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.

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

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog