Day Three Hundred and Thirty Eight
I finally finished Gibran. How did this guy ever get big? Oh yeah…the Sixties happened. I’m so glad I’m done. On to Kafka…
So, some of the books I’d like to read in 2009.
I’m dying to get to my new P.G. Wodehouses: Joy in the Morning, Thank You Jeeves, Carry On Jeeves and Much Obliged Jeeves and I want to buy so many more! Speaking of Wodehouse, we’ve taught Alex to say “Oh Geez!” but are claiming that he’s actually saying “Oh Jeeves!”…as in “Oh Jeeves! Please come fix this mess I’ve made.” Fun, what?
I’ve ordered two books from Persephone Press, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Little Boy Lost and also want to order several more including: How To Run Your Home Without Help, “a guide for the newly servantless housewife” and The Priory, a novel by Dorthy Whipple. My book club will be reading one Persephone book a month next year.
And then I have about a million books at home that I want to read. Since we closed the bookstore down I selected most of my favorites from the collection and kept them. I have Heritage Press editions of many classic titles that I’ve never read. Like: The Chronicle of the Cid, Typee by Melville, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Tristram Shandy and many others. I have a few Folio Society editions of fun and fascinating books like, 1066 and All That, Joseph and Frances Gies’ Life in a Medieval City/Castle/Village, Steven Runciman’s trilogy on the crusades: The Kingdom of Jeruselam, The First Crusade & The Kingdom of Acre. I need to read The Helmskringla; I have in three volumes as part of a fifteen volume, leather-bound set (these were mine before the store closed). I want to finish The Woman in White which was suspended Jan 1st. I want to read some of the books on Medieval Drama that have been stacking up around here. I want to read The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. I have an early edition of C.S. Lewis’ The Allegory of Love just waiting for me!
And I have bunches of books crying out for a re-reading. For the first time ever, I skipped my annual reading of Lewis’ Space Trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia. I really miss him! And I want this to be the year I break out of my prose rut and start seriously consuming some poetry.
I need a shorter list since I’ll hopefully be starting Grad School in the fall, writing my own book, working on a second website and started an online apologetics journal. I’ll also plan on a bit more flexibility but want a more narrowly focused list since this year’s was surprisingly all over the map. Now is the time to weigh in. I’ll take suggestions on everything from list size, to topics covered, to specific book, so fire away with your opinions.