More Resolutions - 1,305 in 2014?

Hi all! I thought I'd do this again since it generally consolidates my aims for the year...Not that I normally manage to complete them!

Out of the 8 I wanted to complete last year I only managed 4 which is rather useless. Especially since these are the tip of the years challenge pile! Anyway, 2014 will be the year of;

A Prayer for Owen Meany (rolled for about 5 years so far)
Les Miserables (rolled)

The Golden Notebook (2/3 through - and two years in. Cannot seem to get on with it but I refuse to quit!)
Hawksmoor (about 80 pages in and in a love hate very slow relationship with it)

And some new ones:
Cecilia - a 75ers friend read this recently and has got me interested
Complicity - my remaining Banks on the list and in his memory
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Also been on my TBR for far far too long

And I will be joining in the group challenge to read In Search of Lost Time over the year.

Oh and trying to knock off a another few of the 'Unreads'.

My other reading aside I figure that all should keep me busy :)

So... anyone else?

Yay, I have been looking out for this thread already, although I haven't planned much for next year.

I'd like to follow the Proust GR, but that's a reread for me, so doesn't count. I'd like to get to 350 from the 2008 list, which means I'll have to read 35 books. Or I'll change my system of counting and start considering the complete list (where I am at about 335 now), I haven't decided yet.

I'll either read one of those extra-long Chinese books with the other GR or finally make some progress with the endless "1001 Nights" full 16 vols Burton edition. Still stuck in vol. 6.

Then I'd like to read some of the real old ones if I can find free or cheap ebook editions.

Both Cecilia and Owen Meany are on my "maybe" list, so if you like we could get through those together. I heard OM has long baseball match descriptions and not knowing anything about baseball this has so far kept me off the book.

I bought Halbzeit by Martin Walser and want to read it early in 2014 although the first couple of pages were as joyless as expected. Maybe some other German author from the unread list, the Grass, the Johnson.... I should get those at my library.

I'm setting a goal of reading 90 books next year-- with 40 of them being from the 1,001 list. We'll see how that goes because that will be a stretch for me.

I'm going to participate in the group read of A Dance to the Music of Time, which I'm really looking forward to doing. I have lots of books on Mount TBR.... I'm particularly looking forward to Vanity Fair; North and South; All the Pretty Horses and thanks to a recent review here Growth of the Soil.

Also hoping to fit in two books that are probably re-reads (but I'm not positive so I didn't count them:) Lolita and Room with a View.

I'm hoping to read at least 20 titles off the list, more would be welcome but I'm not going to push it. I like plenty of variation in my reading and there's only so many of the titles accessible to me at present, so. No specific titles (aside of the 3 library books I have out right now, and the few on my TBR Challenge list, but only 12 of the 24 are "required" so I'm not sure whether I'll make all 24 or not), just whichever ones I happen to feel like.

>3 amerynth: All the Pretty Horses is one of those library books, just picked up this morning. McCarthy is our Monthly Author Reads author for January so that's what I selected. :)

Not a resolution as such, but I've started my first ever "category" thread for 2014 so most of reading will be geared towards that. I've included a minimum of 50 books from the list in those categories, but have also included some to pry me away from the list (such as a Pratchett category)

I'll probably have read about 80 books this year and my category challenge will need me to read 70 so it should be within reach. However, I'm also trying to sign up for as many group read as possible, and at the moment these include Middlemarch, The Three Muskateers and The Brothers Karamazov, not to mention Proust! So I might have to bulk things out with some shorter reads!

The only resolution I really failed to make any headway with was reading more 21st Century books. One of my challenges is to read at least 5 books from each era, so this will help with this one.

My ambitious goal is to read 50, my likely goal is to reach 30, and I'd like to pick up some more of the older ones. Maybe finish off the pre-1700s or something?

As ever, I intend to read War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov (good luck with that too, Jonny!), but given that I have intended to read those for something like the past 5 and 10 years, respectively, don't hold your breath.

From the list I want to read 16 books that I own, 10 books by Latin American writers, and at least get a good start on one of the 4 Chinese classical novels if not finish one of them. I also want to read The Magician of Lublin, Aithiopika, Rickshaw Boy, and The New York Trilogy.

