With food barely digested, plenty of dry January commitments to make up for holiday excesses and more than a few promises to ourselves – some of which really are worth sticking to – there’s plenty to think about, but over on the books team we’re interested in what your reading resolutions look like.
What are the books you want to read – and are realistically going to be able to get around to reading – in the recently welcomed 2015? Or in Internet slang, what’s on your TBR pile for this year? Are you looking forward to the year’s big fiction – Kazuo Ishiguro ore Ben Lerner perhaps – or is non-fiction your bag? Do you intend to spend your time catching up with the unread classics, or do your tastes incline towards the lesser known?
Here are some of the TBR piles for 2015 our readers have shared with us so far:
celinar’s readolution is surely shared by many:
My primary resolution is to finish reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I’m about a quarter of the way through, or a third if you don’t count footnotes. I don’t really schedule my reading because my choices are 90% about what I feel like reading at a given moment. That’s said, I would like to get through the copy of Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women that I borrowed from a friend in November. I’m looking forward to that one, but I feel like I’m going to need a sustained chunk of time to focus on it, probably after I finish the Piketty. I’d also like to get The Goldfinch off my shelf one way or another, although I don’t especially look forward to it.
judgeDAmNation’s readolutions are:
1) To read more non-fiction – this will probably consist of author biographies mostly, but history as well. The Devil in White City by Erik Larsen has been getting a lot of good press from other commenters in Tips, Links and Suggestions so I intend to move that one near the top of the TBR pile. [...]
2) To read more modern fiction – most of the novels I read tend to come from the early twentieth century, if not the one before that, and anything I read that’s published within the last fifty years is usually the latest in a series of some author I already know. Therefore I intend to try some brand new titles and authors: I’ve already earmarked Septembers by Christopher Prendergast as a possible choice, as well as 10:04 by Ben Lerner (having read Leaving The Atocha Station a couple of years back) ...
EnidColeslaw’s list:
Most of my reading is mandatory (not meaning that it is unpleasant!) and concentrates on British and American recent and forthcoming fiction, so I’d like to make room for more other kinds of literatures, ie go back to 19th and 20th century French lit, for instance, especially the two or three Camus I still haven’t read [...]
Eager to read more Zadie Smith, more Carol Shields, more Joan Didion, more Jeanette Winterson. Looking forward to the unexpected, not-on-my-planning, not-in-my-TBR, incredible reads that 2015 will throw at me.
Will this be the year I finally tackle War and Peace? I wouldn’t bet on it.
In the unlikely case that you’re dry of ideas, take a look at the excellent, timeless recommendations from our community of readers in this thread about the books they enjoyed the most last year.
Tell us about your reading plans and hopes for the year in the comment thread below, and tweet us pictures of your 2015 To Be Read pile with the hashtag #2015readolutions. We will update this piece with a selection.