Tuesday, December 25, 2012

The tottering 2013 to be read stacks

Merry Christmas!
A bookish Christmas for me, receiving the annotated version of Some Do Not... and No More Parades. The wife, she notices.

These are the books staring at me from various places around the house, although I’m sure I’m missing some. I will try to focus on these in the early part of 2013. In fact I think I need to make a resolution…something along the lines of reading three of these for every book I buy. The problem, as I have found, comes from discovering new books or authors (especially from book blogs) and wanting to investigate. You’ll notice that a couple of books on the list are from recent reviews of book bloggers. Others listed are extensions of authors I enjoyed. And then there’s Galdós. Anyway, I put this out there in case anyone would like to read along on anything in particular—just drop me a line and I’ll be happy to coordinate with your schedule.

The project for the year will be Martin du Gard’s sprawling series. Maybe if I take a section of it a month I’ll actually make it. Anyway, here I go with the stacks…

Books started or already read (and in need of a post):
Death of an Athlete by Miklós Mészöly
Marginalia on Casanova: St. Orpheus Breviary by Miklós Szentkuthy
Raised from the Ground by José Saramago

In the stacks to be read:
The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard (France)
Summer 1914 by Roger Martin du Gard (France)
Pharaoh by Bolesław Prus (Poland)
The Tale of the 1002nd Night by Joseph Roth (Rothsville)
The Coming Spring by Stefan Żeromski (Poland)
Ashes by Stefan Żeromski (Poland)
Stone upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski (Poland)
Rustic Baroque by Jiri Hajicek (Czech)
The Fallen by Juan Marsé (Spain)
Diary of a Humiliated Man by Félix de Azúa (Spain)
The King Amaz’d: A Chronicle by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (Spain)
Ten Tales by Leopoldo Alas (Spain)
The Moral Tales by Leopoldo Alas (Spain)
A Novel without Lies by Anatoly Mariengof (USSR)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (USSR)
Revulsion by Laszlo Nemeth (Hungary)
Relations by Zsigmond Moricz (Hungary)
Fateless by Imre Kertesz (Hungary)
Portraits of a Marriage by Sándor Márai (Hungary)
The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklós Bánffy (They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, and They Were Divided)
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)

Benito Pérez Galdós (Spain):
The Disinherited
Tristana
The Shadow
The Golden Fountain
Nazarín
Miau
Torment

Pre-ordered:
Harlequin's Millions by Bohumil Hrabal
The Bridge Over the Neroch: And Other Works by Leonid Tsypkin

Nonfiction:
I have a lot of nonfiction which I won’t list, but one that’s important to me to read soon is The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika. The other one I want to post on is Carl Kaeppel’s Off the Beaten Track in the Classics, which I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier post. Maybe an essay a month from him, too.

OK, I’m on record now.

4 comments:

Richard said...

Wonderful sounding plans, Dwight, and I hope you share the nonfiction choices with us at some point (even though I know many in the blogosphere bear an animus toward nonfiction for some reason). Especially pleased to see the Juan Marsé among the contenders, of course. Still trying to gather together my own plans, which may include a break from blogging at some point, but I'll be reading Grossman's Life and Fate (postponed from 2012 due to my wish to finish War and Peace first) and hopefully getting back to your Galdós and Eduardo Mendoza recs. Until then, thanks for all your blogging & foreign film watching-related endeavors over the course of the year. Your blog has become a real favorite of mine despite my erratic track record of leaving comments here. Cheers!

Dwight said...

Heh, I knew you'd notice the Marsé. And don't worry about the track record...wait...after Death of an Athlete I need to be careful on such language...

Regarding the nonfiction, I post a fraction of what I read or listen to in the way of nonfiction because it would seriously cut into my posting on novels. And discretionary considerations.

Thanks...I hope some of these will sound interesting!

Chris said...

I read The Thibaults in translation many years ago and loved it, and am now re-reading it (slowly) in my (bad) French. The translation isn't wonderful (though that didn't bother me at the time), but by and large the sequence holds up well, even if the author is now almost completely forgotten in the US. I'll probably pass on re-reading Summer 1914.

Dwight said...

I saw your post on The Thibaults and look forward to reading more about it. Thanks for the note and glad to hear you enjoyed it the translation...it makes tackling this doorstop a little easier.