Ambitious reading in 2012

Out of the blue one day, my mother asked me "supposing 2012 really was the end, would it change what you're going to read this year?"

In response, I made this list, letting loose my most pretentious ambitions. This is just a rough outline, of course, leaving me with some room to maneuver.

Poetry:

Paradise Lost, along with Milton's other English-language poetry.
A Coney Island of the Mind as counterpoint.

Drama:

Having immersed myself in 20th century playwrights this past year, I need to check out the old guys. Hamlet and Marlowe, for a start.

Novels:

The Portrait of a Lady.
The Alexandria Quartet.
The Rainbow.
Therese Raquin.
Candide.
Queer and Junky.
Cryptonomicon (if I can possibly make the time).
Something by Eco, Camus, Duras, Hesse, Mahfouz....

Stories:

Kleist and Hoffmann.

Nonfiction:

Axel's Castle.
The Birth of Tragedy.
Thoreau and Emerson.
De Profundis.
The Decline of the West.
Eiffel and the Belle Epoque backed with The Empire State Building and New York City (sometimes I like a gimmick).
Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archeology.

Antiquity:

Greco-Roman would be Sophocles or Sappho, Medieval would be The Nibelungenlied or Abelard and Heloise.

______

So, is anyone else planning some ambitious/pretentious reading in the year upcoming? What's that one book (or several) you've been meaning to tackle?

You hit a lot of titles I'd like to read. I want to get around to reading Against the Day by Pynchon; 120 Days of Sodom by DAF Sade; Jerusalem by William Blake.

My own masochistic ambition to read: Europe Central by Vollmann; The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell; and The Tunnel by William Gass.

I want to read "The Bear" by Faulkner; Dorothy Sayers mysteries; and Blood's a Rover by Ellroy (the last of his "American Tabloid" trilogy).

I want to read some histories: Nixonland and Richard Evans trilogy on the Third Reich.

Good luck on the Sayers. I read Strong Poison a couple years back and found the "mystery" element tepid. I thought she did better at depicting the varied levels of society than at crafting a remotely unpredictable plot. On the other hand, I've since heard that wasn't one of her best. Hope you have better luck.

I'm actually planning to try out Agatha Christie this year, partly to compare with Sayers, but also to see if she's taking up shelf space better spent on someone else.

Europe Central sounds extremely interesting. I read Shostakovich's Testimony a while ago, an amazing experience. A fictional look at the same time and place - at four times the page count - piques my interest.

I'm going to read Ulysses in a couple of weeks. Right now I'm reading FD's The Idiot and The Iliad.

Not sure what else for the rest of the year. Whatever the various online book discussion groups choose, I guess. I think one of them may be doing Don Quixote. I'm not enthused about it, but I want to read it because, um, it's the sort of thing one ought to read.

Though the year I intent to catch up on some literary prize winners. So, in order the list would be:

Wolf Hall
The Finkler Question
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Atonement
Lord of Misrule
The Corrections
Tinkers
The Road
The Lotus Eaters
and
Downriver

I'm hoping to read more Steinbeck and Dickens this year, but I don't consider them particularly ambitious. Long, yes, but what I've read of them before, they read quite easily.

Maybe I should say Infinite Jest. Again. ;)

Hopefully the Booker prize shortlist will be somewhat more challenging than in 2011.

Hey, should I hope I get to finish Infinite jest before the world ends, or just be grateful that the world will end so I won't have to finish it?

My 87-year-old father read War and Peace this past year, in a similar spirit. I guess that would be the challenge book for me. I do not plan to read it this year, but sometime in the future.

Re: #7 - You should definitely hope to get to the end of Infinite Jest before the world ends. I struggled at time in the first 200-300 pages, but from then on, it was a pageturner for me, and I'd have been sorely disappointed not to have made it to the goal line.

If you're looking for reading ideas in the upcoming year, The Millions has posted a helpful list of upcoming releases for 2012.

Most Anticipated: The Great 2012 Book Preview

The introduction concludes with the following sentence:

The list that follows isn’t exhaustive – no book preview could be – but, at 8,400 words strong and encompassing 81 titles, this is the only 2012 book preview you will ever need.

ETA: Anna, if you're still enthusiastic about Leyner check out March.

I am particularly looking forward to Jess Walter and Richard Ford.

