This year, I am going to make a more organized effort to read books. I already read a lot; however, my unstructured approach has me starting lots of books without finishing them. Pair that with my bias for highly technical or otherwise ‘impossible’ reads, and overall I didn’t do a lot of successful reading last year. I’m starting with a list ahead of time, rather than choosing randomly.
The Cat’s Pajamas by Ray Bradbury
I am already a big fan of Ray Bradbury, having really resonated with The Martian Chronicles back in high school. This one is a collection of 22 stories published in 2004, wherein each individual story was written sometime between the mid 1940s through the early 2000s. I think this will be a good starting place because each story is only 10-15 pages.
Edit: finished this one.
Game Theory - Davis
I don’t know anything about this, other than my surfaise knowledge of game theory from that one movie. I’m not sure if this is a cornerstone work in the area, or just a one-off, but it looked interesting and not overly-long.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K Dick
Similar to Bradbury, I have been a fan of PKD for a while, because the movie adaptations were the sort of thing I liked to watch with my friends in high school (Bladerunner, a Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, etc.) This particular one I hadn’t heard of before, so I thought it would be a good reintroduction. I considered VALIS, but it is part of a trilogy and seems a bit much for now, given the synopsis.
The Last Blackrobe of Indiana and the Potawatomi Trail of Death - John William McMullen
This one is currently on loan to me from someone that lives near the area covered in the book. It spans French and American history in the 1800s, as well as Catholic and native American culture, so it should be interesting. It seems to be written in a story driven way rather than purely academic, though it is based on real accounts.
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Really I want to read Foccult’s Pendulum, because that keeps coming up as a reccomendation. However, my goal is to one day read that in the original Italian – perhaps too lofty of a goal. Regardless, I am going to start at the beginning of Ecos’ bibliography, even though I have already seen the film adaptation of this one. The film adaptation is quite enjoyable, so I guess I already know what happens, but I can compare the book to the movie in any case.
Inferno - Dante
This is something that I have already been reading, but I want to continue this year.
The One Year Chronological Bible
I find the bible fascinating for a variety of reasons, but I have never read it in its entirety. This version is arranged chronologically rather than by traditional book order, and is also chunked into 365 days. This is an alluring format for me, because it is already structured for daily progress.