I'm participating in the book a month challenge for A Dance to the Music of Time, and I want to read some books by African writers for the Reading Globally group read.

I also got Don Quixote for Christmas so I am reading that, and I need to finish up the spillover from this year which includes The Golden Notebook, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, Transit, Heartbreak Tango, and The Passion According to G.H..

I don't have any specific books that I want to read this year, but I very much want to get to 200 books read off of the list. I'm currently at 175, so I think that's an achievable goal for me.

To mix up the variety of books I'm choosing from the list, I decided to divide the list into groups of 50 chronologically and choose one book from each set of 50 to read. That gets me 26 books which will put me just over my goal of 200. I figure I'll be reading books from all the different eras that way since the spreadsheet I use is presented by date of publication and it will keep things interesting. I imagine there must be at least one book I'm really interested in reading in each set of 50!

I really want to read one of those endless Chinese classical novels, preferably Outlaws of the Marsh aka All Men Are Brothers. But there are many authors from my resolution list of 2013 that I still need to tackle:

Iain Banks
Georges Bataille
Samuel Beckett -- does anybody have a suggestion of something good by him?
Saul Bellow
Thomas Bernhard DONE
Italo Calvino
Philip K. Dick
E. L. Doctorow
Gustave Flaubert
Goethe
Franz Kafka
Milan Kundera
Doris Lessing
Wyndham Lewis suggestions of something good would be appreciated here too!
Iris Murdoch DONE
Joyce Carol Oates
Georges Perec
Thomas Pynchon
Salman Rushdie DONE
Sir Walter Scott DONE
Robert Louis Stevenson
Jonathan Swift
Anthony Trollope
John Updike

So I've done a book by four of them this year and need to do four more next year.

We have baby number two arriving in March so I probably shouldn't be committing to too much, but assuming I have similar reading time to this year my aims are to:

1. Read all the "Group unread" books I have - around 30 left, though rapidly diminishing
2. Finish all the list books available at my local library (been working my way through these for 2 years - now down to around 30)
3. Participate in the Monthly Group reads - so another 12.

72 books in total should be achievable compared with 80 in 2013. Time will tell ......

I have read over 50 books this year, but as next year will be my first full year of college, I have no idea how much I will be able to read. My main goals are to keep up with the In Search of Lost Time and A Dance to the Music of Time GR here. If I have extra time, then I'll try and keep up with the monthly GR here, and then just shop my shelves.

#1, #2 - I read A Prayer for Owen Meany in high school and LOVED IT. Baseball plays a pivotal role in the book; but as I recall there were no long descriptions of actually playing baseball, it was more about a specific baseball.

I couldn't believe it, but Jonny's spreadsheet is right again: of the 344 books I read of the list, half is from 1977 or even more recent.
It is not something I was aware of. I read most of those books before I even knew of the existence of the list. I just read what I saw in the bookshop or read about in the papers.
Since I know of the list I started to read more of the oldies and it is definitely my resolution to reduce my 'average published date' in Jonny's 1001 Index to, let's say, 1950 by the end of next year!

My goal is to read 14 books from the list this year - more would be nice of course however in total I only read 50 books a year and like PM I read a mix of books.

So far floating around in my head I would like to read in 2014:
The Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker - always wanted to but for the 100 year anniversary it would be nice.
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates
The Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler mysteries

>13 kiwiflowa: Ah Blonde is a good choice, I read it a few mos ago, and read the bulk of it, after getting a little bit into it, in just 2 days. Excellent writing.

I am reading Bleak House for the 2014 groups and I would really like to complete one from my list of unfinished. Beyond that I will make no specific resolutions. I'm just too fickle.

Some really good resolutions this year. I might have to steal some... such as hitting the authors by whom I haven't read any works...and trying to participate in some more group reads.

#2 Nathalie - I'll let you know when I get started on Cecilia :) I'm thinking it'll last me a few months on the back burner! Especially if I add in the Proust which I picked up last night to have a look at. Hmm....

