New year’s bucket list
Three years ago, while having a chat about books, a colleague told me that she'd been keeping a list of the books she'd read for many years. I was fascinated! I’ve been reading for pleasure since I discovered Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle series as a child, and in all these many years of happy engagement, it never occurred to me to keep a record. I've flitted from book to book like a bumblebee flitting from flower to flower. If only I'd recorded everything I've read since falling for Doctor Dolittle so many years ago! I would have had a travelogue of where I've wandered in the vast fields of human invention.
Better late than never, as they say. I started my own list three years ago. If you love reading, I suggest you do the same. It could be an easy to keep new year’s resolution (no self denial involved.) Not only will it help you to avoid picking up a book you’ve already read (my colleague's reason for keeping a list), but when you draw a blank trying to recall the title of a book you’ve read, your list will remind you. And as your list grows, you'll have a snapshot of where your head was at during any given year. Over time, you might see interesting things emerge in this bookish mirror of yourself: passions flare up and burn out, growth or stagnation, maybe even obsession.
On the last day of 2014, I finished Ripley under ground, by Patricia Highsmith, the second in a series of five books (known as the "Ripliad") about cultured serial killer Tom Ripley. As I added the title to my list I counted the books I’d read in 2014. I compared this number to my totals for 2012 and 2013. Suddenly, a new use for the list occurred to me. Maybe the idea of mortality was suggested by Mr. Ripley’s murderous doings, or maybe it was the turning of the year – just for fun, I calculated how many books I’d be likely to read in the time remaining to me.
Here's my simple forumla: The average amount of books you read in a year multiplied by estimated years remaining in your life = number of books you will read in the future (if you’re lucky enough to live as long as actuarial tables say you will.) Try it yourself!
I averaged my totals for the last three years, then consulted a life expectancy calculator online to get an idea of how much time I have left to read. I will not divulge the results of my calculations here, except to say that I was shocked and appalled when I put the number beside the 130 million books published over the course of modern history. (This figure comes from an article by a Google software engineer published in 2010, called Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you. I rounded up a bit. The total must be well past 130 million by now.)
The paltry number of books I have left to read considered against the book production of just one country in one year (309,957 by the United States in 2012) was rather deflating. Talk about a wake up call! It inspired me to start a reading "bucket list."
Number 1 on my reading bucket list is the book I requested for Christmas this year: Excellent women, by Barbara Pym. I absolutely refuse to kick the bucket without reading this book, which author Alexander McCall Smith called, "one of the 20th century's most endearing and amusing novels." Pym, says Mcall Smith, covered much the same territory as Jane Austen, "the details of smallish lives led."
I only just heard of Pym in 2014 while listening to the delightful documentary Barbara Pym – an excellent woman, which aired on CBC radio's The Sunday edition. Pym started publishing in Britain, in the early 1950s, but by the 1960s her work had fallen out of fashion. Publishers (including her own) rejected her manuscripts. In 1977 The Times Literary Supplement published an article in which Pym was nominated “the most underrated writer of the 20th century." The article triggered a surge of interest in the author; she was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and found a new audience.
Commenting on Pym's sudden spectacular rise in popularity, Mcall Smith wrote, "What wonderful embarrassment for those who believed that an unmitigated diet of gritty social realism, graphically described sexual couplings and sadistic violence was what readers really wanted. The entire time the reading public, or quite a large section of it, was really yearning for the small-scale delights, the beautiful self-deprecating humour and the brilliant miniaturisation of Pym's novels." Sadly, Pym had only a few years to enjoy her success: she died of breast cancer in 1980, at the age of 66.
Consider creating your own reading bucket list. It might help you take any health related new year’s resolutions more seriously. Stay healthy, live as long as you can – you have a lot to read!
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9 thoughts on “New year’s bucket list”
The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda, which I have on my book shelf and still have not got around to, same with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. So many to get to!!!!
Barbara Pym’s books look good. I’ll have to put them on my “Books to Read” list. I’ve never heard of her before. Thanks Maureen!
I want to read Thomas Hardy all over again! I’d like to start with Jude the Obscure! It’s been long enough because I read most of the Hardy novels in my twenties and I think Jude the Obscure was the first. Mary
Love Barbara Pym…. but only remember reading “Jane & Prudence” …. Thanks for the reminder… must read some others. My bucket list is still too big so I have listened to many of them using the Library’s wonderful Audiobook & eAudiobook collections. Is that cheating? War & Peace is still on my list… listen or read??? 😉
Thanks for telling me what’s on your reading bucket list, commenters! As for Barbara Pym’s “Excellent women,” I’m just five pages in, and I love it already. In response to Jana, listening, as opposed to reading, is not cheating. When I imagine the origins of storytelling, I picture people gathered around a bonfire, listening to a story, before the beginning of the written word. That being said, I wouldn’t listen to “War and Peace” while driving. I never get as much out of a book when I listen to it while trying to do something else. Light a candle, wrap your hands around a cup of something warm, and listen attentively. The library’s audiobook collection is fantastic! Your comment made me wonder if a classic novel I have on my bucket list (“Moby Dick”) comes in audiobook format. I checked, and it does! So, audiobook lovers, don’t forget, many classics come in audiobook format (digital or CD – ask at your local library.)
Thanks for such a great blog, Maureen! You have inspired me to read Barbara Pym’s “Some Tame Gazelle.” I must confess that I don’t have a reading bucket list, nor do I keep a list of what I have read, but I am quite happy to read what I serendipitously come across. Right now I am reading an autobiography by JJ Lee, “The Measure of a Man: the Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit,” and I can heartily recommend it!
I’m so glad I’ve convinced at least a couple of people to read Barbara Pym! I’ve almost finished “Excellent women” and it is so utterly enjoyable that all of Pym’s book are now on my reading bucket list. I think readers who enjoy Jane Austen would enjoy Barbara Pym. Their works are set in different time periods (“Excellent women” is set just after World War II), but both set their novels in England, feature delightful character portraits, and are gently humorous in their examination of the social mores of their times.
I’ve given up having a bucket list there is always another book on the shelf that looks more interesting or I hear or read about a new book that draws my attention, my interests change or I can’t find time. It’s too frustrating to make another list even for groceries.
I can relate, Connie. I often hear an author interviewed on the radio, or read a book review and get enthused about a book. I make a mental note to read it, and then some other book attracts my attention (a bit of an occupational hazard for a librarian). Making a mental note usually doesn’t work for me — I lose almost all my mental notes. Hence, my reading bucket list. Thanks for commenting.