2015 = 1,001 good Resolutions!

Just realised that in the madness of Christmas and New Year I managed to forget to post a 1,001 resolution topic. So here it is! What are everyone's goals for this year? I failed rather badly last year on my resolutions - in fact I had a very slow 1,001er year.

This year I'm participating in the 75ers American Author challenge and the British Author Challenge which basically involves a list of authors and reading one of their books each a month. Or for BAC, two authors a month! I'm linking this up to my 1,001 books where possible. Actually I did AAC last year but kept reading books I thought were from the list that turned out not to be...doh!

So this year, AAC/BAC aside what am I plotting...

Finish Updike's rabbit books (1 1/2 down)
Finish Eyeless in Gaza and Devil to pay in the Backlands - each about 1/4 through

If I have any time, which seems rather unlikely, plug away at my eternal rollers;
A Prayer for Owen Meany (rolled for about 6 years so far)
Les Miserables (rolled 2 years)
Complicity (rolled)
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - (rolled 2 years)

So how about you guys?

I'm about to commence a project reading a book by every author on my bookshelves, alphabetically by author. I anticipate clearing the As, Bs and starting the Cs this year. There are quite a few non-List books, but I still hope to get through around 60 list books so I should get to my 400 in the second half of the year.

I'm not setting a goal for this year. I have about 50 books from the list on my shelves (out of 125 total) and I'll pick those as I feel like it. I'll also probably participate in a lot of our group reads. But no specific goals this year as I need a bit of a break after reaching 200 this year.

I have a large goal of reading 500 books off of the list by the time I reach age 50 and I know that to do that I need to average 25 books a year from the list.

I think I just listed kind of a lot of goals for someone who says they don't have a goal this year! :-)

I didn't meet my reading goal last year, so I've dialed things back for this year. It would be great if I could manage 43 list books to get to 300 in 2015. We'll see how it goes.

Infinite Jest. A Dickens book. That's all I've got for goals this year.

My reading was down overall last year, but I hope to pick the pace back up in 2015, and that includes reading a higher proportion of 1001-listed books. I'd love to hit 650 overall, which would mean reading 53 off the list, but that may be out of reach.

Partly because of our collective "read the list" project, my 2014 reading included a lot of obscure and, frankly, undeserving literature. In 2015 I want to go the opposite direction and focus on the unread works of the greatest reputation and popularity. I don't have any specific numeric goals in that regard, but it will mean reading works like Song of Solomon, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Notre Dame de Paris.

An overlapping target is to reduce the number of authors with multiple unread books. I have six authors with five unread books each, so I should at least be able to read one apiece. Then there are authors with multiple books on the list whom I've never read at all. By the end of the year I hope to be able to say that I've read at least one book by every author who has four or more on the list.

Hmm, I won't promise any specific volumes but it would be nice if I managed to get to 200 books (22 books to read this year, though I already finished the first of them).
Maybe I should finish Bowen books, four down, two to go, and so far I have enjoyed her a lot...

I did just put together a list of interesting titles for coming months, I did not specifically pick them from 1001 list but a number of them are.

LOL - everyone seems very cagey this year! Normally we're an exact lot - looks like we've worn ourselves out on trying to clear the last few unreads ;)

My focus is the bigger books. Hopefully I can finally make a dent on Proust, start Infinite Jest and perhaps even Suitable Boy.

OK, I will go all crazy and specific and say that I need to read All Men are Brothers to get one of those endless Chinese classics off my list.
Then there are still the following authors with 3+ books (in the 2006 edition) by whom I have read nothing:

Iain Banks == DONE
Georges Bataille == DONE
Fanny Burney == DONE
William Burroughs == DONE
Angela Carter == DONE
Denis Diderot == DONE
E.L. Doctorow == DONE
Marguerite Duras == DONE
Maria Edgeworth == DONE
J. W. von Goethe == DONE
Peter Handke == DONE
Michel Houellebecq == DONE
John Irving == DONE
Milan Kundera == DONE
Elmore Leonard == DONE
Doris Lessing == DONE
Primo Levi == DONE
Guy de Maupassant == DONE
Alberto Moravia == DONE
Joyce Carol Oates == DONE
Flannery O'Connor == DONE
Georges Perec == DONE
Thomas Pynchon == DONE
Iain Sinclair == DONE
Tobias Smollett == DONE
Gertrude Stein == DONE
Robert Lewis Stevenson == DONE
Jonathan Swift == DONE
John Updike == DONE

Oh gosh, that's a LOT! I need to read a book by at least 8 of these.

