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Thursday, January 06, 2005
books I want to read in 2005
I don't remember the last time I was in bed before midnight. It has reached the point where I feel like I'm wasting hours if I am asleep before two a.m. I think this is some kind of long-repressed reaction to having had a bedtime of 9:00 from birth till high school -- when my parents allowed for my extra maturity by bumping it up to 9:30. Not that it was very strictly enforced, I'll admit. But I have to blame my weird night-owl tendencies on something.
I spent some quality time with my Amazon recommendations* the other night, and between what was suggested to me and what those suggestions triggered in my memory, I came up with a really yummy list of a few books I want to read this year. This does not include re-reads, which I know I will be doing a great deal of, because I am the kind of person who has books instead of friends. Some of these books I hadn't even heard of before, which is exactly what I need right now, as I'm in a bit of a rut. I won't necessarily be buying all of these; some I'll check out of the library, and I already own some of them. I'll put a star by those. And forgive the lack of italics and authors' names; this is taken from a text file that I made up quickly as I went, just as notes for myself. Shut UP already Rachel and get to the list.
- The Jungle Book
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Hardy)
- The Awakening*
- Jude the Obscure*
- Time Machine/Invisible Man*
- Vanity Fair*
- Dickens* [every year I promise myself a chronological Dickens excursion and every year I put it off. Maybe this year I'll actually do it.]
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- The Secret Life of Bees
- Middlesex
- The Life of Pi
- Frankenstein
- Tales from Watership Down
- The Three Junes
- The Pull of the Moon -- E. Berg
- Say When -- E. Berg
- Until the Real Thing Comes Along -- E. Berg
- Atonement -- McEwen
- Reading Lolita in Tehran
- Here Be Dragons -- Penman
- The Good Mother -- Miller
- Middlemarch
- Mill on the Floss*
- Fahrenheit 451
- more A.S. Byatt
- War of the Worlds -- Wells
- Good Grief -- Winston
- Little Children -- Perrotta
- Firefly Summer -- Binchy
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night TIme -- Haddon (this one is waiting for me at the library)
- The Lost World -- Doyle
- An Assembly Such as This (Pamela Aidan)
- Truth and Beauty: A Friendship -- Ann Patchett
- The Birth of Venus -- Sarah Dunant
*Amazon recommendations: WHAT A TOTALLY BRILLIANT IDEA! don't you think? I mean, isn't it, like, the perfect and purest use of computer programming, to take in data about what books I like and spit out a list of books I probably would enjoy? I feel all warm and fuzzy toward the whole computer industry every time I think of it. Well, not quite the whole computer industry, OK, but pretty close.
Oh, and the redesign. I went for a more bloggish look this time. IT WAS A LOT OF WORK so if you hate it, be nice. It won't last long anyway; you know how I am by now.
Edited to add: Valerie asked me for the URL for Amazon's recommendations. You just go to Amazon.com (I'm pretty sure the British version would have the same feature if that's what you'd rather use, Val). Sign in or create an account, and then the fun starts. :) You can search for books on Amazon that you own or have read, and rate them (down on the lower left on each item's page); you can add things to your wish list; you can make purchases. All these things will change your recommendations. After you've done some rating, buying, or wishing, click on "Your Store" (should have your name instead of "Your" if you're signed in) and there'll be recommendations for you. You can go through those, rating them, telling the beneficent Amazon computer that you're not interested, buying them, adding them to your wishlist (which is a bit of a pain because it takes you away from the recommendations page every time, but oh well, nothing's perfect), and that will continue to update your recommendations.
P.S. If somebody should happen to buy, say, a book about rebuilding MoPar muscle cars, one about the book of Revelation, and a set of Star Wars videos on your Amazon account, you will spend months weeding out the sprouts from those seeds in your recommendations list. Just thought I'd warn you. The moral of the story is: T has his own e-mail address; he needs his own darn Amazon account as well. ;-)