#10 Congratulations! I found number 2 didn't stop me reading as number 1 did, but it definitely slowed me down!

I plan to break 400 early in the year and finish both Dance to the Music of Time and In Search of Lost Time on the way. 2013 was the worst year for reading since I started blogging in 2006 so I'm determined I will not read less than 50 books this year. The majority, as always, will be off the list.

I think I'm going to try to join the group read of In Search of Lost Time. I don't have any goals or resolutions beyond these: Read. Read list books.

puckers - Congratulations! I had the same experience as BekkaJo in that baby number 2 slowed down my reading but didn't make it come to a grinding halt as number 1 did.

My primary goal is to read Les Miserables for my 100th book and to join the In Search of Lost Time group read.
Then I'm going to concentrate on reading 1001 list books that overlap with my other lists and interests (Booker prize, Global Reading Group, historical fiction...)
I'm not setting a particular number of books to read other than to surpass the 62 books I read in 2013.

I'm aiming to read my 501st book by the end of the year, but I have seriously slowed down over the last year - with all my reading. I'd like to read about 33 as I have that many sat on my TBR pile already.

They include the last two books in A Dance to the Music of Time, John Updike's Rabbit series. I need to finish The Tale of Genji and Don Quijote as well.
I seem to have more Classics than newbies, which'll be a change. Heavy on French writers - Guy de Maupassant, Satre and Victor Hugo.

There are quite a few readalongs going on in the 14 in 14 Category Challenge, so will join in there and, of course, here when I can.

In 2013 I read 137 books, of which 45 were from the 1001 Books list. For 2014 I'd like to read at least 120 books again, but up the percentage of 1001 Books to half, which would be 60.

I'll mostly be picking books from the list that also fit themes that we're reading in other groups. But I'll continue at the same time to read from the list chronologically, which means after I finish La Celestina I'll be reading the monster Amadis of Gaul. Another monster book I plan to read in 2014 is Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann.

I haven't been around in this group much the past year, and haven't really been reading many books from the list. When I first started using the list I needed to read about 2 books a month to finish all books within a lifetime; so for the coming year I would like to aim for at least two books a month off the list.
I would very much like to participate in the group reads again, that would already give me one book per month, and I'd like to join in for the year-long reads of In Search of Lost Time and A Dance to the Music of Time, so that's a good start...

I usually read between 40 and 50 books a year, with a mix of 1001 and non-1001 reads. I'd like to read at least 28 from the list (which should keep me on track to read 1001 of the list before I die). A nice bonus would be to reach 250 this year. We'll see how this goes...

As for specific titles, these are on my shelves:
Excellent women - done
The good soldier Svejk - done
The return of the soldier - done

And these are high on my radar (will probably come from the library):
The opposing shore - done
Under fire - done
The master and Margarita - done
To the lighthouse - done

Svejk is a great read, one that I will be coming back to read again.

I have a few different goals for 2014...

Finish the 18th century books - 7 remaining

Read some of the biggies - looking at Infinite Jest and A Dance to the Music of Time again and maybe Lord of the Rings

Get down to a max of five works per author - easy enough since that only means reading a DeLillo and a McEwan

Dare I say, reach 400 books read - that would require reading 59 books and I've been rather distracted with life and non-1001 books

#26 The read all the authors down to 5 works is sort of one of mine too - but more in general than specific to 2014. Mainly because it'll take me a lot more reading than fo you!

BekkaJo - I've been working on the prolific authors for some time. I know I will never get all the books read if I get to the end and am left with all the Beckett's and Thomas Bernhard's, but pacing them I stand a chance : )

It's definitely a good idea - there are a couple of authors I have neglected completely (Beckett and Bernhard amongst them). I really need to start knocking them off. Just one a year or something...

Uh oh... I'm feeling a challenge coming on :)

I read my first Bernhard this year and it was short, easy to read, and very good. I have a bad feeling that Beckett will not be that way. And what about Wyndham Lewis, anyway??

BekkaJo - one a year sounds like a good pace, frequent enough to make progress but with enough space to forget any misery ; )

annamorphic - I was glad to see your recent review of Bernhard. I read Correction and it sounds similar to what you read, but twice as long...which got really dull. I haven't read any Lewis yet and I'm a bit intimidated.

