My reading year has concluded
I’m glad to report that I finished reading the principal works of Homer, Dante (not his Vita Nuova), E. M. Forster, Anthony Powell, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. And I finished all I’ll ever care to read about J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
I reached my numeric goal, too. But I was forced to rationalize at the eleventh hour. I’d galloped through The White Darkness – David Grann’s little picture-book about antarctic exploration – but was unable to do the same with Michel Foucault’s little picture-book on Magritte. I called it quits. It was almost midnight. I was two books short.
Then I remembered that the three parts of The Origins of Totalitarianism were first published as separate volumes. I’d finished reading Antisemitism and Imperialism. I did some reverse-gerrymandering and included them in the tally. Not without qualms. I appended asterisks.
Last night, I began reading Proust. I joined the long tradition of those who fall asleep reading the “overture” in Swann’s Way, which is about falling asleep.
I reached my numeric goal, too. But I was forced to rationalize at the eleventh hour. I’d galloped through The White Darkness – David Grann’s little picture-book about antarctic exploration – but was unable to do the same with Michel Foucault’s little picture-book on Magritte. I called it quits. It was almost midnight. I was two books short.
Then I remembered that the three parts of The Origins of Totalitarianism were first published as separate volumes. I’d finished reading Antisemitism and Imperialism. I did some reverse-gerrymandering and included them in the tally. Not without qualms. I appended asterisks.
Last night, I began reading Proust. I joined the long tradition of those who fall asleep reading the “overture” in Swann’s Way, which is about falling asleep.