My goal is to read 60 books, 40 of which will be from the 1,001 list.

Well I am aiming for 89 books including the 12 volume Dance to the Music of Time. I am also clearing out some serious chunksters in the first part of the year. I'll finally finish The Brothers Karamazov andUlysses, Infinite Jest and House of Leaves. I'll have to come up with more challenges for later in the year!

Last year I finally managed to read The Brothers Karamazov, which had been a New Years resolution for about 5 years running. I'm aiming for another Russian classic, War and Peace, this year. Also, I hope to reach 400 on the combined list, which means I'd need to read 38. It'll be a stretch.

Like Bekka, I am participating in the British and American Author Challenges over in the 75 Group and will try to get as many 1,001 listed books covered that way. Then I am planning to participate in the monthly GRs here, of course unless I've already read the book. This should easily bring me past the 400 mark.

And then there are those books on my shelf which I should really finally get read. *sigh*
Among those are:
I'm not Stiller by Max Frisch
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak which is for the umpteenth time on my NYR list
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doeblin

Of the +3 book authors there's just one left of whom I've read nothing and that's Georges Pérec.

Oh, and I got the first volume of Taebek Mountains last year in French translation. I should at least try to read some of its pages.

14 -
Where did you find the french translation? I've been looking for it in Paris.

I read 28 books off the list in 2014 including the wonderfully written ( but terribly long!) In Search of Lost Time. So a few shorter books are in order this year.
My plan is to continue reading more of the World War I novels and some of the books that overlap with the Reading Globally group. So, to beat last year's total, I'd like to read at least 30 from the 1001 list. The problem is, my non-fiction TBR pile is almost as high as my fiction one!

>15 lilisin: on amazon.it which is linked to amazon.fr - but they seem to have just one copy per volume and each costs around 30 euros, so the whole thing is quite an investment.

Edit: just checked and they have vols 4 and 5, but only those on Kindle!? Almost too good to believe! Wouldn't it be lovely if they e-booked the whole series now and made it available on amazon.com as well??

Unfortunately I have no use for the Kindle version but thanks for the info.

after finishing Proust and Powell last year, my goal is not to read any books over 500 pages. In fact, I might just target only the short ones on purpose because my year on average has taken a severe hammering!

I will definitely hit the 250 mark this year, and want to mark the occasion with something memorable. I'm leaning toward The count of Monte Cristo. Aside from that, my goal is just to read around 25 books on the list, which has been my average for the last few years.

I completely missed the resolution thread last year. Maybe it's just as well - probably I would have fallen fall short and then felt bad. I like the idea of reaching a nice round number of books completed, but at 68 books finished already, it would take 32 to reach 100. Possible, but not likely. I'll be thrilled if I finish 20. I have more than that on my planned reading list for the year, but I never finish everything on that list. So, 20. My goal is 20.

last year I set my goal at one a month and read a bit more than that. So this year's goal is 18 - one and a half books per month.

>21 sjmccreary: I'd love to join you with 20 books, but not sure if I'll make that many, although like >1 BekkaJo:, I'm planning to read along with the American & British authors challenges and also the read-all-of-Jane-Austen challenge as well. So who knows?

I read over 80 of the 1001 last year. Some great ones, but a lot of 3 stars, which I will forget about real soon I guess.
This year I want to read more books that are unforgettable, books that stick with me and that I will recommend over and over again to my friends.
Even if that means I have to read more books outside the list.

