Looking Ahead to 2013 Reading (also a possibility for Film Club and some other stuff)

I don't know why it's so fun to think about the reading for the year ahead when I very rarely meet my goals or plans set out the year before. In fact, a friend recently asked me what my reading plans were and I referred to a rollover list I have. LOL. This is the first year I've called it that, but it works, a list of books I roll over year to year that I want to eventually read. I knocked two books off it this year! Yay!

Anyway, I have very few actual plans for my reading this year, because they don't work that well for me. I do like having a list of potential reads, though, I like thinking I will read these books. And you know, it does give me a tremendous feeling of satisfaction when I actually do!

Obviously my biggest project this year is reading War & Peace. I am sooooo excited about this! I watched "Happy New Year, Charlie Brown" (or whatever it was called, I don't remember) and poor Charlie had to read it over his break. It was the cutest thing everrrr when he was lugging the book around everywhere and never getting past page 5. But I love that I'm finally going to read a book with this exact reputation and also I don't know, I just loved Anna Karenina so much that when Charlie Brown was reading from his book about the Russian society dinners I started to feel really excited, omg book PLEASE BE GOOD. Anyway, you can still join in! We're making it very manageable! Just 100ish pages a month. (by the way, if you didn't see on Twitter, my book arrived in the mail this week and it is huge! squeee!!)

I will also be doing INSPY reading. That's always a really challenging time, but I don't know I've read so little faith driven lit recently that I'm looking forward to it.

Okay now for THE LIST. Here is what the list looked like last year:

The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings

1984 by George Orwell

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Germinal by Emile Zola

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

Saints in Limbo by River Jordan

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Lilith by George Macdonald

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

This year I am proud to say I managed to read Anna Karenina and Lilith so I can knock them off! That makes the list ten, which I think I'll keep it at and then if I manage to read some more this year I can replace them at the end of the year.

I'm hoping to get to Strong Poison for sure, the rush of recent reviews have made me very anxious to do so. I also really want to get to The Yearling finally because it so heavily influenced Andrew Peterson's most recent album.

I'll still be reading some new releases, I have some I'm already eager to get to, and I saw Patrick Ness is coming out with two new books this year which is very exciting. I think I'll work on a post of 2013 releases I want to read for later in the week.

I'd like to read a few beloved authors like Tana French or the Justin Cronin books. What do you guys think? Which would I like better? And I want to dig into the stack of Danish books I acquired when I asked for recs earlier this year.

And finally. Always. I want to read more nonfiction. I am sooo envious of everyone who reads it so easily and I want to be someone who loves nonfiction as much as fiction. I have a stack of books I really want to read, I just need to make myself do so!

So those are my very loose reading goals for the year! I definitely want to hear all about yours and any advice on books you think I should be reading. :)

Film Club

I've really been thinking this over and I have an idea but I want to see if people would be interested in doing it. I really don't want to do this if it turns out to just be me you know? So it's not going to hurt my feelings if this is not something you want to do, I'd just rather know upfront if there's any interest. Basically, I was thinking we could take a decade of Academy Award winners and watch through them. The big group watch would be whatever won best picture, but then everyone could also choose to watch a movie that won any award at all that year and write a review on their blog. (kind of like how the classics circuit used to work?) Do you guys think this would be fun? It might be easier to find a movie that way, too, at your library or whatever. We could vote on what decade to do and then have fun! Let me know what you think!

Other Viewing Plans

Back when I "dared" Ana to watch the first season of Buffy, I said that if she did I'd read a book of her choice. Well now she's watched all of Buffy and Angel! So I asked what she wanted me to read, but being the kind and thoughtful person she is, she chose movies for me instead! Before Sunrise and Before Sunset which I already wanted to watch anyway, yay! So I'll be watching those soon, I hope. And I might have a little surprise for Ana anyway in the next few days.

I also plan to finish watching Six Feet Under (I took a break because it was too depressing for the holidays), and maybe watch Parenthood? I don't have big TV plans, really.

I want to hear all about your everything for 2013 if you care to share, if you like the idea of film club or think it stinks, how excited you are to read War & Peace with me, etc....