So I didn't make it...

Well I didn't make the magic 52 books in a year mark. I could have, but I found myself counting pages, and looking at the size of books, and wondering if I read 5 of Shakespeare's plays in a weekend whether that would count or not. That wasn't the goal of this whole adventure, so I took a step back, and read what I wanted to read. This however turned out to mean that I started another 10 or 15 books and never finished them. I read much more widely perhaps, but with less depth. So I find myself reading Proust, The Oxford Shakespeare - The Complete Sonnets and Poems, Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, some Popper, a collection of Rilke Poems, re-reading The Odyssey, a selection of Shakespeare's plays, some of Aristotle's works and the list goes on.

A few people have commented here or emailed me privately while I was doing this, and I didn't expect that either. That was a nice touch.

The plan for next year (starting in 2 days time) is to read 100+ books in a year, with one important distinction - I'm not going to count them (well I might, but I won't be fanatical about it). It's just going to be a voracious quest for knowledge swamped by a torrent of words and a symphony of ideas. The idea of 'number' has shown itself to be entirely too complex :)

Thanks for reading the blog, and with this final post, Adieu.

[Exeunt]

42. Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit - Samuel Beckett

I'm reading Swann's Way at the moment. This essay by Beckett (written when he was 25) is a brilliant interpretation of what Proust is doing in À la recherche du temps perdu.

The three dialogues towards the end of the book are between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit and discuss the art of Pierre Tal-Coat, André Masson, Bram van Velde. Beckett's take is strikingly familiar if you've read much of him before. Beautiful beautiful stuff of course.

The reading just keeps on getting better; like some kind of tropism towards.. what? Surely it has to stop somewhere...

40. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

I found it really cool to read this book as I was just discovering parts of London myself. Woolf is brilliant. She uses her stream of consciousness technique to delve into the lives of several characters, and discusses social classes, mental health, creativity, relationships, the role of the woman in early 20th century London etc etc. It's beautifully and powerfully written.

38. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche never ceases to amaze me. He ranks as one of the best writers I've read. "Beyond Good and Evil" is no exception. I highly recommend gettin this intaya!

36. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

Not too shabby. Good read. Nothing on Ulysses.

33. Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

This one belongs on the "Books I'll read again and again" bookshelf - next to Ulysses :D Brilliant! I'll come back to this and re-read once I've read more Nietzsche. Absolutely beautiful writing.

35. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language - Melvyn Bragg

Galloping good read! Very enjoyable tour of the evolution of the language we call "English".

Fertile, rich background info here. Lots of good mulchy knowledge to feed roots into other areas of philology, etymology etc.