I have a dreadful habit of buying books and never reading them. There are a number of reasons for this. Mainly, the problem is that as I’m studying English and History, I simply don’t have enough time to read anything outside of course books. Sad but true. Also, I get easily distracted and forget to finish.
Another significant contributing factor, which is a bit embarrassing, is that I have a horrible habit buying books that I would like to think that I would like. That is, I see some big heavy tome, or perhaps a slim volume with a horribly complicated title (The Epistemology of the Closet, anyone?), and think that it looks awfully clever and must have something awfully clever to say. Unfortunately I never get around to find out what that might be, as once it’s bought, it’s never looked at again.
I finished Revolutionary Road today, and decided that the madness had to end. Instead of going to the shop and spending fifty yoyos on self-improving masterpieces (and a fiver on Jordan’s book, which I then devour leaving the masterpieces to rot in the bag they were sold in), I raided my parents’ bookcases.
My dad also has a book buying compulsion. This, coupled with my mum’s inability to throw anything away, means that we have quite an extensive collection of books. It might not be a stretch to call it a library…though there is no order, books are stacked all over and the shelves are lined two deep. We definitely own every book that was ever written about Munster or Cork. Definitely.
So I chose twenty that I plan to read over the summer.
It’s a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I doubt I’ll read every word of every one, but I’ll give them all a good flick anyways. If the list sounds interesting to anyone sure give me a comment and we can have a wee bookclub! Exciting.
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
Possession, A.S. Byatt
Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World, Jeremiah Curtin
A History of Ireland, Edmund Curtis (I really should have read this already)
The Idiot, Fyodor Mikhail Dostoyevsky
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (didn’t like Faulkner before but I’ll give him another go)
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway
Men without Women, Ernest Hemingway (heart Hemingway)
Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, Declan Kiberd (this looks really interesting, I was reading some of it in the library a while ago.)
Vanity of Duluoz, Jack Kerouac
The Dead School, Patrick McCabe
The Best from “The Bell”, Sean McMahon ed. (collection from The Bell journal, including pieces by Frank O’Connor, Brendan Behan, Flann O’Brien etc)
The Girl with Green Eyes, Edna O’Brien
The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre (this may not get read…)
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr
Naming Names: Who, What, Where in Ireland, Bernard Share
Love the smell of books.
Thing a Day 