I read the first Wyndham Lewis novel, Tarr, and didn't find it difficult at all. It's quite conventional and straightforward and rather enjoyable. I'm not sure if that's true of the rest. A couple of them look really big, too.

I'm hoping for 20 this year, which is doable. Here are some I have my eye on now -- The Leopard, The Power and the Glory, Brideshead Revisited, Oscar and Lucinda, Waterland, Cloud Atlas, Line of Beauty, Amongst Women, Cold Comfort Farm, Absolute Beginners, Birdsong, Hard Times, Dangerous Liaisons . . . and now that I've written this down, I am sure to ignore at least 60% of them for the rest of the year.

>33 Nickelini: I recently picked up a copy of The Leopard, so I imagine I'll be reading it this year too.

#32, there are a LOT of them on our "nobody's read it" challenge list!

>33 Nickelini: I have the same problem - as soon as I write down my goal I feel free to ignore it completely. Exactly the opposite of how this is supposed to work.

Great idea - right now taking the resolution NOT to read Doctor Zhivago in 2014. Let's see where that takes me! :)

Deern - you're too funny!

Im going to try and keep a book journal that I will write down my monthly goals and also keep a log of book acquired that month and also daily read log and write down a few throughts about what I read that day. And also somewhere I can write down the book bullets so I can remember them when I go on a shopping spree (Im getting old and memory is short.) I think that will help me out alot of keeping things on track since I normally read 2 to 3 books at a time. I need something since I have missed my goals the past couple of years.

Good luck on the reading journal, Ann. I've tried such things in the past, but only half-heartedly. The chief problem is that I can't write legibly sitting in a recliner, and I don't want to get up and go to my desk every time I need to make a note of something. (And sometimes I can't write legibly even then.)

HAHA Yes I completely understand and its not getting any easier since I have gotten to the point where I dont really write anymore since I type alot faster then I write. This year will be a test run and if it goes well will continue and if not well I tried.

>39 ALWINN: Have you read any of Nick Hornby's Believer articles, collected in The Polysyllabic Spree, Shakespeare Wrote for Money, More Baths, Less Talking? My favorite part is the top of each has listed (on the left) Books Bought and (on the right) Books Read.

I've read those - a few of those articles can be read on the believer website too. Also BookRiot has an inbox (acquired)/outbox(read) post each week.

I've started a book journal for the first time, too! It's from Moleskine and is alphabetized, with other sections for notes and lists. I'm inordinately excited about it.

>42 ELiz_M: Sounds interesting may have to check these out.

I guess I keep a book journal, of sorts, but in a spreadsheet (I have an unhealthy obsession with spreadsheets!)

However, I've just had a look at some of the stuff on moleskine and I'm sorely tempted!

Spreadsheets are handy, but I wouldn't call that a journal. Well, unless you have cells for thoughts about them? Then I'd say yes. To me a journal implies more than just a list of stats, though (and goodness knows I keep plenty of those! :P).

I've found that ebook readers that enable me to add notes are proving their worth. But my dear old blog (www.johnandsheena.co.uk/books), which just had its 8th birthday, will always be where my thoughts on literature find their final resting place.

I'm in the spreadsheet clan. I have columns for date read, rating, notes, plus a colour coding which sort of links to the rating. I say sort of because I rate in increments between 0 and 5 (ie 3.4). Plus another tab for challenges and over things and stuff and... yeah I love my spreadsheets too...

I've started a book journal for the first time, too! It's from Moleskine and is alphabetized, with other sections for notes and lists. I'm inordinately excited about it.

Well then I'm excited for you! I'm interested in how you plan to organize it--are you using the alphabetized sections? How does that work? I just have a plain lined book, a new one for each year, always hardcover for easier writing when I don't have a table (in bed, on the sofa, in my car, at the park). I just write the date and then my thoughts. But an alphabetized approach sounds intriguing. Maybe it's time for me to shake things up a little?

