- 15 of those books were read on my nook, which spent only 2-3 months in commission (my jumpy toddler broke it... twice).
- Only 2 of last year's books were what I would call "classics," though even those are modern classics (Slaughterhouse Five and Contact). I think this year's list will be much smaller, since I'm trying to tackle some real classics like Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, possibly Virgil's Aenid, and some other heavy stuff. We'll see, I may tire of it and switch back to my good old standby, YA.
- 28 books I read last year were YA.
- 11 were re-reads, and I'll probably do that again this year with a few books. There are just some books you have to read every couple of years, you know?
- Only 6 of 48 books were NOT part of a larger series, though some of the series (serieses? How the hell do you pluralize that word?) have only one book thus far.
- Nook stuff I already own & would like to read this year:
- The Odyssey (currently reading)
- The Iliad
- Dracula
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Relativity: The Special and General Theory
- How Children Learn
- Raising Freethinkers
- Anna Karenina
I plan to purchase and read Zenschooling, and I just found out that the second in Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles series is coming out in May. I'll be buying and reading that in one day, I'm sure.
Last year, I sorted through the NYT's "must read books of the last year" and added a bunch.... which I never read. I think I'll be lucky to make it through the list I already have while studying Calculus and recovering from birth, but do you have any suggestions for me? Take a look at my to-read shelf (this includes all the books I want to read with the kids, so it's long) and tell me if anything jumps out that should go to the top of the list!
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I've been reading Homer's Odyssey, and am fascinated on many levels. One is the style. A couple of years ago, I started a self-study Old Testament course (which I never finished, because I fail at not having deadlines), and one of the first discussions was the context in which it was written. The Odyssey had a similar introduction, explaining the oral nature of Homer's time, how the oral story would have been passed down through generations, changing each time to fit the bard's audience, and ultimately would have come to be put into print. As I read, I hear so many stylistic similarities to the Bible, in terms of repeated phrases, two alternate versions of the same story-within-a-story told a few paragraphs apart, and so forth. It's obvious that these tales were composed (at least in written form) in a similar timeframe, and it is just really interesting to me how differently they are now perceived, one being viewed as pure mythology and the other as absolute truth.
