2011 Reading List

I thought it may be interesting and exciting to post our reading lists for this new year, it may also prompt people who have not drafted such a list to do so and post their list to this thread. It would be nice to keep track of others reading and to encourage us to follow through on our own selection of literature.

Sir Guyon's 2011 Reading List

Sir Thomas More - Utopia
Sir Philip Sidney - Astrophel and Stella, The Defense of Poesy,
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia II,
Edmund Spenser - The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queene I,
The Faerie Queene II, The Faerie Queene III,
Amoretti
Sir Francis Bacon - Essays, New Atlantis
Christopher Marlowe - Dido, The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus
William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, As You Like It,
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV pt.1,`Sonnets
Ben Jonson - Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, The Sad Shepherd,
Epigrams
John Fletcher - The Faithful Shepherdess
Francis Beaumont - The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Beaumont and Fletcher - Philaster, A King and No King
John Milton - Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes
John Webster - The Duchess of Malfi
Elizabeth Cary - The Tragedy of Mariam

The Cambridge Companion to Spenser
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare
The Cambridge Companion to Milton
Greenblatt - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: More to Shakespeare

I have no reading list, so to say. I go along and pick what I feel like reading.

However, I have a few thngs on my shelf and a few wishes:

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen because it is the last one that I still have to read of her.
Celcile - Theodor Fontane because I bought it cheap in a nice edition and it's on my shelf.
Thérèse Raquin - Emile Zola, I bought it second hand, cheap and I'll read it when I fancy some really, really depressing French misery. .
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy, because I bought it second hand, cheap and it tickles my fancy.
The Caïro Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz, because my father bought it for me as a Christmas present. I don't know what to think of it yet. I think I'll spread the three volumes across the year.

And if I still have time, some more Defoe and if I can pluck up courage some more Scott (Waverley was so amazingly dull that if I had read that as a first, I would never have considered a second, though Scott has his moments of absolute brilliancy).

And maybe some French, I am already planning to read Madame Bovary for such a long time that I should really just buy it and be done with it. There always seems to get something else in the way...

Oh, yes, and some gentle Russian tales in order to boost my vocab in the language.

I don't have a comprehensive list--and I never do since I'll act on my mood as to my next selection--but I know I will read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake this year, as well as War and Peace.

I'm going to read, among other things: d'Artagnan Romances, Ulysses,Les Miserables. I also plan to read all work of the Bronte sisters and I'll try some of Tolkien's fiction. Have almost all on my shelf.

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Originally Posted by Sir Guyon

Sir Guyon's 2011 Reading List

Sir Thomas More - Utopia
Sir Philip Sidney - Astrophel and Stella, The Defense of Poesy,
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia II,
Edmund Spenser - The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queene I,
The Faerie Queene II, The Faerie Queene III,
Amoretti
Sir Francis Bacon - Essays, New Atlantis
Christopher Marlowe - Dido, The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus
William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, As You Like It,
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV pt.1,`Sonnets
Ben Jonson - Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, The Sad Shepherd,
Epigrams
John Fletcher - The Faithful Shepherdess
Francis Beaumont - The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Beaumont and Fletcher - Philaster, A King and No King
John Milton - Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes
John Webster - The Duchess of Malfi
Elizabeth Cary - The Tragedy of Mariam

The Cambridge Companion to Spenser
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare
The Cambridge Companion to Milton
Greenblatt - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: More to Shakespeare

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My powers of deduction may be weak but I think I descry a taste for late middle [?] English Lit.

I'd love to read Jonson eventually. And Bacon and Webster are sorely under-appreciated.

Here is a list of somethings I hope to read soon [taken from 2 posts I made elsewhere on this forum]:

FICTION

A Tale of Genji- Lady Murasaki
Carpenter's Gothic- William Gaddis
Nostromo- Joseph Conrad
Child of God- Cormac McCarthy
Bleak House-Dickens
Barnaby Rudge- Dickens
Coriolanus- Shakespeare
Broom of the System-DF Wallace
The Joseph Quartert- Thomas Mann
Jerusalem Delivered- Tasso
The Town- Faulkner
The Mansion- Faulkner
Adventures of Augie March- Saul Bellow
Against the Day- Thomas Pynchon
The Unnameable- Beckett
Love in the time of Cholera- GG Marquez
Outer Dark- Cormac McCarthy
The Satanic Verses- Rushdie
About 50 novellas by Balzac

