Skip to main content

Meme: Top Ten Books I Resolve To Read in 2011

The Top Ten Tuesdays meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Show your appreciation by clicking on the link and checking out some more reading resolutions on the other participating blogs.

This is actually more of an “I would like to finish” list than a resolution - I have stopped making those.

  • Douglas Adams: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I like the Hitch-hiker’s Guide series, so I really should read this one and see if I like it as much.
  • R. Broby-Johansen: Krop og klær. Illustrated costume history, in Danish. It’s a subject I am interested in and I have had the book for several years, but for some reason never read it.
  • Charles Darwin: Voyage of the Beagle. Third attempt...
  • Amelia B. Edwards: A Thousand Miles up the Nile. I need to finish this one.
  • Neil Gaiman. Anansi Boys. Bought it soon after it came out and never read it, which is surprising because I like Gaiman's work.
  • Gregory Maguire:Wicked. Got it for my birthday years ago but never managed to work up the enthusiasm for reading it.
  • Mervyn Peake: Gormenghast. I read Titus Groan several years ago and started this one, but put it on the back-burner for some reason I have forgotten.
  • Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen: The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch. It has been waiting for too long to be read, considering the trouble I went through to get it (BookMooch with endless customs hassles).
  • Paul Scott: The Jewel in the Crown. It’s time I started reading the Raj Quartet. I loved the TV mini-series and I expect I will love the books as well.
  • More non-fiction in general. I have loads of interesting non-fiction books sitting on my shelves unread.
Labels:

Comments

Peppermint Ph.D. said…
Wicked is also on my list...I've seen the play and want to compare :)
January 04, 2011 10:05 pm
Irene Palfy said…
Darwin? That's cool. I hope you'll have fun with all your pics. I can not image Douglas Adams could ever fail.. ;")
January 05, 2011 4:45 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more