What Is One Thing That Is On (Or Would Be On) Your Reading Bucketlist? (7/7/19)

[Marc]

Let us know one reading-related goal/accomplishment you'd like to complete before dying. Can be big or small, meaningful or superficial, etc. Does NOT have to be your priority. E.g., I'd like to read Book X before I die. I'd like to read everything by author Y before I die. I'd like to acquire a signed first edition of...

[Marcus]

That would be a simple one for me - to read at least most if not all the book I have in my house. At the moment there are over 4,000 but this rises by rises by 2 or 3 a week while I only manage to read 1 or 2 a week.

[C I N D L E]

Mine is a stretch, but still relates to books and answers the question.

Since elementary school through present day, with no sign of stopping, I've read so much fiction and non-fiction books about WWII and The Holocaust, that I want to visit the sites where some of the most hateful crimes against humanity were masterminded and committed.

Not out of morbid curiosity, but out of a need to further my knowledge on the subject matter. I pride myself in knowing a lot about both WWII and The Holocaust, but the more I read about both, the more I want to know more, and the more I know thereafter, the more I realize there is still plenty more to learn.

It is because of my reading - and excellent history teachers from elementary and high school, that I want to visit Anne Frank's secret annex, Berlin, the Pyrenees between France and Spain, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Warsaw, Dunkirk, Omaha Beach, the Swiss border, plus several other major history-defining sites of the war.

I've gained much insight into the subject, and I'm a better person because of that insight. Yet, I feel that being present at some, or hopefully all of these locations, would enrich me in ways that the fiction and non-fiction books about them cannot.

Not that this matters, but I'm not Jewish, and neither is my ancestry. Yet from the first time I learned about WWII and the holocaust, it was like a tap was turned on, and I craved and relished every book I came across that flowed with information about both. My reading over the years has given me this desire to know plenty about the war, so visiting the places where some of the real events and fictional stories occurred would be a sad, but poignant dream come true. I want to be present and witness, for what I've learned.

[Robert]

Cindle- once you go to auschwitz your life will change. You feel the cruelty envelope you.

My bucket list is simple read moby dick and maybe whale watch. As my partner wants to go to Iceland next year, this may become a reality

[Lark]

Robert this may be heresy to admit but I'm a huge fan of Moby Dick as read by Anthony Heald. It was gripping! I do so love to be read to. But my family reads books aloud together for fun. There are some books that I've never been able to get through on the page that come alive in voice.

[Lark]

My reading goals are short-term rather than life-time...Once I figure out it's really important to me to read something before I die, I usually go ahead and read it.

Two books that are weighing on me right now that I want to read eventually are The Aesthetics of Resistance, Vol. 1 by Peter Weiss and Don Quijote.

[Marcus]

C I N D L E wrote: "Mine is a stretch, but still relates to books and answers the question."

Excellent choice Cindle, and perhaps I could make one more suggestion while you tour Europe - in Paris just behind the Notre Dame cathedral, at the very end of the island on which it sits, is an underground memorial to all the French Jews put to death during WWII. It is profoundly moving and unexpected, and for some reason most of those who visit Paris are unaware that it is even there.

[Marcus]

I've started reading plays again this year and wonder why I ever stopped, as I'm enjoying them so much. Suddenly realised a new ambition for the bucket list - to see all those performed that I have only read. I'd like to start with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead...

[Franky]

Interesting ideas in here. I think mine would be to read Ulysses for the personal challenge it would impose. I might need cliffnotes though, truth be told :) And I might need a year to read it.

[Antonomasia]

I know you said one but there are very much two for me (just in terms of fiction; non-fiction could add a third strand). I have been working on these lately anyway, and for too long had been neglecting, in favour of new books, what it has mattered to me for much longer to have read. (There has been quite a lot of time I spent reading ephemeral new fiction that I wish I had spent on these.) The first one will bore frequent readers of these threads, or of my own reviews, as I mentioned it in another recent one, and also in a couple of recent reviews.

1) a goal since 1994 (!) read at least one proper-length book by each author mentioned in the song The Booklovers by The Divine Comedy.
(I allow myself to tick off an author with a very short work, e.g. Turn of the Screw by Henry James, but that is really to reduce the numbers, and with the hope that one day I would go back and read either the most famous work or at least a standard-length one.)

2) As far as is possible in English, to read a range of classics and more recent literature that I might have read if I'd been brought up bilingual English/Polish. Predominantly Polish classics but also influential books from neighbouring countries. (There are a lot of Polish classics not available in English, and others that are only available in long-out of print volumes for £30+ which I effectively ignore. So it's a relatively small pool compared with English-language or translated French classics, but still quite a lot of books.)

[Hugh]

My reading goals don't extend that far, though I would like to find more time for re-reading. Might yet try Proust...

[David]

Robert wrote: "My bucket list is simple read moby dick and maybe whale watch. As my partner wants to go to Iceland next..."