Shorter term, I'd like to finish the rest of the 'A' books - 15 to go! I think I can hit 200 this year (I'm currently at 168), so that's my end of year goal. I would also like to try to read one volume of the Burton translation of A Thousand and One Nights - mainly because there are 16 volumes that I don't want to be stuck with when I reach the 'Ts', sometime in my 60s. ;)

Love all the resolutions! Good luck everyone :)

Every year I list a handful of books and mostly read something else, and last year was my biggest fail yet--so I am resisting listing even one book. I've slowed right down on my 1001 reading, but I still have 142 books from the list waiting in my TBR pile, so I hope to pick up the pace this year. And that's the best I can promise.

I had a patchy reading year in 2014 so I have also dialed things back in a bit. That's not to say I can resist some challenges though! So here's the plan:

1. Reach 200 (so 54 books in 2015)
2. Read 20,000 pages
3. Read at least 2 books from each period (1900s, 1800s etc)
4. Read the penguin 3 volume edition of Thousand and One Nights
5. Read 1 book by all unread authors with 5 books on the list (10 in total)

There are a handful of books that have been on my shelf for too long so I will try and get to them this year. Namely Infinite Jest, Against the Day, Watchmen, Middlemarch and Middlesex.

Should be a fun year!

Mid-Year Status Check...

Goal: Reach 650 by reading 53 books off the list.
Status: Only 20 read so far.

Goal: Read more landmark works like Song of Solomon, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Notre Dame de Paris.
Status: Read only Song of Solomon of these three, but also read Orlando and The Awakening.

Goal: Read at least one book by each of the six authors with five unread books.
Status: Have read five of the six. Only Paul Auster is left with five unread books.

Goal: Read at least one book by each of the three never-read authors with four books on the list
Status: Have read only one, Heinrich Böll. James Kelman and Edna O'Brien remain.

Not a stellar year so far, but I read 30 non-listed books during this period, so my goals are still in reach if I can just keep up the pace but increase the proportion of listed books in my reading.

My goal was to read one book by every author on my bookshelves, getting in to the Cs by year end. Just finished Bernhard and moving on to Blackmore (the non-List Lorna Doone). 50 List books (out of 70 books read) so will exceed the target of 60 for the year. Getting through more books now I've discovered audiobooks this year.

My only goals were to read Infinite Jest, which I finished in April, and to read a Dickens book. I read A Tale of Two Cities in February.

I've read 15 list books so far this year, which is okay if not stellar.

I didn't set a goal specific to this year, but I am trying to get to 500 books by the time I'm 50, in 2028. To do that I need to read 23 books a year and I've read 17 so far this year. So that's pretty good.

I've also had an easier time since discovering audiobooks, though I am discovering that I really prefer nonfiction or easy books, like mysteries, in audio format, so in the long term audiobooks might not help me with my list reading.

>31 japaul22: -- I've done quite a few 1001 books on audio and I think they were all a success. Here are the ones I recommend:

Flaubert's Parrot
White Tiger (the reader is hilarious--I listened to this while painting the outside of my house and I'm sure my neighbours thought I'd lost my marbles)
What a Carve Up! - another funny one
Cider with Rosie
Anna Karenina
Fingersmith
Chocky
The Mill on the Floss
End of the Affair - read by Colin Firth -- yummy
Fanny Hill
The Accidental (is this a 1001 book? Not sure but it's a good audio book because it makes some things very clear that readers of the paper version have trouble figuring out)

Don't give up on 1001 audiobooks yet!

>32 Nickelini: Thanks! I know part of the problem is that I keep picking books to listen to that I don't really want to read since audiobooks feel like "free books" to me since I listen while doing something else where I couldn't be reading. So that's really not fair to the audiobook genre. Thanks for the suggestions!

>33 japaul22: I keep picking books to listen to that I don't really want to read since audiobooks feel like "free books" to me since I listen while doing something else where I couldn't be reading.

Yep, I know that strategy well. Sometimes you come across good books doing that (from my list, White Tiger, Chocky, The Mill on the Floss, What a Carve Up!). And then there are some that I wouldn't like on paper or audio (ah hem, Glass Key).

