Five favorite books I read in 2013
- Magister Ludi, Herman Hesse
- To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway
- Snow, Orhan Pamuk
- Starmaker, Olaf Stapledon
- Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
Three news stories I’m following going into this year
- Civil war in Syria the devolution of the “rebel” forces
- Ongoing violence and French foreign policy in Africa
- Unrest in Turkey about Erdogan’s government
Two things that, in 2013, I discovered I no longer cared about
- The NFL
- Fantasy football
Four books I am particularly looking forward to reading in 2014
- The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
- My Antonia, Willa Cather
- Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
- The Plague, Albert Camus
Seven books I would like to reread in 2014
- The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
- Catch 22, Joseph Heller
- Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carre
- Bridge on the River Drina, Ivo Andric/li>
- Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Four books I once started, but didn’t finish…that I’d like to give another shot
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
- Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Four “resolutions” for 2014
- Write more, in a variety of places (including here)
- Cook more often and more adventurously
- Spend less time dwelling on things beyond my control
- Smile more often
I did not like 2013; for everything that went right in the year, it seemed that two things went wrong. Flipping the calendar to 2014 is an arbitrary milestone, but I am optimistic about this next chunk of time all the same. Noted above, one goal I have for this year is to write here more frequently, and I have a few topics on the back burner, though the only post I have planned for the near future is to revisit my list of top novels, which could appear as early as next week.
