As we’re recovering from the holidays and winding down the new year celebrations, the LitKicks team is looking forward to an interesting and busy year in 2006. In addition to our own personal resolutions for the coming year, we thought it would be a good time to ask … What are your literary resolutions for 2006? Though we definitely want to know what you are reading, we also want to know what you have brewing on a larger scale in the literary realm. Are you planning to re-read some favorite authors? Finish some books that you’ve been struggling with? Or perhaps you’re hoping to branch out and experience new genres and styles. Maybe you’ll be setting a quantitative goal, Readathon style, such as 52 books in 52 weeks or a more arbitrary and boastful 75. (Remember, if you shoot for a large number, make sure you have someone spotting you — for safety’s sake.)
For those of you more focused on writing than reading, you most likely have some specific resolutions for the year. Are you planning to finish a manuscript? Self-publish a novel or chapbook? Start a new project or experiment with a different style? Maybe you’d like to join a poetry reading or put on one of your own.
Here at LitKicks we have a few resolutions and plans for the new year. Of course we are set on continuing to provide a place for literature to live online by offering timely articles, commentary and news bites. We have a few new features planned that will be fun and informative, plus we’ll be adding many more reviews and interviews. As we work to expand our coverage of more genres and styles, we also want to more thoroughly explore the imprints of literature on everyday life — and the echoes of life and global chaos in literature. We plan to dive into the current literary world and the history of literature on many levels. Levi will be taking on the NYT Book Review, Jamelah will still be reading the classics and I’ll be doing whatever it is I do around here. As if that’s not enough, we will always have a new literary factoid in our Today in Literature feature.
Whatever your literary goals and pursuits are — big or small — we’d like to hear what you’re eyeing. And, as always, we wish you the best of luck in keeping your resolutions and for a great 2006.
31 Responses
VollmannEasy reading aside, I
Vollmann
Easy reading aside, I think I’m on a collision course with William Vollmann’s Europe Central.
More broadly, I would really like to read more international titles this coming year …
Happy new year everybody.
20-o-6 or 2006?I resolve to
20-o-6 or 2006?
I resolve to get all my shit done, viz., finish my current project and then get a really fictitious novel done that sets the world on its ear, complete my second bachelor’s degree, pass the Beijing Language and Cultural University’s Chinese Proficiency exam, and run 5 K in under 22 minutes. I also want to stop wasting time. My uncontrollable narcisstic rage needs to somehow get channeled. 2006!
How topical…I don’t pay for
How topical…
I don’t pay for hardcover books, so I normally read them at the library or wait until I get them as a gift or when they come out in paperback. So that is why I didn’t read Dylan’s Chronicles until just last week.
I was reminded of something I’ve wanted to do for a while – get into the influences of some of my favourtie writers. Chronicles reinvigorated that interest, and I’m busy on Limewire downloading all the influences Bob named in the book. I suspect this will breathe some life into my amateur songwriting, and writing in general, which has been stagnant and fly-specked for a couple years now. have a feeling I will be listening to, reading, and writing a lot of folk tunes in the next little while. All I can promise is that I won’t work Tom Joad’s name into a title, as I think that has been overdone.
But I was also reminded that I owe some folks here something on Tom Wolfe, and I fully intend getting to that.
So, to summarize, I will be reading a lot of folk lyrics, methinks.
Vollmann … that sounds so
Vollmann … that sounds so boring. Good luck with that.
What kind of “international titles” are you thinking of?
Hi Knip — I haven’t read
Hi Knip — I haven’t read Chronicles but I know a lot of people really loved it. And while I’m not all up into Dylan, I think it’s cool to download and research influences of an artist, musician or writer that you’ve admired. On a related note, I gave my brother a gift of a book containing the authors who influenced Tolkien, because he is (or used to be) a big Tolkien fan.
The songwriting sounds like fun and I hope you’ll update us on your projects…
Well, that’s the problem —
Well, that’s the problem — I’m not really sure where (to put it in Huey Lewis terms) the heart of international literature is beating. I’d like to find out.
Sites like Words Without Borders and the Literary Saloon offer some starting points for international literature, and I guess one of my resolutions is to follow through more often on actually reading the stuff.
To List or Not to List…I
To List or Not to List…
I know how most people here are ‘against’ literary lists, but I find them interesting in that I like to compare my reading canon with them. So I’m pondering over one of those “100 Best Books of the Entire Universe Lists” just to see what I’ve missed out on and those will be the books I will try to read in the coming year(s).
There’s an awful lot. I’m finding out that I’m not as well read as I once thought!
Well, I for one love me some
Well, I for one love me some lists. As long as no one is forcing me to actually follow the lists. Unless it’s a list I make. I’d love to hear more about which books you’ve decided you need to read.
Reading Goals for 2006I have
Reading Goals for 2006
I have a few reading goals for 2006.
1. Finish reading all the books I’ve started and left half-finished for various reasons.
2. Read some classics – Les Miserables, War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, and Shirley.
3. Read/complete 35 books this year (one more than I completed in 2005).
4. Read what I desire to read rather than following a prescribed list or reading schedule or book club selection etc.
resolutioni can resolve to
resolution
i can resolve to particpate in litkicks for a while, as i just joined just now.
i resolve to read more dictionaries and to create more entries for my own dictionary in progress.
i resolve to minimize the passive voice in my writing, except as a tool of first person narration and/or dialogue.
i resolve to begin studies that will offer me advanced degrees in education. this resolution ranks high, as i continue to encounter artists, writers, musicians who complain about “the stupidity of americans” and yet, none of these creative geniuses seems engaged in pedagogy. i stand accused and guilty of this same comment. having recently corrected a text [it didnt attain to a level i consider ready for editing] by a professor at yale grad school, i know that something is rotten in the usa, and feel it best that i address the matter directly. americans wear the badge of illiteracy like fiancees wear diamonds. i know poets who dont read, artists who avoid looking at art, musicians who hate other musics — all in order to “avoid unnecessary influence.” is this the hallmark of an “information age?” or does this rather smack of our smug acceptance of semiliteracy? and how will i feel comfortable with such an abundance of rampant anti-intellectualism if i do nothing to offer my solutions? literacy is not just for the literate, and if we, the literate, do little other than stroke our own egos at gatherings of like minds in cathedrals of the converted, we should not cry in terror when their libraries — public and private — reach farenheit 451.
