Reading for 09 - just a start! Sunday Salon

I have really, very little idea what I'll read in 2009 (though it will include a lot of Powell, Austen, Homer, Kipling, Borges and Eliot, as well as heaps of classic mystery fiction), but there are two "starters for ten" as they say.  First, I made an assault on the bookshop, and another on the London Library, just before Christmas, and this was my booty:

 

Second, I have decided not to read Anthony Powell's Dance To The Music Of Time this New Year holiday, as I normally do (though I will doubtless read it later in the year).  Instead, I am going to read C P Snow's Strangers and Brothers series, an altogether more substantial undertaking - eleven novels of 400 pages or so each.  He isn't a great novelist, but I do think he's underrated, and he offers a fascinating insight into the twentieth century from the viewpoint of a northern lower middle class boy who makes good, a viewpoint with which I have, for family reasons, a great deal of sympathy.  I will start with A Time of Hope - the first in order of the completed sequence, but not the first written. Thereafter, it isn't always easy to keep them in order, as some overlap the others slightly or completely, and they weren't, especially early in the sequence, written in order.   I shall take a long while over this, reading other stuff en route, but I shall keep you informed at every step.

Comments

[Sarah]

I love reading serial novels and watching characters and events over years. I'm re-reading Trollope's Barset books at the moment. I'm always interested in other options, so will be interested to hear about Snow's books.

I'm a bit of a completionist and have to read earlier Le Carre before his latest, but hope A Most Wanted Man is good as I will get to it one day.

[Glo]

I really thought you would have reread your Powellian series and was eagerly looking forward to read what you would have to tell us about it this year. I just need to be a little more patient.
I am glad to see that you are about to try some Paul Auster and look forward to read what you will write about it. I'll say no more because I don't want to influence you in a positive or negative way before you start.
And don't forget to tell us if you have decided to finish or give up Tristram Shandy. I have now my copy of it but haven't decided yet when I'll start reading it.

[Mr Cornflower]

I have paused for breath about half way through "A Dance to the Music of Time" but hope to complete the course by Easter. Setting this deadline should keep me the right side of temptation - like Uncle Julius once the trout season gets properly under way I find the lure of the water....

[Joanne Ganley]

Lovely to see what other people are reading. Enjoy.