting. Since Scott's a Scottish writer, maybe it makes sense to read one of his books that are set in Scotland. I don't know much about Rob Roy, except he's like a Scottish Robin Hood.

[ennison]

On RR's gravestone at Baile Chuidir it says "Macgregor despite them". Although the name Macgregor was proscribed it was a law that could not be enforced in the clan lands so he and others used it openly. Rob offered protection to drovers at a price. Roy is a bastardisation of ruadh - red of hair.

[ennison]

I hope to tackle novels by Iain Pears and Kinky Friedman.

[ennison]

I also want to read as much as possible by Marcel Pagnol.

[kev67]

I also want to read as much as possible by Marcel Pagnol.
I read a couple of his autobiographies, La Gloire de mon Père and La Maison de ma Mère. I actually read them in French :smug: Pretty good but very sad appendix.

[kev67]

I also want to read as much as possible by Marcel Pagnol.
I read a couple of his autobiographies, La Gloire de mon Père and La Maison de ma Mère. I actually read them in French :smug: Pretty good but very sad afterword.

[Danik 2016]

On RR's gravestone at Baile Chuidir it says "Macgregor despite them". Although the name Macgregor was proscribed it was a law that could not be enforced in the clan lands so he and others used it openly. Rob offered protection to drovers at a price. Roy is a bastardisation of ruadh - red of hair.

I enjoyed Rob Roy because one learns a bit about how people lived in the Scottish mountains.

[kiz_paws]

I hope to tackle novels by Iain Pears and Kinky Friedman.And I thought that Kinky Friedman was a musician... a writer too?! LoL

[ennison]

He is a musician, apparently too. I had never heard of him but a close friend gave me a huge stack of books this summer including several novels by him that she had read when much younger and living in the USA. I have put aside a couple to start post-Christmas