a dancing star!

So many books is Gabriel Zaid’s macro-history of the book. What it lacks in fluidity, it compensates with ample anecdotal antibiotics to cure curiousity of Biblical proportions. It prompted me to dash to the care of dusty tomes, and assuage a “to be read” shelf which at time of writing includes two Eco novels, the Alliez book (The signature of the world), Benjamin’s Arcades project and O’Donnell’s Augustine biography. Time, therefore, to itemise these great years of neglect, a testament to perennial regret. To that end, and with the year’s end in sight, what better way than to compile a set of resolutions for the coming year.

the basics:

The meagre collection of books that make up my so-called library is slowly inching its way pass the three digit mark. I remember a time when reading and book buying took place within some discernible framework. Those good ol’ days were marked by guidelines (reading lists, for example), coherent themes plucked from courses or degree programmes and corollary interests. These days, these uncomfortable, independent days know neither rhyme or reason. Therein lies a brutal laxtity.

The amazingly charged LargeHeartedBoy, however, has diligently filled the past 2 years with a “52 books, 52 weeks” column. What better way to fight this much maligned marginalisation? Not only that, but what if the reading is threaded, each leading seamlessly to another? In this way, the end book of 2006, though it will be of no particular significance as it is a mere transitory point on the great chain of Reading, will be predetermined. This makes for an unusually heavy choice of starting point.

books that missed their time:

Candidates, alas, cannot come from this long, impossible list which consist of Don Quioxte, Wuthering Heights, Lolita, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Crime and Punishment, Remembrance of Things Past, and Ulysses. This is my unhappy list of lost chances, and missed milestones. A Lolita not read in one’s teen years, or Crime and Punishment passed over during college days, cannot be readily re-claimed in the mid-way of one’s life.

Perhaps Homeric Moments, Eva Brann’s introductory literary landscaping of the Greek world? The symbolism of such a beginning should not be lost. A more respectable point of departure must surely be (Etonian) Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World: an Epic history from Homer to Hadrian; but will I survive its 700 pages and live to tell its tale? Decisions, decisions. See reviews of The Classical World in The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Church Times and The Independent. Hmmm, reviews dampen the enthusiasm of delving into the relatively unknown. Or will Harold Bloom’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? prove to be too weighty a first step? (NPR’s review).

Nevermind, a title will be decided upon and its review will appear here on the first Sunday of the year. Any suggestions?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 at 13:15 and is filed under books, lists.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.