What Books Do You Want to Read?

Bloganuary writing prompt
What books do you want to read?

I suppose the question with a shorter answer would be “What books wouldn’t you want to read?”

Being employed by a Library, I read widely. I run a book discussion group after all. However, I have my personal areas of focus that I return to over time.

This year, I’m looking forward to reading Benjamin Labatut’s The MANIAC. His novel/history/fantasy When we Cease to Understand the World was an astonishing read about the nature of mathematics, chaos theory, and the myth-making of “great men.”

Following the abrupt ending of Karen Marie Moning’s Darkfever, I am intrigued to begin Bloodfever, the second in her “Fever Series” of paranormal romances.

Only a Voice by George Scialabba. On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt. Wrong Norma by Anne Carson.

Like many others, I am waiting for Keanu Reeves’ debut, The Book of Elsewhere. In the meantime, there is The Book of Disquiet.

And there is always, of course, Finnegans Wake. I’ve been telling myself that this would be the next “big read” I would explore after my third go-around with Ulysses.

One thought on “What Books Do You Want to Read?

  1. The hype around Finnegans Wake made my wife pick it up, but after reading half a page she almost threw it into the dumpster fire. So, just for her, I set up a literary art experiment in which I merged the most beautiful book in English literature (the Kelmscott-Chaucer) with its most enigmatic one (Finnegans Wake). Both books had had issues with their readability – the Kelmscott-Chaucer with the used layout of the text and Finnegans Wake with Joyce’s sibylline prose. After weeding out this defects, this book’s stream-of-consciousness stile still makes it a difficult read, but you don’t have to be an accomplished philologist anymore to read it (or alternately reading a version that contains as many footnotes as actual prose). Right now everyone can decide if this book was the biggest literary hoax ever or the work of a genius (although, admittedly, I dumbed it down a little by eliminating the foreign idiosyncrasies and streamlining Joyce’s prose).

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