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is Moby Dick is a bore (my advice - if you must read it, skip all the parts that are just about whaling, unless that particularly interests you). The good news is Iceland is an amazing place. Everyone should visit there at least once in their life.

[David]

Marcus wrote: "I've started reading plays again this year and wonder why I ever stopped, as I'm enjoying them so much. Suddenly realised a new ambition for the bucket list - to see all those performed that I have..."

Reading plays is underrated. I am in the middle of reading through all of August Wilson's Pittsburgh plays. Last year I read several by Neil Simon. A few years back I read a bunch by Ibsen and read all of Shakespeare's plays over the course of a year.

[David]

Marc, I guess if I ever had a bucket list read it would have been The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. When I first started to read it I only got 50 pages in before quitting, but always intended to go back and finish it. Over the years I restarted it a few times, never getting much further, until finally, 20 years after the first attempt, I got to the end. It was well worth it.

Another book I would not quite call a bucket list book, but that has been looming out there for almost 25 years now, is The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary. I bought it for an English literature course I took, but the professor became ill mid-year and was replaced by someone who decided to skip it, so I never read it. Many times over the years I have though about finally reading it, but I have never even actually started it. I can't say why I still want to read it after all these years. Maybe I will find out one day if I ever do read it.

[Kathleen]

This is a great question, Marc. At first I thought, no, I didn't have one. Then I got depressed when I figured out the limit of the number of books I can foreseeably read before I die. Then, subconsciously, I started to prioritize, and that's when I realized there is one: The Golden Bough by James George Frazer. I simply must get through that. Maybe if I start now ...

[Tamara]

Kathleen wrote: "This is a great question, Marc. At first I thought, no, I didn't have one. Then I got depressed when I figured out the limit of the number of books I can foreseeably read before I die. Then, subcon..."

Kathleen, I love The Golden Bough. It enriched my reading of Oedipus Rex and Conrad's Heart of Darkness and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. I think some of what Frazer argued has since been discredited, but it's still an amazing book.
I hope you enjoy it.

[Donna]

War and Peace

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Tamara wrote: " I think some of what Frazer argued has since been discredited, but it's still an amazing book. ..."

It seems like every time I hear about Frazer's book anymore, it's in a dismissive tone--so much so that it's slipped further and further out of my reading plans. I'm glad to hear that not everyone shares that opinion, and to know that it's not a book to completely give up on.

[C I N D L E]

@Robert, @Marcus,

Robert wrote: "Cindle- once you go to auschwitz your life will change. You feel the cruelty envelope you."

Robert, I've heard similar from those who have visited it, that they depart it a different person. I have no doubt it'll affect me the same. It's odd to say I look forward to it, but perhaps what I really mean is, I look forward to having the same transformation from it that others have described.

Marcus wrote: "Excellent choice Cindle, and perhaps I could make one more suggestion while you tour Europe - in Paris just behind the Notre Dame cathedral, at the very end of the island on which it sits, is an underground memorial to all the French Jews put to death during WWII. It is profoundly moving and unexpected, and for some reason most of those who visit Paris are unaware that it is even there."

On your advice Marcus, I immediately googled this site, officially called Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation, and read up on it. You are correct, I never even knew it existed in Paris, or that it shared such close proximity to Notre-Dame de Paris. I loved that you pointed this out, because it is a great example of what we say in the states, "the more you know."

Thank you both for sharing, great insight.

[Lily]

David wrote: "Robert wrote: "My bucket list is simple read moby dick and maybe whale watch. As my partner wants to go to Iceland next..."

... The bad news is Moby Dick is a bore (my advice - if you must read it, skip all the parts that are just about whaling, unless that particularly interests you). The good news is Iceland is an amazing place. ..."

It took me years and several tries to finally read Moby-Dick. (I can agree with calling it boring.) Today, I would consider re-reading it -- and I would skip/skim several of the chapters about whales/whaling -- but not entirely -- and they are different -- and probably focus on the the tale of Ahab and of the narrator Ishmael, which is still obscure to me in its details. A good job of moderating a discussion occurred on the Western Canon board a few years ago. I dragged way behind on the reading, but was determined not to give up that time. David's schedule, a Kindle version on my PC and, mostly, the narrations here are what got me through it: http://www.mobydickbigread.com/ I listened and read -- I found the variety of readers, as well as the accompanying art work, added greatly to the experience and kept me going.

The world apparently has a number of "big reads" of Moby Dick (google the topic). I attended a bit of one at Mystic Seaport aboard the Charles W. Morgan years and years ago. (https://www.mysticseaport.org/event/m...) New Bedford Whaling Museum had its 2019 read in January and it sounds like a very different venue: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/program...

Look, too, for a set of abstract illustrations, one per chapter, that have been done. Also, for a bit on Melville's writing there-of and of the seeming gaps/slip-ups in the plot line.

