Saturday, January 2, 2016

... paved with good intentions: 2016 plans


What does a person do when she is too fond of reading and books have addled her brain? In my case the love of the written word spurs me on to buy more, even though I have so many now that I'll never get them all read.  That definitely defines the word addled in my case. A smart person would read what she has, and then buy more, but no one's ever accused me of being smart. So I have great intentions for my reading life this year, but as they say about the road...

I'm kind of thinking along these lines:


  1.   I am planning to read more 19th century American fiction, then make the move into the early  20th century, discovering those novels that rarely make it on to become the stuff of literature classes. I didn't mean for that to happen in 2015, but I had such fun with them last year (for the most part) that I want to do it again, while
  2.  rotating in some translated fiction since there is really a lot of great stuff out there just waiting to be read; and then there are the crime reads, which this year will focus on
  3. books that have been made into movies -- with some exceptions, mostly older novels and older movies (I discovered the Criterion collection on Hulu this year so the choices are pretty much huge)  while still focusing on
  4. obscure women writers of crime novels, and then finally there is the
  5. darker fiction that I love reading, where I'm thinking about reading out of the mainstream, focusing on work from smaller presses or from the past.  
Then again my plans could all go belly up as new fiction is released, so committing myself might be folly. 

To everyone: a happy reading year, filled with great books, great health, and inner peace. 




5 comments:

  1. Agree with these sentiments exactly for the new year, but I'd add a wish for outer peace, too, although that seems impossible.

    I've found this website for old movies:
    http://free-classic-movies.com/index.php

    Also, a new good English writer about crime and social issues is Eva Dolan, excellent. Denise Mina continues her excellent series on crime in Scotland With Blood, Salt, Water.

    The urge to stay home this winter and just read and watch dvd's is pretty strong.

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    1. I have to pace myself with the movie watching or that's all I'd find myself doing. Thanks for the recommendations, and I do wish for outer peace but well, yeah.

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  2. I'll add The Hummingbird by Finnish writer Kati Heikkapelto, and she has a second one out now, The Defenceless.
    Mina is examining a lot about the criminal world, interesting, good writer.
    Am reading Grisham's new one, The Rogue Lawyer, good comments on injustices in the criminal justice system, combined with a lawyer who pushes the envelope all the time -- and is very witty while he's at it.
    If you watch foreign TV mysteries, the Danish/Swedish series (2 so far), The Bridge (Bron or Broen) is available at Netflix. I am truly addicted to this one, much better than U.S. TV.

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    1. We've done two seasons of The Bridge (Scandinavian) and loved it. I didn't even want to try the US version.

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  3. Thee's also the British Broadchurch and The Escape Artist which is a thriller which also has brilliant repartee between barristers.
    The Bridge will come back with season three but without Kim Bodnia, only with Sofia Helin. I can't wait.

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Say what you will, but at least try to be nice about it.