Omega-3 isolation: reading resolutions for the New Year

Before I launch into omega-3 isolation, or rather my self prescribed reading list for 2011, I've set out a few of my favourite book-related news stories for the week. Why? Why not! Everyone else seems to be making lists (Waterstones, the US National Book Critics Circle) I want a piece of the action. So, my top six book stories/sites for the week that (nearly) was are: 

1. Forget O: A Presidential Novel, which of these gift horses will Obama read first?
2. National Book Circle (US) finalists named: note to self must read Skippy Dies, great title... let's judge more books by their titles
3. Sacha Baron Cohen to star in adaptation of Saddam Hussein's Romance Novel... nuff said
4. New Yorker cartoon response to Tiger Mother book uproar
5. Bookgami? Oribooks?
6. Watch out Stephanie Meyer: Twilight publicist writes own teen novels

Onto another list, one more self-centered still. As the diary of my bookish self or my bookshelf, this blog is much about my aspirations, my reading future, the books I hope will lie dog-eared and devoured on my bookshelf in the months to come, as it is about the books I've already read. And the New Year is the perfect excuse to pop some of those aspirations into... hurrah, a list (I'm standing on the very top of the list-making bandwagon with a megaphone). The books, and case for each, are: 

The book: Good-bye to All That

The case: I like Robert Graves’ novels. I Claudius is up there with Peter Pan and The Count of Monte Cristo in my read-them-again-and-again favourites. A large part of Good-bye to All That deals with Graves’ time in the trenches – it’s an anti-war memoir and while I find books about war difficult, I’m approaching Good-bye to All That in the same way I approach fish oils. The unpleasant way it might repeat on me (in the book’s case with pop-up visions of bullet-riddled young men) will surely be far outweighed by the good it’ll do me.

The book: How to be Alone

The case: it’s been on my bookshelf (unread) since I bought it in 2002. It’s a collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen. Surely I should read these before I allow myself to buy his latest novel Freedom (this week named a US National Book Circle finalist) don’t you think? Besides, the blurb tells me as a body of work these essays reflect on ‘being alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture’. I think I could do with some of that.

The book: American Psycho

The case: it seems everyone else read American Psycho yonks ago and that I missed out. I hate missing out. Plus The Guardian’s banking in literature quiz has led me to understand that Bret Easton Ellis has his murderous main character work at Pierce & Pierce, an investment firm that bears the same name as Sherman McCoy’s firm in Bonfire of the Vanities – I loved Bonfire of the Vanities. And who doesn’t want to read a book about a mad, murderous investment banker?

The book: Dune

The case: it’ll bring a nice sci-fi geekiness to my year of reading and it’s got longevity on its side (Dune was first published in 1965). Given there are six books in the original series (with two co-authored spin-off series) if I’m as gripped as the fans seem to be, I’ll get to be gripped for a long time to come.

The book: Mrs Dalloway

The case: I like to use parentheses a lot and so, it seems, does Virginia Woolf. Unfortunately I don’t like to read them nearly so much (they’re annoying) and last time I picked up Mrs Dalloway – after reading Michael Cunningham’s The Hours – I had to put it down in protest. But it’s a classic and usually perseverance reaps reward.