At message 10 above I have been keeping track of my resolution, which involved reading books by authors with 3+ works on the list (first edition) by whom I had read none. There were 29 such authors and I've now read books by 17 of them, which is pretty good! Although a few of those I have left, like Peter Handke and Iain Sinclair, are particularly daunting.

I also resolved to read one of the huge long early Chinese classics and that I have not yet done.

Re. audio books, on another thread I've listed a lot of 1001'ers that were great on audio. I've always got a 1001 book going in the car.

>22 streamsong: Goal : Read 18 from the list which will put me at 120 121 total. ETA: Whoops, just noticed another one that I read last year is on the list!- Wonder if I can make it to 125?

End of June - 9 read, mostly British, which is no surprise since, like others, I'm reading along with the British Authors Challenge as well as the Read-All-Of-Jane-Austen-this year group.

Probably not going to hit my goal this year (and I'm totally going to blame the new baby for this one.) I hoped to read 43 list books, but so far have only managed 16.

My other goal was to read all of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past this year, but I couldn't keep up the pace of one book every other month. I felt like all I was reading was Proust. While I am enjoying the series, it's slow going. I decided to take a month's break between finishing one and starting the next... so this is definitely going to stretch into next year.

My goal was to read 89 books including the whole of the Dance to the Music of Time at a book a month. I was also going to read four big classic chunksters - The Brothers Karamazov, Infinite Jest, Ulysses and House of Leaves.

So far I have read 51 books, am one month behind on my 12 book series but I'll catch up once I get in to the library which has these and I've read 3 of the 4 big classics. House of Leaves I haven't been able to get my teeth into yet.

All in all I'm well on track.

I'm a bit behind on my goal to read 25 books this year - only completed 10 so far - but I'm almost done with The count of Monte Cristo which I'm reading as my 250 book from the list.

Hmmm reading sit rep... well I was planning on a lot of AAC/BAC and so far I'm mostly keeping up with that (Henry James aside who I LOATHE).

Finished my Updikes andEyeless in Gaza - shamefully behind on the rest of my resolutions :)

Shame on me, I totally abandoned this challenge (and most "good" reading) early this year thanks to RL taking over, and am now slowly coming back with this year's Booker longlist. Looking at what I was planning in >14 Deern: - I guess I won't read any of those listed and won't get near 400. Hoping for a better 2016...
So I'll modify my goals for 2015: I'll be happy with any 1,001 I'll read this year! :)

I've read books by 22 of the 29 authors by whom I swore to read a book, and may actually finish that part of my resolution by the end of this year. On the other hand, my vow to read one of the massively long Chinese books has come to naught.

Me reaching 200 books is also a bit far away, ten books still to go...which would be fine if I concentrated on them, but my to-read pile is mostly other books, I think there's only one list book there (and unlike normally, my to-read pile is literally a pile).

My goal was to read 89 books including the whole of the Dance to the Music of Time at a book a month. I was also going to read four big classic chunksters - The Brothers Karamazov, Infinite Jest, Ulysses and House of Leaves.

New 1001 Books - 113
Re-read 1001 Books - 6

So that means 96 books came off of my big 1300+ total this year which I'm pretty thrilled about. I didn't get around to reading House of Leaves so I'll try to do that this year, but all things considered I'm still pretty happy.

That was my first full year of truly working through the list and although I probably focused a little too much on only 1001 books at the start of the year, I think I've now gotten a pretty good balance of around 40% 1001 books and 60% whatever else takes my fancy. I think I'll be able to maintain a similar sort of reading pace for this year.

Thank you for reminding me about this M1nks :)

Plus well done you - that's a whopping 1001 total for the year. I basically failed in the vast majority of my resolutions... maybe I'll go more generic this year...

Edited because I spotted there already is a new thread up for 2016 resolutions :)

Wow - that's very impressive MInks!

My goal was pretty modest in 2015 ( >22 streamsong: ) - to read 18 and I read 19 along with 3 rereads.

My goal was to read a book by at least 8 of the authors with 3+ books on the list by whom I'd read nothing. I went a little crazy and read a book by all 29 of them! I did not read one of the huge old CHinese clunkers on the list, which was the other part of my resolution.