2012 Reads

Heidi's post about her January reads reminded me that I needed to write down my booklist for this year. I had scribbled titles of books and authors on a piece of scrap paper at work about a week and a half ago as an effort to take a tiny break from entering names and diagnoses and payments and insurance information, etc. I've been adding to this list as I sit at work and think about books I'd rather be reading at that moment.

Here's my list at this point:

• The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (reread)*
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (play)
• The Misanthrope by Moliere (play)
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Stranger by Albert Camus (reread)
• 1984 by George Orwell (reread)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (reread)

*Currently reading

Like Heidi, I've also been aiming at reading about two books a month but some books may take longer than others (e.g., Anna Karenina vs. The Catcher in the Rye) so I'll have to space them out accordingly. Several of these books have been on my "To Read" list for years now (I bought my current copy of Anna Karenina as a freshman in high school and just never read it, but it was one of the books I shoved in my suitcase when I packed for Hurricane Ike) so I really just want to buckle down and read them. I know they're good books. It's just that other good books have often gotten in the way. The four rereads listed on here are all books I read in high school and I just want to read again. I LOOOOVED The Stranger when I read it the summer before sophomore year (that summer I did the summer readings for both high schools on the island which my friends thought was both totally unnecessary and totally nerdy; I didn't care, I loved it). I read it twice that year and then forgot about it until freshman year of college when I got to read The Plague by Albert Camus for some class (I can't even remember which class it was-- I think it was maybe History of Psych?) and I loved that book too. My rereads are at the bottom of this list (except Prozac Nation) because I should read the other books first, though I WILL read The Stranger again even if I don't get around to everything on this list for some reason like other good books getting in the way.

Other things I would like to read this year but won't put on the above list because I don't feel like I need to commit to them as much:

• The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
• 50 poems by e.e. cummings
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (I think I've read this book about once a year since I first read it in high school. This is one of my favorite books of all time.)
• Anything by Amy Tan because she is becoming one of my favorite authors
• And maybe a few Newbery Award winners for some light reading. It's kind of an unwritten goal of mine to read all of the past Newbery Award winners and then just keep up with them as they come out each year. I thoroughly enjoy children's literature.

Please feel free to recommend other books for me to read this year (there are still about seven spots open, if I plan on doing at least two a month) or to simply add to my neverending list of books to read in this lifetime.