The stack you see here is my January pile. Books to start the new year off with. Some are just to start and some are to actually read this month.
I've decided I am going to join the Back to the Classics Challenge. Six classics in a year? Surely I can do that? That's where D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers comes in. I started reading it last month and want to get back to it. It would fit in nicely. I have wanted to read Lawrence, but I have failed now on several occasions. I just don't persevere with him. I think the problem in part is that his characters often speak in dialect which bogs me down. I have been enjoying Sons and Lovers, though.
Remember when I bought the complete boxed set of Little House books? This is one of my projects for the year--to read all nine books. I spent most of my reading time yesterday with Little House in the Big Woods. I read some of the books when I was little, but it's been so long it all feels new to me. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am now ready to start Farmer Boy.
Anna Pavord's The Curious Gardener: A Year in the Garden looks quite delightful. Twelve sections, each focusing on one month of the year. In my case it will be 'armchair' gardening, but you never know--maybe I will be inspired. And certainly I can manage a chapter a month. I thought it might be fun to read along with the seasons. More about this one soon. I would like very much to get back to reading nature books this year by the way.
I read The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins for Wilkie in Winter and hope to write about it very soon. Now I have pulled out The Woman in White for a reread. If I follow the schedule, it's a matter of reading each section (roughly 200 pages) in two week spans. If I start now I should hopefully have plenty of time to finish by February 24.
Howard Bahr's Civil War story The Black Flower is for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong. Discussion is not until the very end of the month. It has won all sorts of awards and gotten quite a few positive reviews. I'm looking forward to it--I'm in the mood for something a little different and I've read very little about this era of US history.
2014 marks the centenary anniversary of the start of WWI. Although I won't officially join, the Virago group at Library Thing is doing a year long themed read. I'll cherry pick along the way--read some of their titles and some of my own. They are beginning with Cicecly Hamilton's William - An Englishman for January/February, which I have long wanted to read.
And I'll be joining a blog tour for Alison McQueen's Under the Jeweled Sky, which is out this month. She will kindly be dropping by early in February to guest post here. I have been wanting to start reading the book ever since it came in the mail, but I didn't want to do so too far ahead of time (it's too hard to write posts after too many weeks have passed after finishing a book!). Now I will get to start reading it in earnest.
These are a few highlights and there will be other books along the way and hopefully I can finish a few of last year's carryovers, too.
I'd say these should take me through January quite nicely. Which book(s) sit on your night table these days?