A Missive From The (Maybe) Future

Given that I can never work out what timezone Blogspot is set to, I may well be writing this from the future. Here in Oz it's New Year's Day but I'm going to take a punt and guess that I can get in one last post for the year.

Now, I'm not usually one to succumb to the whole New Year's resolution thing. If I added all the weight I've promised to lose each January 1 I would actually exist as a vacuum or black hole. But given that writing this blog was the first resolution I've ever kept, I figure I should at least jot down a couple of aspirations for 2010 just in case. With complete awareness that history has shown that I am hardly likely to follow any of this claptrap, here are the things I hope to achieve.

Read One Great Classic Per Month. I do read them from time to time, but I really want to make a concerted effort to tackle the books that any self-respecting lit-lover should have read with a particular focus on the fat Russians, somewhat leaner Germans, Charles Dickens and Henry James.

Read One Debut Novel Per Month. While some of the big names disappointed in 2010, first novels proved a boon. This year I want to expand my horizons by finding exciting, new writers onto whom I can hitch my wagon.

Read Outside My Comfort Zone. When it comes to reading I am well and truly a creature of habit. Literary fiction all the way! Anything else feels like work. But with Patti Smith landing in my Top 10 of 2010, I think it's time I let down my guard a little and ventured into alternative worlds. I am particularly intrigued by the idea of dabbling in graphic fiction, genre fiction and some less conventional non-fiction.

Read More, Buy Less. Umberto Eco once said that a person's anti-library (the shelves of books one owns but has yet to read) is just as important as their library. Even with a reading rate of 150 or so books a year, my anti-library has grown out of control. Scanning my shelves I see so many books that I would love to read but had resigned myself to never pulling down. This year I want to buy fewer books and try to clear a little of the backlog. The prospect of a mortgage probably helps a fair bit!

Read one Series In Its Entirety. I sat through all nine Police Academy flicks. I didn't abandon Star Wars after the Phantom Menace. I listened to Bat Out Of Hell 1 and 2. But for some reason I don't do literary serials. So whether it's Harry Potter (which it won't be) or something a little more high brow (and no, it will not be Proust's In Search of Lost Time either), in 2011 I want to knock over one whole sequence.

The space/time continuum is closing its wormhole now... Signal fading... Peace out!