Okay, I've poured myself a very watery scotch, a veritable Easter Island of liquor in a lonesome South Pacific of ice and H2O, and I'm going to tackle one of the ontological questions of this project, namely, which books count?
Obviously, in literature, the classics by novelists who are household names: Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac, Mann, Joyce, Proust, et.al. (Is Balzac a household name in the United States? One hopes, one hopes.) But also less celebrated works that have a certain permanence: The Rector of Justin, La-Bas, The Sleepwalkers, Il Gattopardo, The Master and Margarita, for example. I can't expect myself to take on War and Peace or Die Zauberberg every outing.
So, famous authors; authors who should be famous, were the world less crass; and one-offs like, well, Lampedusa's The Leopard comes to mind again. (I guess I'll be trying to actually finish that one.)
Here I have a confession to make: like many lovers of books, I've attempted probably three times as many books as I've actually finished. Swann's Way I've started at least six times; Crime and Punishment three or four; Little Dorritt definitely twice; The Talisman, Ivanhoe, War and Peace, practically every novel by James Joyce. I'm great at starting books; not so terrific about actually seeing them to a conclusion.
But everything this year started from the beginning except for the books I happen to be in the middle of right now. My work schedule being what it is, I don't expect I'll finish any of those until the counting starts, but I'll consider them legitimate, given my previous track record (see above). I'll need all the help I can get once I run out of the Shorter Novels of John Steinbeck.
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