Some people don’t like Christmas.
I’m not judging…but that’s completely ridiculous.
Other people dislike Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving…you get the idea. I like to cultivate a moderate level of apathy for most of these holidays, so I can focus on the important ones like Boxing Day and Australia Day (the unsung heroes of the holiday calendar, to my mind). But I hate, hate, HATE New Year’s Eve. I am the Scrooge of New Year’s Eve. It’s shocking – since it seems to be the one day everyone is encouraged to roll around in glitter – but there it is. Take Groundhog’s Day and push it back a month or so and you have my own personal 9th circle.
In spite of this overwhelming hatred, I do sometimes participate in the resolutions. (Don’t read anything into it; I’ve been known to indulge in Lent, too.) Some of you will remember that I posted a list of goals for 2020. That’s similar to a list of resolutions, I suppose, except I’m going to go ahead and call them action points, because I don’t want New Year’s to get any funny ideas and think we’re becoming intimate. At any rate, one of those action points was to read 101 novels in the next ten years.
I picked that as an action point for a couple of reasons:
1. It was mentioned in a BBC adaptation of Emma. Emma set herself the goal because she was being petty and competitive. That seemed reasonable/noble at the time and I’m impressionable. (Sadly, this is the primary reason. Don’t judge me.)
2. Most civilians assume that anyone getting her Ph.D. in English has read ALL OF THE BOOKS. All of them. That’s a pretty tall order. I’m not a vampire, you guys, and therefore I don’t have that kind of time. Also I’m an early modernist. Professionally, I only care about Renaissance literature. Personally…I pretty much only care about Renaissance literature. (That’s not actually true, but just so we’re clear there is no possible world in which I am interested in the Lake Poets. It’s just not happening. I’m glad that other people are interested, though.)
3. Ironically, I spend most of my life feeling as though I’ve read approximately four books. Total.
So, 101 novels seemed like a nice workable goal. I mention my reasons for setting myself the challenge because it’s important to realise that there’s some sort of underlying desire to become a better person with all this reading. That leads me to the question of standards, because reading 101 gas station novels obviously isn’t going to do me any good.
Anyway, I’ve been keeping track (kind of, sort of, I think) of the books I’ve read since 2010, and in the grand tradition of English students in January I’ll offer said list up now (Bolded titles for the ones I particularly enjoyed/would recommend, but bear in mind only vaguely depressing books seem to fall into that category):
2010:
The Sea – Banville. Amsterdam – McEwan. On Beauty – Zadie Smith. Lolita - Nabokov. Enduring Love - McEwan. The Blind Assassin - Atwood. The God of Small Things - Roy. Emma - Austen. Mr.Pip - Jones. Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - Wodehouse. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Lewycka. The Book Thief - Zusak.
So, 12 books that I feel fairly comfortable counting towards my 101. Although even some of these feel like cheating. I feel like I must have read more than these, but I can’t remember and the only other books I can recall are The Amber Spyglass (Pullman; children’s book) and The Tipping Point (Gladwell; not a novel) and I’m pretty confident that I shouldn’t count these.
Here’s 2011:
1984 – Orwell. On Chesil Beach - McEwan. The English Patient - Ondaatje. Wolf Hall – Mantel. The Shipping News - Proulx. Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro. Middlesex - Eugenides. Oryx and Crake - Atwood. The Edible Woman - Atwood. The Year of the Flood - Atwood. The Clothes on Their Backs – Grant. The Penelopiad - Atwood. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - Sedaris. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Hosseini. The Secret History – Tartt. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith. The Comfort of Strangers - McEwan. Lucky Jim - Amis. That’s 18, before you count my questionables: One Day (Nicholls; is this just a trashy romance novel with a brain?); Blink (Gladwell; not a novel, also the type of book one buys in an airport); The Hunger Games (all three of them; Collins; strictly speaking a YA series but I LOVED the first one in particular); Good Omens (Pratchett and Gaiman); The Help (Stockett; enjoyed it, would especially recommend it to older female family members; not really sure why I feel like I can’t count it). All in all, 2011 was a far more successful year, in terms of reading. Well, presuming enjoying the books is a measure of success.
Here’s my issue. Why am I stressing so much about which books count? It’s not a question of enjoyment, because if that were the case then The Hunger Games would slide right in and I’d never admit to anyone that I’d ever picked up The Sea (not to be reductive or anything, but that book was stupid.) The ‘action point’ was 101 novels, and a friend and colleague of mine quite accurately pointed out recently that figuring out what ‘counts’ should be fairly simple. A novel is a novel is a novel (though I am certain that someone somewhere would happily start an argument with me on that point). I don’t have any problem admitting that I read books that are below my fighting weight (I’ve read all of the Twilight books, and when I was interrailing I read some of the trashiest trash anyone has ever encountered). So I’m not worrying about this because I’m trying to be a huge poseur. I think the concern is more that, having set myself the challenge, I don’t want to wimp out; I want to challenge myself. So team: any ideas for what ‘counts’? What should the criteria be?
