The 2024 Reading List

Early in 2024 I decided to keep a running list of books, plays, and poetry that I was reading. Current reading seems to surface in most conversations, and I found that I couldn't always remember what I had just finished. I read a lot and across many topics.

As I'm new to Instagram and have discovered that most of the book people are sharing lists as a year end exercise, I thought I'd do the same here.

You will note that the bulk of my reading was Shakespeare. Yep, read all of his work in 2024. And you'll also note a great deal of poetry.

It feels like something is missing, but it's likely because I read many books at once and several have been started and remain stacked and waiting...

1.         Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

2.         Henry VI, Part One by Shakespeare

3.         Chip Wars by Chris Miller

4.         Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (A beloved book since childhood)

5.         WH Auden’s Lectures on Shakespeare

6.         Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

7.         Henry VI, Part Two by Shakespeare

8.         This is Shakespeare by Emma Smith

9.         Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare (A must!)

10.      To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

11.      The World Doesn’t End by Charles Simic

12.      Henry VI, Part Three by Shakespeare

13.      Good Will Come from the Sea by Christos Ikonomou

14.      Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare

15.      Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

16.      A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli

17.      Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare

18.      Richard III by Shakespeare

19.      Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimora

20.      The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare

21.      The Two Gentlemen from Verona by Shakespeare

22.      Postcards from the Underworld by Sinan Anton

23.      King John by Shakespeare

24.      Richard II by Shakespeare

25.      Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte

26.      The Anchor's Long Chain by Yves Bonnefoy

27.      Perreira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi

28.      A Writer’s Notebook by W.H. Auden

29.      Hamlet by Shakespeare

30.      Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

31.      Blow Up: Stories by Julio Cortazar

32.      The Hebrew Bible as Literature by Tod Linafelt

33.      The Key Concepts of the Old Testament by Albert Gelin

34.      The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

35.      Brand New Ancients by Kate Tempest

36.      The Rape of Lucrece by Shakespeare

37.      Shakespeare’s Sonnets (all) by Shakespeare

38.      Readings from the Book of Exile by Padraig o Tuama

39.      Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems by Simon Armitage

40.      4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

41.      Dialogue by Robert McKee

42.      The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

43.      Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44.      Othello by Shakespeare