If it really was the end of the world, I would definitely reread Infinite Jest.

Just finished my first big book of the year, Wade Davis' INTO THE SILENCE. A mere 600 pages...and a wonderful read.

I try to read at least one BIG book every year. Last year was Infinite Jest and the year before was 2666. This year I plan to read the Histories by Herodotus.

I'm also being urged by friends to read The Man Without Qualities. And if I go to Europe this summer, I will travel with A Time of Gifts and the rest of the Patrick Leigh Fermor travel memoirs.

This year I picked world fiction for my reading challenge. I posted a list of the books I plan to read here. I also intend to read more classic literature: Carson McCullers, Dickens, DH Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, Malcolm Lowry... that sort of stuff.

Good challenge--readings on world literature is a durn good idea. We all need to explore outside our comfort zones.

I read Ben Okri's FAMISHED ROAD and liked it every much.

I am impressed that you all plan what you read. I generally just pick up whatever looks interesting for next. Complete randomness works for me.

18: I usually don't get so schedule-happy, although things have happened so I want to create a "thematic read." I'm planning to review 3 books on the Supreme Court and 3 books about Nazis on the Eastern Front during World War 2.

18: Even though I've made a plan for myself, the plan is completely random in design. I snatched things off shelves ad hoc; all I've done is make a list, so as not to forget my selections. It's the LD Centenary, so I'll something of his... I've meant to read The Rainbow for two years, and still haven't... Here's this Nietzsche I rescued from a bookstore, I should read that... I'm reading The Alchemist and would like to wash it down with a literary equivalent to Coelho's New Age yarn, so Siddhartha is on the list. Etc. Etc.

20: I'm kind of that way too. I have my list of "Always wanted to read," including Against the Day, JR, and Hunt for the Red October I also want to pepper my reading list with shorter works, like some short stories from Nabokov and Faulkner, along with the travel writing of Jan Morris

My kids both read the Alchemist at around age 13-14 and liked it very much. I had read it and at about page 20 I was like, "wait a minute, it's the Sufi story..." but it was still a very nice retelling of it.

I'm actually out of giant scary books to read, other than, say, Europe Central. I suppose I could try to get my hands on a copy of Ulysses but that's a task that I'm glad to put off for another few years....

Having done 2666 last year and Europe Central the year before, this may be the year I get to The Kindly Ones.

Currently finishing a 600+ page opus for LTER: The Street Sweeper by Australian writer Elliot Perlman but despite the size, it's hardly ambitious reading, more of a (valuable and important but unoriginal) history lesson wrapped in a page-turning story.

I find that I'm haunted by the reading I did in college that I didn't quite get the first time round. The unfathomably complex books on critical theory, or gender politics, or post-structural this-and-that that you're asked to buy at the college bookstore, only to half-read about fifteen pages of each in your dorm room while your mind reels. Still, these books must be on the syllabus for a reason, right? There's gotta be whole worlds in Freud, Derrida, and Rorty that I've just been too much of a slacker to really investigate up 'til now. Sure, I pick up bits and pieces of their ideas in novels and articles (or in – ha! – "The Matrix") but I've always promised myself that one of these days, I'm gonna make that cash I spent at the college bookstore into a good investment and get into the real stuff. College is, gosh, almost a decade behind me now, but I haven't lost hope. I read some Jung last year, and am toe-deep in a book on aesthetics right now, so wish me luck.

25: I feel the same way. I never liked the pace of college reading, especially the one book per week. One consumed books, but didn't really enjoy them. I remember reading Swann's Way in a "French Lit in Translation" class as an undergrad, along with Molloy Years later, I revisited both, slowly ambulating through Proust's 7 volumes and then, years after that, reading Beckett's "Trilogy." There's no greater luxury as reading at one's own pace. (Which puts me at odds with professional book reviewers, who either come across as "blurb factories" or "skimmers," since deadlines and selling issues outweights a nice meaty review. I read slow, stew on what I read, then write a review when my schedule permits. Sorry authors and publishers, that's how I roll. ***White guy doing a bad imitation of gang signs***)

I also revisited Michel Foucault, reading The Birth of the Clinic -- strangely relevant, since I've been temping for a hospital for over a year. I also enjoyed Foucault's dense, allusive, elliptical writing. He writes intellectual history like TS Eliot writes poetry: hyper-erudite and indirect.