Making Lists

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I love making lists, especially reading lists. After I finished off The Moonstone yesterday, I noticed that there was a catalogue of other titles by the same publisher (in this case Everyman's Library) at the back of the book. As I mentally ticked off the ones I'd read, it was the perfect opportunity to note down a few titles I'd like to read sometime in the future....

Jane Austen :: Emma
Mikhail Bulgakov :: The Master and Margarita
Miguel de Cervantes :: Don Quixote
Daniel Defoe :: Moll Flanders
Charles Dickens :: Little Dorrit
Henry Fielding :: Tom Jones
E.M. Forster :: Howards End
Thomas Hardy :: Far From the Madding Crowd
Nathaniel Hawthorne :: The Scarlet Letter
Henry James :: The Golden Bowl
D.H. Lawrence :: Women in Love
Leo Tolstoy :: War and Peace
Voltaire :: Candide
Virginia Woolf :: To the Lighthouse

Can you find any of your favourites on my list?
Also an article on the art of list making - are you a list maker?

This Year

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I have a love-hate relationship with the new year moment. I'm awe struck by being in the midst of one of time's turning points, where you're supposed to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. But as the hours draw closer to midnight I usually feel a mixture of excitement, nostalgia, and a tiny bit of panic about the unknown year ahead. Does anyone else get this?

Usually, I make the standard resolutions: eat more fruit, drink loads of water, go to bed earlier, run more. While I'm probably going to try and do all the same things again this year - why break with tradition - I'm also making a few resolutions about improving in other ways: it never hurts to work on being kinder, more patient, more optimistic and more thoughtful. To take each day as it comes, and not stress about the small stuff.

And just for fun, I'd also love to make sure that this time next year I've filled in a few reading gaps...

Ulysses by James Joyce (second attempt)
Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch