Top of your TBR for 2019?

[astrangerhere]

I spent the better part of the afternoon finishing up my 2019 reading spreadsheet (which tracks way too much data - pivot tables and everything!). And I have a TBR tab that has my unread Calibre titles in it. I usually sit down and try to pick 10-15 things I want to get to sooner rather than later to help kickstart my reading for the year. Here are a few of my upcoming reads, and I was hoping you guys would share some of yours.

• Severance by Ling Ma
• The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
• The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers
• Football in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
• A Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers
• Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar
• Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa

Jungle Book in Hindi - translation by Ajay Anand
Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry compiled and edited by Kushwant Singh
Kipling's India by Rudyard Kipling, foreword and compilation by Kushwant Singh
You Say Potato: A Book About Accents by Ben and David Crystal
The Gift of the Gab: How Eloquence Works by David Crystal
Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of English Grammar by David Crystal
La forma dell'acqua by Andrea Camilleri (immersive reading w/ audiobook)
Il gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (immersive reading w/ audiobook)
War and Peace Tolstoy, Maude translation

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I spent the better part of the afternoon finishing up my 2019 reading spreadsheet...
...and I was hoping you guys would share some of yours.

You put me to shame as I hardly ever know what book I will be reading next let alone beyond that. I do throw the books I would like to choose my next read from onto my tablet but that now has close to 500 books on it .

But I can say what my first book to finish in 2019 will be and that is The British in India by David Gilmour as I have just started that and will likely not finish until in the New Year. Now I was somewhat relying on stuartjmz's positive comments when choosing it but now that I have started it no book can be bad if Billy Connolly is mentioned in the first sentence, and further in the author states that the subjects "...will be looked at in the context of their time and not from the vantage point of a usually smug present" a lesson some readers could perhaps adopt too.

So, that is my definite reading list for 2019. But I may get to Pevear's translation of War and Peace; I read War and Peace years ago while at university but is worth another go in a fresh translation.

Mmmmm, might get to Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead as I recently read her Atlas Shrugged which I quite liked and found that I could read it, taking a detached apolitical viewpoint, as just a story.

What else, I think I am into confusion territory on that.

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

no book can be bad if Billy Connolly is mentioned in the first sentence,

Indeed! And since his great-grandmother was from Bangalore, and that's where one side of my Anglo-Indian family was (and still is) from, I'm gonna say we're cousins!

[GeoffR]

I'm looking forward to Derek Robinson's First World War novels, and to making a bit of a dent in Robert Silverberg's backlist, perhaps starting with his Majipoor books.

[DiapDealer]

New releases in 2019 I'm looking forward to:

Emma Newman's Atlas Alone
Guy Gavriel Kay's A Brightness Long Ago
Elizabeth Bear's Ancestral Night
Theresa Frohock's Where Oblivion Lies
Wes Chu's Fall of Io
Jasper Fforde's Early Riser
Paul Kearney's The Burning Horse

I've heard rumors about Neal Stephenson's new book being published in 2019, but I've learned to wait for official notice before getting my hopes up.

[HarryT]

I'm looking forward enormously to the new Penguin Classics translation of Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics" which is due for release next year. Who could resist it?

[CWatkinsNash]

I don't really plan out my reading much, but I do have a few things in mind. I'd like to do a re-read of Harry Potter in 2019. And maybe this time I'll finally read book 7.

I have a few series I want to get back to, so these are on the list:
The Way We Die Now - Albert Samson #2 - Michael Z. Lewin
Full Contact - Miles Jacoby #3 - Robert Randisi
Killing Pretty - Sandman Slim #7 - Richard Kadrey
The Trouble With Scarlett - Hollywood's Garden of Allah #2 - Martin Turnbull

And, from the "I've been meaning to get around to this book forever" department...
On the Beach - Nevil Shute
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

[gmw]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

I don't really plan out my reading much, but I do have a few things in mind. I'd like to do a re-read of Harry Potter in 2019. And maybe this time I'll finally read book 7. [...]

I have to ask: Why have you never read the best book of the Harry Potter series? (Okay, so I should have put that less subjectively , but you know what I mean.).

On topic, I am much the same: I don't plan my reading very much. There is a good chance I'll be re-reading Harry Potter in the coming year, similarly I am likely to revisit my Terry Pratchett collection (both which will have me reading paper again unless Kobo puts them on special - which seems unlikely). Both of these are regulars for me and are coming up to due again.

I hope to be catching up with the Amelia Peabody books (by Elizabeth Peters) over the coming year. And I know the year will be starting with an Ursula K. Le Guin story (The Left Hand of Darkness), and I expect to follow that with re-reads of more of her books.

I also have books by Jane Harper, Kate Atkinson, Jasper Fforde, Simon Hayes, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia A. McKillip and Saki in my sights (on my reader waiting), but my crystal ball starts to grow fuzzy after that.

Originally Posted by gmw

I hope to be catching up with the Amelia Peabody books (by Elizabeth Peters) over the coming year. And I know the year will be starting with an Ursula K. Le Guin story (The Left Hand of Darkness), and I expect to follow that with re-reads of more of her books.

I'm nearly finished the second Peabody book on my re-read, and am 1/4 of the way through The Left Hand of Darkness. Peabody is definitely fun, although I'm discovering I have to be in the mood to find her idiosyncrasies amusing, not something I remember having felt when I read them 30 years ago. I'm still not sure how I feel about Le Guin's classic, for reasons utterly unconnected to its core, central conceit.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by stuartjmz

I'm nearly finished the second Peabody book on my re-read, and am 1/4 of the way through The Left Hand of Darkness. Peabody is definitely fun, although I'm discovering I have to be in the mood to find her idiosyncrasies amusing, not something I remember having felt when I read them 30 years ago. I'm still not sure how I feel about Le Guin's classic, for reasons utterly unconnected to its core, central conceit.

Fiction is conceit. Possibly most non-fiction is too (there's a reason why they call it "non-fiction" rather than "fact"). Some we like and happily become complicit in, others not so much.

I find Amelia is one of those things best taken in small doses; (at least) a few books between each new Peabody book seems the way to go. Quite unlike reading the Discworld stories where I'm more than happy to binge-read, and only break them up with other reading in order to make them last longer.

Originally Posted by gmw

Fiction is conceit.

Oh, I didn't mean it as a pejorative, I was indulging my own conceited preference for archaicisms by using it in the sense of "concept, notion"

Totally agree about both Peabody and Pratchett, too. Two Peabodys in a row is enough, while I'm now in the mood to re-read The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, having raved at length about it to a friend last week

[gmw]

Originally Posted by stuartjmz

Oh, I didn't mean it as a pejorative, I was indulging my own conceited preference for archaicisms by using it in the sense of "concept, notion"
[...]

Sorry, I was being a smart ahhh... person. I happen to like the phrase "fiction is conceit" because I think it fits so many senses of the word (some more than others).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

I have to ask: Why have you never read the best book of the Harry Potter series? (Okay, so I should have put that less subjectively , but you know what I mean.).

I have a friend who will almost never read the last book of a series she loves. She likes to know that she's still got a book in it to read.

It makes some sense to me, not so much in terms of delayed (possibly forever) gratification, but because I think last books are almost always disappointing, especially when they wrap up a sustained story. I thought the last Harry Potter book was awful and it ruined the series for me. After it came out, I would ask people what annoyed them most about the book and each one had a different answer.

But in line with an earlier exchange we had, I like to pick nits anyway. I had the great pleasure of reading the Harry Potter books with a nephew who was the perfect age for them. We started when he was five and caught up with Chamber of Secrets and wrapped it up when he was 14. He told me recently that his friends even now resent it when he talks about everything that was wrong with the books, a habit I'm afraid he got from me.

Originally Posted by gmw

I find Amelia is one of those things best taken in small doses; (at least) a few books between each new Peabody book seems the way to go. Quite unlike reading the Discworld stories where I'm more than happy to binge-read, and only break them up with other reading in order to make them last longer.

The more I like a series or an author's books, the more likely I am to stretch it out. In part to keep the pleasure going, as with Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books, and in part because even the best authors are repetitive. I've got a long-term goal of reading all of P.G. Wodehouse in more-or-less order and he's best served by my not going to that well too often, as tempting as it is.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by issybird

I have a friend who will almost never read the last book of a series she loves. She likes to know that she's still got a book in it to read. [...]

Curious. It's not something I've ever really considered. If I like something enough I'll just turn around and re-read it sooner rather than later (on a few rare occasions, the very next day).

Originally Posted by issybird

[...] He told me recently that his friends even now resent it when he talks about everything that was wrong with the books, a habit I'm afraid he got from me.

Which reminds me of another of our recent conversations: with great books the faults don't matter. I can see (at least some of) the faults with Harry Potter, but to me they just don't matter. The series absolutely fascinates me (pun intended) each and every time I pick it up.

Originally Posted by issybird

The more I like a series or an author's books, the more likely I am to stretch it out. In part to keep the pleasure going, as with Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books, and in part because even the best authors are repetitive. I've got a long-term goal of reading all of P.G. Wodehouse in more-or-less order and he's best served by my not going to that well too often, as tempting as it is.

Wodehouse is definitely one I had to space out ... although maybe not as much as I have. I started working my way through Psmith and some Jeeves and Wooster a few years back, and somehow never got back to finish them. Hmm... maybe that's another one to add to 2019.