Right on!What a great
Right on!
What a great message. You’ve got me fired up now to get back into college (something I’ve been talking about for a while).
Hey, one of the greatest discoveries I made last year was the setting on Microsoft Word to detect passive voice as well as spelling & grammar. Maybe I shouldn’t be sharing that secret. Do people know about that?
well, now…(1) What I’m
well, now…
(1) What I’m reading: I recently discovered Guy de Maupassant. Many consider him France’s greatest short story writer. I read several of his short stories and he reminds me of Poe; then I read his novel Bel-Ami. Good stuff! An unscrupulous newspaperman having multiple affairs with aristocratic women to further his career, splashes of impressionist-like scenery descriptions, and satirical humor. I am chomping at the bit to write an essay about the threads that connect this book, at least in my mind, with Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, and to a lesser extent, Joyce’s Ulysses.
New Years Resolution: Finish the novel I’m working on and promote by existing book of short stories. I am estimating that I will finish my novel in the Fall of this year. Maybe sooner. I have a good feeling about it.
Have you ever read Crime and
Have you ever read Crime and Punishment? Because it’s really good.
Slacker ResolutionI want to
Slacker Resolution
I want to get out of my reading rut which basically means I need to pick something up that’s a contemporary piece of writing. I can’t remember the last time I read a book that was from this century. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I suggest A Heartbreaking
I suggest A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Weird title, I know, but I really liked it.
Or you could try A Voice
Or you could try A Voice Above The Din by umm… myself.
MIAI’ve been somewhat missing
MIA
I’ve been somewhat missing in action since early fall because of some health problems, but I feel primed and ready to get back into the swing of things. My resolution is to complete at least 30 novels (which I find infinitely reasonable) in multiple genres and to write at least one new poem every week-it would be also nice to have a few published in the small literary mags and of course on LitKicks.
Actually, that is an
Actually, that is an excellent idea. We should all resolve in this new year to read books by fellow LitKickers!
One per month! I mean it!
Knip, I bet your songs are
Knip, I bet your songs are good, just from what I know about you.
Which causes me to throw in
Which causes me to throw in an addendum to my resolution. I also resolve to write something this year and not let the bile forming at the back of my throat keep me from letting other people read it.
Indeed! You should write
Indeed! You should write something, let us read it, and bile be damned!
Read Dutch-booked and
Read Dutch-booked and Cerebral Cyanide. Both are from the new millenium.
Perform and get out thereThis
Perform and get out there
This year I have decided to finally write a book, so that is my main project.
But also, I am going to re-enter the world of the spoken word and performance poetry I’ve been missing since University. Hopefully, I’ll have time to read in between all of that, and also organise my notes. (Well, I’ve got all year to do it!!)
OulipoMy 2006 goal is to read
Oulipo
My 2006 goal is to read the entire oeuvre of the Oulipo and write a very long scholarly essay(Anna Karenina long) about it.
In the spirit of brotherhood and support, I would like to read another of Orhan Pamuk’s novels.
And I would like to get a pool together to predict what the hot new book will be this year. My guess: When The Da Vinci Code the movie comes out, the book will reemerge to spend the rest of the year at number 1, with people literally crawling out of the woodwork to buy it.
If I were you, I’d read Les
If I were you, I’d read Les Miserables first. It is leaps and bounds better than the others on the list.
I love the goal of
I love the goal of international reading. One of mine is to read a book by an author from a country I have never been to or read about.
I will recommend Dalkey Archive, my personal favorite publishing company. They publish exclusively good books, and focus on foreign literature in translation. Every year I find myself leaning more and more on their catalog. Their web site is a great tool, with author interviews, and a section where you can browse authors by country. They aren’t concerned with profit, so they don’t need to publish trash. Its very reassuring to see their logo on the spine of a book on the shelf of a used bookstore. And their newspaper CONTEXT is free and is entirely about foreign lit.
If you had a country or region in mind, I might have some suggestions as I find myself reading mostly foreign lit, but still getting plenty of kicks.
PS My roommate got Europe Central for Christmas.
LitKickers SupportMy second
LitKickers Support
My second resolution – inspired by Billectric – is to read as many books of fellow LitKickers as possible. I think it should be real exciting and I’m looking forward to it.
We have a built-in support group here in the LitKicks community – we should all be a part of it as much as possible!
Write a novel…about my
Write a novel…
about my decision to leave the US and wander in southeast asia, about falling in love.
If you write it, I’ll read
If you write it, I’ll read it!
Impressive and inspiring.
Impressive and inspiring. Perhaps moreso since my own goal is to remain employed for another year.
write a booka book that is
write a book
a book that is half of a mind trying to beat up and then befriend the other half because the only reason the other half disliked the other half was because the are so alike–this can be achieved in many (and in some cases seemingly unconnected) short stories and 8th grade poetry!
Calling it:
“Geoff Parsons brain’s like all wacky!!”