SFist Reads

SFist Mary-Lynn has recently been diligently cataloguing her book collection using LibraryThing, including tagging her "toreadshelf" which at last count numbers 27. Thus, her reading plans for 2006 include getting through that list and, most importantly, not adding anything new to it! She also has a stack of magazine and news article clippings about a foot high. You know, if she finds the time...

In November 2005, SFist Chuck picked up a book called Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps by Romulus Hillsborough, partly because it's got a samurai on the cover and partly because the author's name is even more bad-ass than Wolf Blitzer's. It's a non-fictional account of the role of the samurai police during the Meiji Restoration, and even criticisms of it point out that it's exhaustively researched and detailed. Sometime in 2006, he plans to get his shogun on and actually read the thing.

Chuck is also resolving to make a dent in his own "Essential Books to Claim Basic Literacy" list, planning to tackle Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. This will most likely end up in his getting through one chapter of each, then giving up and going back to Terry Pratchett. Somewhat less literary but no less difficult a read is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; he's never been able to get past the first dozen pages because Dave Eggers' matter-of-fact description of his parents' death leaves him a sobbing heap. Maybe 2006 will be the year he finally grows a backbone and finishes it.

SFist Cedric is hoping to finish Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which he is currently slowly slogging through. This book has been clogging his reading pile for years, and to be honest, he is sometimes annoyed by the excrutiating details of the vagaries of a sickly young man whose only way to socialize with women seems to stalk them. Nonetheless Cedric is intent on plunging Proust away, so he can read through the rest of the pile, for instance McGee's On Food and Cooking, which explains the chemistry of cooking.

Last year Jon said he'd read War and Peace on this very site and then went out and did it. And with the exception of their being way too much theorizing about historical and socialogical determinism, enjoyed it immensely. He was even sad when it ended and would have been quite okay if it went on. So with that in mind, this year's big reading resolution is to take up another Russian classic he's never read-- Crime and Punishment. He actually picked it up once and started it years ago, only to get distracted by something on the TV by page three and never picked it up since. He would also like to say that with word that J.K. Rowling has yet to start the next and final Harry Potter and will start it within the next month, that he wishes J.K. to hurry. With Star Wars and the LoTR movies over and a Serenity sequel probably not happening, his little geek heart turns to her to save him.