>50 Nickelini: I am using the alphabetized sections, as well as listing them in the back by date and separating them into 1001 List books and other categories as well. My OCD is having a field day! I've never kept a written copy of my books read in a year before, though I do use listsofbests.com to keep a list for each year digitally.

I just made up a form like which has date, title, author, reason for reading, rating, year published and pages and of course my thoughts. And I can check what form the book is in ebook, hardback or audio and of course if I will re read it or not. I have a special handydandy binder that I alphabetize.

#52 - I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that one reader came up with a form like yours only he printed it on blank 4x6 or 3x5 cards, used the card both as a bookmark and a place to make notes while he was reading, then filed it in a card case when he finished the book.

I started in 1978 keeping a hardcopy list of the books I've read, but the list only shows author, title, date read, page count, and my rating. Other than that the only reading record I have is what's on LT, but I do have a large number of spreadsheets and an Access database for tracking my progress against various book lists and awards.

Okay, time to check how I did this year..

No Proust reread, no long Chinese novel and no 1,001 Nights.

Instead, thanks to our unread list, much progress with German authors and I read the fantastic, super-long and quite unknown Jahrestage. I finished Cecilia and Halbzeit as planned and still didn't read Doctor Zhivago.

I changed my counting system, now following the complete list while still keeping the 2008 listed books on an extra list.

If I finish The Vicar of Wakefield, which should be easy, I'll arrive exactly at my goal of 35 books (2008 list), some more from the complete list. Year-end count should be 350/385. Not great, but also not totally bad.

I read 32 off the list this year and expect to finish at least two more, but I'll still be well short of what I hoped to achieve. My reading was down overall in 2014.

As for tomes, I read Amadis of Gaul, but never got around to Joseph and His Brothers. But, thanks to our "unread list" project, I knocked off a couple of Wyndham Lewises.

Perhaps my most noteworthy milestone is that I've now read everything from the 17th century and earlier. The oldest unread book on my list is now Joseph Andrews (1742). If I continue reading chronologically I should be able to finish the 18th century in 2015 as I have just 12 books left to read that were published before 1800. I'm still thinking about other possible goals for next year.

My stated goals above: "I think I'm going to try to join the group read of In Search of Lost Time. I don't have any goals or resolutions beyond these: Read. Read list books."

Hey, I did pretty well! I did read In Search of Lost Time this year. To this point, I've read 108 books, 39 of which were list books. I will probably finish with a total of 110 and 40. I had been aiming for about half my reads to be from the list, and it's not much short of that if you consider that the Proust was 6 books counting as one.

Next year: I really don't know. I have a move coming up in March that will not only impact my reading around then, but will have an effect on the rest of the year as well.

Oh lordy - I knew I'd be cranky at myself when I reviewed this... I did manage to finish Golden Notebook and Hawsmoor. And I read Cecilia Baring that I've had a pants 1,001 year - my lowest total in about5 years I think! I'm at 25, expecting to be 26 by year end. About 10 short of my normal 1.001 total. Grrrrrr...

I failed to read any endless Chinese novel but I made quite a dent in my authors-I-need-to-read list:

Iain Banks
Georges Bataille
Samuel Beckett -- DONE 2014
Saul Bellow -- DONE 2014
Thomas Bernhard DONE 2013
Italo Calvino -- DONE 2014
Philip K. Dick -- DONE 2014
E. L. Doctorow
Gustave Flaubert -- DONE 2014
Goethe
Franz Kafka -- DONE 2014
Milan Kundera
Doris Lessing
Wyndham Lewis -- DONE 2014
Iris Murdoch -- DONE 2013
Joyce Carol Oates
Georges Perec
Thomas Pynchon
Salman Rushdie -- DONE 2013
Sir Walter Scott -- DONE 2014
Robert Louis Stevenson
Jonathan Swift
Anthony Trollope
John Updike

Some of the ones I have left on here are absurdly easy so my resolution will be to get through seven more of them in 2015.

I've read 54 list books this year, which has got to be a personal record. It's just over half the books I read for the year (another personal record- over 100 for the year). I LOVE using the book journal and I think it encouraged me to read more and to pay more attention to which time periods I was reading from.

>58 annamorphic: So jealous that you're done with Rushdie.

