2010 Reading Goals

2010 is the year when I will take up again and finally finish A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. 2010 is the year when I will pare my TBR to a mere one row or less on my main book shelf. 2010 is the year when I will once again take on those book lists I started keeping track of some years ago, and get some substantial mileage in.

I like a challenge, but I’m wary of officially joining reading challenges. Not for anything, but knowledge of myself. I know that I can go berserk just joining challenges that I like the sound of, then feel immensely depressed when I find myself unable to keep up with the challenge. Also, sometimes I feel limited by a reading challenge. For instance, I only really kept track of my quantity reading challenge because I knew I could decide which books I wanted to read. I didn’t feel limited by a specific genre or author or whatever. So, it took me a while to figure out what my reading goals this year would be and which challenges I would join, if ever.

When I began this blog, I noted down a few lists that I was challenging myself to go through, no time limit, and no pressure to read everything on the lists. But, in the course of the year, those lists sort of took a backseat what with the great book recommendations I keep reading about from other book bloggers and friends. This year, I shall return to my basics. And, I shall trim down my TBR because, no matter what others might say, the books in my library are meant to be read, not just owned, by me. So, I’ve taken my five major lists (1001 Books to Read Before You Die, All-TIME 100 Novels, BBC Big Read, Booker Prize winners, and Pulitzer Fiction winners) and checked which books in those lists are in my TBR. Those are the books that I will make sure to read this year, and these are the following:

1. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
3. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
4. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
5. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
6. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
7. Delta of Venus - Anais Nin
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
9. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
10. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
11. Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
12. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
13. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
14. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
15. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
16. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
17. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
18. Neuromancer - William Gibson
19. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
20. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
21. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
22. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
23. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
24. Saturday - Ian McEwan
25. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg
26. Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
27. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
28. Sula - Toni Morrison
29. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
30. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
31. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
32. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
33. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
34. The Gathering - Anne Enright
35. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
36. The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
37. The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble
38. The Sea - John Banville
39. Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
40. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
41. Watership Down - Richard Adams

That’s 41 books so far. And given these books, I’ll be joining Miz B’s TBR Challenge and the Chunkster Challenge. If I get through all 41, then I’ll have completed both challenges, easy.

Of course, I’m betting getting through these 41 books isn’t easy at all. But, as I said, I like a challenge.

Apart from those two challenges, I’ll be signing up for the Victorian Reading Challenge, too. This is part of returning to my basics since I used to read a lot of Victorian novels, and I find I miss them.

Aside from my list and these three challenges, I have a couple other reading goals for this year:

• Read a Jeanette Winterson book
• Read an Oprah book club book

…because I’ve never done either, and I’m willing to try anything once.

The portrait is also a reading goal.:) I'd like to have more time reading like that. So, here's to an exciting reading year ahead. Here we go!