[Lily]

Donna wrote: "War and Peace"

My thoughts: don't miss it! Been through it at least three times, listening to one edition while reading from another! I haven't particular interest in the war planning and execution parts, but the characters live in my life much as Nabokov claims those in Anna Karenina do for many Russians -- as family members and acquaintances one can gossip and argue about. ( Lectures on Russian Literature -- only AK is among the lectures. )

Most of the critical commentary is apparently still in Russian, but I like R.F. Christian's Tolstoy's 'War And Peace' (or maybe his Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction ) These discuss how many of the characters changed in subsequent versions as Tolstoy wrote and rewrote.

[Donna]

Thanks, Lily. Re: War and Peace I have the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. Really thought I would get to it this summer. Would like to read Tolstoy's short stories, too.

Anna Karenina is one of my all time favorite, life time books.

[Lily]

Bryan "Blackadder" wrote: "It seems like every time I hear about Frazer's book anymore, it's in a dismissive tone--.."

Doesn't do the same thing as Frazer, but personally I would probably as soon put my time into re-reading Ovid's Metamorphoses -- although selecting the translation to use -- well, I don't know.

Right now, I'll put my focus into finding good children's books -- and I am amazed at some of the wonderful board books to share with the under one-year-old set. I love best the ones with few words and simple, but still rich, illustrations that can be woven into ad-hoc story-telling, dependent upon the impatience at the moment of my grandchild.

[Lily]

Donna wrote: "Anna Karenina is one of my all time favorite, life time books..."

Donna -- AK would go on my list, too. (Was looking just yesterday at writer Natalie Goldberg's favorites list in her Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft. That's a fascinating list as well.)

[Ellen]

Love this question. The choices have given me lots to think about--as though I need more books on my TBR!

I actually loved Moby Dick; not so much for the whaling chapters but I found them more interesting the second time I read the book--but the obsession is fascinating and the characters/relationships interesting. Thanks for the links for the big reads; I might do a third reading using one of them.

And thanks Lily for reminding me of Goldberg's reading list--I have to pull that out for ideas.

For me, I'd like to finish my Dickens with Little Dorrit--that and The Pickwick Papers are the only two I haven't read. I started a few years ago but gave up.

Also, now that I'm retired, I was hoping to give Finnegans Wake another go. I have lots of the books that go with it. I've started a few times--I think I've gotten as far as about 30 pages but I'd like to finish it. I thought what I read was impossibly difficult but beautiful sounding and the accompanying books helped make some sense of it.

Right now I'm trying to read Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Demons for a second time. It's the only "big" Dostoyevsky I have left to read. This time I'm doing a buddy read; I hope that will help me get through it. I'm finding the opening hilarious.

[Kathleen]

Tamara wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "This is a great question, Marc. At first I thought, no, I didn't have one. Then I got depressed when I figured out the limit of the number of books I can foreseeably read before I ..."

I appreciate this so much, Tamara. Like Bryan, I've heard nothing but the dismissive comments lately, but still wanted to take the journey. So glad to hear you found it worthwhile.

I think I will also take Lily's advice and re-read Ovid's Metamorphoses. There is so much in there, and it has been so many years since I read it. Great idea!

[Marc]

I can't be the only one that adored Moby Dick upon first reading, can I? And I was forced to read it for class in college. Even found the whaling parts fascinating.

[Whitney]

Marc wrote: "I can't be the only one that adored Moby Dick upon first reading, can I? And I was forced to read it for class in college. Even found the whaling parts fascinating."

I'm with you, Marc! And I first read it in high school English. The teacher even said we were not responsible for the chapters on the business of whaling, but I loved those as well. I usually enjoy when books or movies go into the nitty gritty of professional work.

My teacher (god love her) made a particular point of saying we were especially not responsible for "The Cassock" chapter, even though it was really short and strange and fascinating and had caused controversy when read in schools, we most certainly did NOT have to read it. Thereby guaranteeing that almost every student would certainly read it and love it and discuss it.

[Ella]

My goal is probably not one I will achieve, but I'm having fun working on it. I want to read a book set in/by an author from every country in the world.

I only read in a few languages, so I've run into some stumbling blocks with some countries/translations, but as the world of translating gets wider, so does my appetite for books from places I may only ever visit by reading.

[Whitney]

I am about 2/3 of the way through one of my chunkster reading goals, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. 1200 pages of very dense writing. I'm reading it with a Facegroup book led by Steven Shaviro. One chapter a day (I'm 5 chapters behind with delusions of catching up) with lots of notes from Steve, which is a great way to read this book. Really loving it, but it is taking up all of my "face in front of page" reading time, so the only other books I've been reading for the last several weeks are on audio.

This will leave Don Quixote, The Man Without Qualities, and the second half of JR as my remaining "must read" kitten squishers.

[[deleted user]]

My life goal is to read a novel in Japanese before I die. Manga doesn't count; the word count on those is low enough that I've managed to work my way through one with the help of a dictionary. I'll settle for a novella though.