I achieved my goal of getting to 200 books read off of the list, actually getting to 202. I think I read about 28 books this year which is pretty normal for me. I'd had an idea of how I was going to pick my books to read that I did not stick to, but the number was the most important thing to me this year.

I won't be setting a goal for next year, just reading as I like.

#60, oh, not done! This was the list of authors by whom I was supposed to read ONE book. I read his Fury because it was short, but this was a bad choice -- it was one of my worst books of 2013. I am now reading his Midnight's Children (or listening on audio) and it is long but great.

I'm hoping for 20 this year, which is doable. Here are some I have my eye on now -- The Leopard, The Power and the Glory, Brideshead Revisited, Oscar and Lucinda, Waterland, Cloud Atlas, Line of Beauty, Amongst Women, Cold Comfort Farm, Absolute Beginners, Birdsong, Hard Times, Dangerous Liaisons . . . and now that I've written this down, I am sure to ignore at least 60% of them for the rest of the year.

This is what I wrote in January. I was a big fat fail and didn't make even the 40% I predicted. I managed to read two of those: The Leopard and Dangerous Liaisons. I only got around to eleven 1001 books this year, although I am reading one now and have another lined up, which will bring me to 13 for the year. Not a good showing, but oh well. Maybe next year.

Apparently I made no resolutions for the year, but managed to cover 17 books (and have one more picked from library, hopefully I manage to cover it by the end of the year).
Of course I read something like a hundred fiction books over the year, so mostly stuff outside the list...

And I didn't cover any of the big intimidating classics, but eight of the books were picked from the "Read All" project list, so I managed to cover some of the more offbeat corners of the list...

From above I wrote:

my aims are to:

1. Read all the "Group unread" books I have - around 30 left, though rapidly diminishing
2. Finish all the list books available at my local library (been working my way through these for 2 years - now down to around 30)
3. Participate in the Monthly Group reads - so another 12.

72 books in total should be achievable compared with 80 in 2013. Time will tell ......

I achieved each of the goals above and I have read 80 list books to date - same as 2013!

My project for 2015 will be start reading all the books on my bookshelves alphabetically by author (one book per author). This will take me about 5 years! No doubt there will be numerous distractions along the way, and there will be more non-list books than recent years, but I should get my total beyond 400.

I'd like to read at least 28 from the list (which should keep me on track to read 1001 of the list before I die). A nice bonus would be to reach 250 this year.

I'm presently reading #25 and will NOT reach 250 this year. However, I read all the specific titles I listed above. I've also reached a bit of a milestone by reading books by 200 different authors from the list.

>62 annamorphic: Ah, gotcha. In that case, I hope you like him more than I do. He and I are not friends.

Thanks to the arrival of my beautiful daughter (and preparations for said event) I've read just over half what I read in 2013 so many targets have been missed.

However I'm still on course to hit a couple...400 pages left of Proust and only a short Henry Green to finish to tick 1 book off all 6+ authors.

I'm definitely going to dial back in my aims for 2015 but I've finally embraced audio books so this might help pick up the pace again.

Well, I read all of the books I mentioned in my resolution post -- I finished A Dance to the Music of Time and am reading the final book on the above list--Growth of the Soil-- currently.

I was way off on my tally tough -- having only read 78 books so far, instead of 90 this year. For list books, I've read 35 not 40. Will definitely complete Growth of the Soil before the end of the year, but probably not another.

I actually would have hit my overall reading goal (or come closer anyway) if I counted A Dance to the Music of Time as individual books rather than by volume. (So it counted as four books instead of 12.)

I'm also going to dial back my goals for 2015, in part because we've added a new baby to the house so my time for reading is more limited right now.

I read 19 off the list this year and achieved my goal. It may seem a far cry from my usual annual tallies but it did include the two longest novels off the list which together come to well over 6000 pages:
A Dance to the Music of Time
In Search of Lost Time

oh... I nearly forgot the piffling and tiny 1250 page

The Count of Monte Cristo

so... I'm not at all fazed by the fact that I didn't reach even 20 books and, from now on, no amount of pages will ever intimidate me again!