So with a mere two weeks (can it only be two weeks?) left in 2011 my thoughts have turned to which books I might finish before the end of the year and which books I plan on starting/reading over my week long break from work. I tend to think big when it comes to books and vacations and select far more than I know I can reasonably manage, so I'm hoping to not make too many grandiose plans.
I expect that books will once again be shuffled around as I try and tidy things up for 2011 (I hate to start a new year with my night stand groaning under the weight of too many books). I have at least four books where I am at the midway point or beyond that I've been reading lately that I hope to quickly complete. The rest of my 'works in progress' will have to be holdovers into the new year.
Then I have several interlibrary loan books that will need to go back about the same time I return to work. They are all fairly short (less than 200 pages), and hopefully the odd afternoon spent reading will be enough to complete them. I've got Ingrid Noll's Hell Hath No Fury as a follow up to Head Count which I enjoyed so much last month. It's a story about an obsessive love à la Patricia Highsmith. I've also got another short crime novel by Andrea Maria Schenkel called Ice Cold set in 1930s Munich (a follow up to The Murder Farm), and Stefan Zweig's novella, Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman. Can you tell I was inspired by last month's German Literature Month? All three books are by German authors.
And then we come to the books that I have so busily been adding to my vacation reads list. It started out (my pile, not the list--the list had far more titles on it) as three possible books to read and has grown to five. I don't expect to finish more than one of these as they are meant to be 2012 books, but I want to start reading them over my break. I couldn't resist adding Lettice Cooper's The New House to my pile, since it is my newest book and I never did get around to reading a Persephone title this year. And Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone is from my WWI list, which I'd like to read from during the coming year. I originally picked two suspenseful stories for good vacation reading: Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes (think cloak and dagger) and The Fencing Master by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (I read a number of his books many years ago and loved them). Olivia Manning is going to be one of my long reads next year, so I might just dip into Fortunes of War now. This is a hefty book made up of three novels that should take me into spring to read.
Okay, so who am I kidding? My plans are pretty grandiose after all. I can never help myself when it comes to books. I want to read them all! But, of course, I am tugged all over the place--I should be reading the books on my night table, and then attention needs to be paid to library books (with their looming due dates) yet I'm drawn to the promise of the new (rather, unread) books from my own stacks. I'll read what I can and hopefully spend many good hours enjoying my books. What more can I ask for? I'm very lucky as I have the week between Christmas and New Year's off. I always envision myself filling all those free hours with books. Maybe this year will be the year I actually get to do so--I certainly won't be bored.
Are you reading anything special in the upcoming last two weeks of 2011?