I Intend To Read 12 Novels This Year
Last year I read 33 books. Only seven of these were novels. After compiling the lists of the books I read, I felt I ought to read more fiction, so I made some kind of promise, partly inspired by Jason Kottke’s vow to read 52 magazines, to read one per month.
So far, I’ve not succeeded very well. Since New Year, I’ve read four fiction books : Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines (which I count as fiction, after all), and Jorge Luis Borges’s Brodie’s Report. (The first three of these were read in their Swedish translations.)
So I am behind by two books, but summer is a good time to read fiction, so I’ll try to catch up and accumulate a little overhead during my vacation (which starts today). The book I’m reading now is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.
I’d appreciate suggestions for novels that are in line with my current interests: cities, constraints and guiding principles in human expression, aesthetics, semiotics – or anything else you think might interest me.