Reviving resolutions

So, delving back into the past, we find that I made at least one resolution or promise or vow or something: to read one of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels per month, in order to finish them all before I turned 40.

I started off with gusto in June, reading during the long dull hours at work when there either actually was a tech to do the 15 minute safety checks on the patients or during those blessed rare nights when all of the patients only had hourly checks. I managed to read three novels in June and another in July. And, Lo!, all of them were enjoyable, if not exactly my typical reading fare. I'd previously read another nine of them, but I fully intended (and intend) to re-read them at some point.

But, for all intents and purposes, I only read four of the books, which makes me caught up on my resolution through . . . September? Egads. That leaves me lacking a novel for the past three months. I read plenty of novels during those months-- I had a gluttonous relationship with the local library in the previous town we lived in, and I caught myself up on all the genre fiction I'd missed during nursing school. I just didn't read anything off the list.

So, to recap: I read Henderson the Rain King, I, Claudius, The Way of All Flesh, and The Good Soldier. I recommend them all very highly. In fact, I'd say that reading each of them enriched my life in some manner. I think I've gotten a lot more out of the novels than I would have if, say, I'd tried to read them in high school. I just didn't have the perspective back them to appreciate the ironies and the griefs, the little triumphs and failings. I was much too dogmatic, on the whole. Not that I'm much better these days, but I try.

Somewhere along the way, I read another nine of them, but not in a very conscious and determined manner. So 1984, Lolita, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, A High Wind in Jamaica, and Heart of Darkness are all on the re-read list. Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" is on the re-read list as well, if only because I am 100% in love with that novel and re-reading it will be a pleasure.

Here, I officially admit what I did not admit during my junior year of high school-- yes, "Light in August" WAS assigned to me in AP English, yes, I turned in the final essay on the novel and passed the course with a B, but, no, I didn't read the book. And, honestly, unless Faulkner has somehow mutated into a less obnoxious pain in the butt to read, I doubt I ever will read that novel. Faulkner, ugh. Imagine the sound of a cat barfing. That's my internal reaction to Faulkner.

I've got a half-dozen or so of the other Top 100 Novels on a bookshelf, awaiting their turn. None of them have really called out to me, begging to be read. Nostromo, Wings of the Dove, Zuleika Dobson, Invisible Man, Brave New World . . . blah. Nothing feels right for the time and place. I've stared at my Amazon wish list for hours, trying to decide which of the other novels to shuffle over into my shopping cart.

Right now, I'm tempted to just splurge and buy a dozen of them. My dad sent me a gift card for Christmas . . . surely a hundred bucks worth of books is a good investment? Well, a hundred bucks worth of good books, anyway.

Tempting, very tempting . . . .