Pretty much everything by Lope De Vega, John Barth [save Giles Goat Boy], and V.S. Naipual

And those which I've learned of since joining this forum:
Lu Xun
Lucanus
Statius

NONFICTION:

Gareth Evans- Varieties of Experience
Brad Steigler- Technics and Time 1-3
Jean Luc Nancy- Being singular Plural
Heidegger- contributions to Philosophy
Derrida- Margins of Philosophy
Levinas- alterity and transcendence/otherwise than essence
Habermas- Pragmatics of Communication/Reason & the Rationalization of Society 1-3
Ricoeur- conflicts of interpretation
Russell- analysis of matter
Bataille-The Unfinished System Of Nonknowledge
Proudhon- Philosophy of Misery/what is property
Adorno- Negative dialectics
Grice- Aspects of Reason/conception of value
Dummett- Frege
Deleuze- Difference and Repetition/ Anti-Oedipus

Reading Lists? I have no idea what I will be reading in the coming year. One book often leads me to the next... sometimes because I wish to continue in a given direction... sometimes because I want something completely different... sometimes because the author (or critical commentary) has suggested other specific writers. Right now I'm looking over Robert Alter's Wisdom Books, a translation with commentary of the Biblical books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Next week I might be reading Cornielle (I have a new translation sitting next to me) or something completely unexpected. I'm looking at some translations of Ronsard and Du Bellay online.

I've heard Mansfield Park was not one of Austin's better works, but as that's also one of the two I have left to read of hers it's probably going to find its way onto my list later in the year.

I really really liked Paradise Lost!! I hope you enjoy it Sir Guyon! Les Miserables was another good one... though I think if I ever read it again, I'll take breaks at the ends of each volume. I got pretty frustrated with some of the sections and really rushed through reading parts.

I'm sure my list will change eventually, but so far I'm currently rereading Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and my friend got me a book of Victorian vampire stories that is badly edited but so far amusing.

Fiction
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
1Q84 by Murakami Haruki
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker
I also want to finish vol. II of Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Non fiction
The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Faith in Paper by Charles E. Cleland
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Trying to figure out what I will be reading this year is incredibly frustrating because since my move all of my books are still in California. I think I've mentioned this elsewhere on the forum - perhaps it is just a search for pity since I've lost my library - but it makes my selecting books difficult :D

The situation has been searching for a remedy so for Christmas I was blessed with a nice and humble sized collection of brand new hardcovers of some of my favorite classics, and some borrowed paperbacks from my sweetie. Reading for 2011 will have to start with what I have then...and will mutate as the year progresses!

Fiction
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (may take awhile!)
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
The Eve Duncan series by Iris Johansen

I will be RE-reading one or a few of the following:
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Don Quixote - Cervantes

If somehow my personal library turns up here in Texas, then I have a lot more options and genres to choose from that have yet to be read! Of course I am hoping they'll turn up (otherwise I may have to come to terms I may never see my entire library again!)

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Originally Posted by grace86

The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (may take awhile!)

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guilty pleasure reading. I don't know why but I immensely enjoy these, and I don't care for the mystery genre.

I tend to gravitate toward non-fiction. I've already bought the books (not all of them yet) in a post-Christmas binge so I'll be reading these throughout the year:

Richard Dawkins:
The Blind Watchmaker
Selfish Gene
The Extended Phenotype
The Ancestor's Tale

Michio Kaku:
Physics Of The Future (when it comes out)
Parallel Worlds
Visions
Hyperspace

Steven Pinker:
The Blank Slate
How The Mind Works

Daniel C. Dennett
Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Milton Friedman:
Capitalism and Freedom

John Allen Paulos:
Innumeracy

Christopher Hitchens:
God Is Not Great

Ludwig Von Mises:
Socialism

Murray Rothbard:
The Ethics of Liberty

Ron Paul:
A Foreign Policy of Freedom

Morris Bishop:
The Middle Ages

Agatha Christie:
An Autobiography

I might also intersperse some Heinlein and Agatha Christie novels in there...

heres mine.

A lot of American fiction there :) Here's hoping I get through half :D