Here’s my bucket list. These are the works I want to
read before I die. However, they all will require an above-and-beyond amount of
either time, energy, motivation, or some such combination, which I generally
don’t have. You know, the whole 24/7 marriage / raising children / working
thing. Plus I already do read anywhere from forty to sixty books cover-to-cover
a year, and that pretty much zaps up all the free time I have.
Yet something deep down inside me lifts these books up
as something special. Thus, the reading bucket list. If I’m blessed with a long
retirement, or if I win the lottery or gain an inheritance from a long-lost
granduncle, I’d tackle it immediately. But right now, they all sit on my
idealized book shelf, my fantasy on-deck circle. I will get to them, though, somewhere
down the road, and that’s a promise.
Fiction
The
Brothers Karamazov and Crime
and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
* Both long reside at the acknowledged pinnacle of
literature. Have the first in a beautiful hardcover with gold edging all ready
to go, need the second. Wrestling with morality and amorality – should be quite
instructive in our generally ignorant, emotionalist times.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(Dickens)
* A Dickensian murder mystery – where the author died
before the final chapter was written! This has intrigued me for years. (Plus,
superior author Dan Simmons has wrote his own treatment on the book – what
really was going on when Dickens wrote it. Might be a good parallel read.)
Infinite
Jest
(Wallace)
* Everyone loves David Foster Wallace (including me,
based solely on the one book of his I’ve read), who sadly lost his battle with
mental illness. This book is his masterpiece and is on all the lists of “most
difficult” reads out there. I read a few chapters a few years ago, but was too
busy job seeking to give it the attention it deserved.
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
* Never read it, feel I should. Simple as that.
Robinson
Crusoe (Dafoe)
* Same reason as Huck
Finn. Plus, the whole “stuck on a desert island” theme appeals to me.
The
Maltese Falcon (Hammett)
* Want to read it simply because it is probably the
most famous noir detective novel ever
written, the Platonic Form, in fact, of the noir
detective novel. Sam Spade, and all. And I read in black and white.
Gravity’s
Rainbow (Pynchon)
* The prospect of an intricate, snaking plotline in
any novel gets my immediate attention. Throw in some general weirdness and,
perhaps, a deep, enigmatic riddle, and I’m hooked. Read his Crying of Lot 49 and enjoyed it. Read
about 100 pages of GR ten or twelve
years ago, but I think I want to read the thing in its entirety.
The
History of Middle-earth (Tolkien)
* During the 80s and early 90s, Christopher Tolkien
released twelve volumes – twelve! –
of his father’s unpublished stories, fragments, notes, and whatnot, further fleshing out the universe of Middle-earth. I read Unfinished Tales, which, I think, is unofficially volume one, but
I’d have to check on that. Each volume is a couple hundred pages and covers a
specific topic in general ways. I must read it all!
Need to complete:
The plays of Shakespeare
* 11 down, 26 to go …
[Non-fiction tomorrow …]
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