Reading report

My reading year concludes on the 30th. Or, rather, on the 1st (a few years ago, I decided I could have a “day of grace”).

Books to finish (I’m behind):
  • Christie, Towards Zero, which I’m rereading because there’s a new TV miniseries
  • Forster, The Eternal Moment and Other Stories
  • Garner, The Stone Book Quartet – this month’s “fantasy” choice: much less fantastical than I was led to believe, but no worse for that
  • Dante, Paradiso, which I should have finished years ago
  • Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, for the reading group
  • Homer, Odyssey, last month’s “fantasy” choice – and the preceding month’s, and the preceding month’s. … It’s not that I don’t like it – it’s great – I just keep switching, mid-month, to other fantasy books
  • O’Brien, The Third Policeman, which I should have finished years ago; also fantastical; also brilliant (a book’s quality is no guarantee that I’ll finish it promptly)
  • Powell, Temporary Kings and Hearing Secret Harmonies, the last two books of A Dance to the Music of Time (a “warm-up” for reading Proust next year)
  • Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, a “warm-up” (pun intended) for next year’s “weather disaster” reading
I’m reading philosophy but won’t finish any titles by the end of the month. (Don’t think I’m neglecting my field.)

Anyway, if certain blog entries strike you as perfunctory, you can guess what is occupying me instead. (Actually, I might be brushing up on titles by Agatha Christie, typing them out for this quiz. I know all the titles but have trouble recalling them in one sitting. Once, I remembered all of them except [a] the novel I’d just finished and [b] And Then There Were None.)

I was finishing books at a regular clip until December, and then Abel was born.