45.      Memoirs, Dreams, Reflections by Jung (still reading)

46.      The Visitor by Maeve Brennan

47.      The Swimmer by Edna O’Brien

48.      Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos

49.      Love’s Labour’s Lost by Shakespeare

50.      Academy Street by Mary Costello

51.      Pericles by Shakespeare

52.      The Source by Tara Swart

53.      Cymbeline by Shakespeare

54.      Homeric Moments by Eva Brann

55.      The History of Forgetting by Lawrence Raab

56.      Falling Upward by Richard Rohr (my second but not last time to read this)

57.      Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare

58.      Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare

59.      All’s Well That Ends Well by Shakespeare

60.      King Lear by Shakespeare

61.      A Lover’s Complaint by Shakespeare

62.      The Passionate Pilgrim by Shakespeare

63.      Lovers in the Museum by Isabelle Allende

64.      As You Like It by Shakespeare

65.      Macbeth by Shakespeare

66.      The Hidden Parables by Todd Michael

67.      The Twelve Conditions for a Miracle by Todd Michael (another reread)

68.      Genesis - Jensen Bible Study

69.      The Writers Guide to Crafting Stories for Children by Nancy Lamb

70.      The Economics Book by DK Publishing

71.      The Quiet in Me by Patrick Lane

72.      The Ferryman (play) by Jen Butterworth

73.      Charles Simic Selected Poems 1963 to 1983

74.      Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare

75.      Let the Light Pour In by Lemn Sissay

76.      Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

77.      James by Percival Everett

78.      Erasure by Percival Everett

79.      Corilanius by Shakespeare

80.      All's Well That Ends Well

81.      Carbon Reckoning by Sue Ransom (not yet published)

82.      Measure for Measure by Shakespeare

83.      The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

84.      Henry IV, Part One by Shakespeare

85.      The Secret History of the Zohar by Michael Berg

86.      The Merry Wives of Windsor by Shakespeare

87.      Henry IV, Part Two by Shakespeare

88.      The Commune by Marios Chakkas

89.      The Cabala by Thornton Wilder

90.      The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis

91.      The Monk in the White Robe by Ira Proof

92.      Moby Dick by Herman Melville (stopped partway through and must finish)

93.      Our Town by Thornton Wilder

94.     Henry V by Shakespeare

95.     Henry VIII by Shakespeare

96.     J.B. by Archibald MacLeish

97.     The Age of AI by Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt

98.      Selected Poems Leonard Cohen

99.      Confessions of a Sinner by St Augustine

100.   The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

101.   Inner Work by Robert Johnson

102.   The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

103.   Edward III by Shakespeare

104.   The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik

105.   Timon of Athens by Shakespeare

106.   A Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare

107.   Paris by Julian Green

108.   The Tempest by Shakespeare

109.   Christ, with Urban Fox by John Deane

110.   Paul by NT Wright

111.   Two Noble Kinsmen by Shakespeare

112.   Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

113.   The Answer is No by Fredrik Backman

114.   Nausea by John Paul Sarge

115.   Songs of Minyar the Damascene by Adonis

116.   Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

117.   Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong

118.   The Runner by David Samuels

119.   Consider This by Chuck Pahlaniuk 

120.   The Shortest Day by Colm Tobin

121.   Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

122.  First Four Books of Poems by Louise Glück

123.   Gravity and Center by Henri Cole

124.   A Divine Language by Alec Wilkinson

125.   Budapest by Victor Sebestyen

126.  Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

127.  Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare

128.  A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare

129.  Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare

130.  The Phoenix and Turtle by Shakespeare

131.  A Funeral Elegy by Shakespeare (I don't believe he wrote this)

 

 

Holes

I recently read the Young Adult (YA) novel titled Holes. What a delight! It's the story of a wrongly convicted boy who must attend a camp as part of his sentence. It's a fast read with a tightly written plot and a great sense of humor. I found that the past was hidden in the present, what seems obvious isn't, and what isn't obvious really is. There is much to love -- friendship, determination -- and much to make you cringe -- cruelty, adversity. But ultimately it will leave you with a smile.

Recent Reads

Two books I read recently -- one a reread:

I reread this one by Mario Vargas Llosa -- a favorite author. I had forgotten some of the detail, so I was pleasantly surprised. And once again, I fell in love with the book.

Paulo Coelho is another favorite. The Alchemist is a reread every so often, a book shared with so many friends. I love it. This one was quick, different, but offering nuggets that called to be underlined and contemplated. What I needed, when I needed it.

Walk Neither Faster or Slower

My underlined words and passages from Paulo Coelho’s book, Manuscript Found in Accra

Apocryphal Gospels…Muratorian Canon…Scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them…Defeat is for those who, despite their fears, live with enthusiasm and faith…For those who are not frightened by the solitude that reveals all mysteries, everything will have a different taste…Walk neither faster nor slower than your own soul, because it is your soul that will teach you the usefulness of each step you take. Sometimes taking part in a great battle will be the thing that will help to change the course of history. But sometimes you can do that simply by smiling, for no reason, at someone you happen to pass on the street…You would still never know exactly when you had been useful to someone else…Do one thing: Live the life you always wanted to live. Avoid criticizing others and concentrate on fulfilling your dreams…Or: “I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why.”…Dreaming carries no risks….the correct path is the path of nature, which is constantly changing, like the dunes in the desert. Those who think that the mountains don’t change are wrong; they are born out of earthquakes, are eroded by wind and rain, and each day are slightly different even though we do not notice…Joy. That is one of the main blessings of the All Powerful. If we are happy, we are on the right road…travelers meet other people on the road who are feeling just the same. As they talk, they realize that they are not alone; they become traveling companions and share their solutions to various obstacles. And they all feel wiser and more alive than they thought they were…”Difficulty” is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are…faith and transformation are the only ways of drawing near to God…Faith shows us that we are never along. Transformation helps us to love the mystery…the place where the morning star is born…And to those who believe that adventures are dangerous, I say, try routine; that kills you far more quickly…Beauty exist not in sameness but in difference…the many colors out of which dreams and poetry are made…Enthusiasm is the Sacred Fire…”I am an instrument”…That is the beauty of the person who continues onward with enthusiasm and respect for the mystery of life as his only guide; his road is beautiful and his burden light…Love is an act of faith, not an exchange…No one can go back, but everyone can go forward…I will look at everything and everyone as if for the first time, especially the small things that I have grown used to, quite forgetting the magic surrounding them…my soul feeds on mysteries…loneliness is a lie, because the Universe is there to keep me company…Stay close to those who sing, tell stories, and enjoy life, and whose eyes sparkle with happiness. Because happiness is contagious and will always manage to find a solution, whereas logic can find only an explanation for the mistake made…No matter how you are feeling, get up every morning and prepare to let your light shine forth. Those with eyes to see will see your light and be enchanted by it…Elegance is not an outer quality, but a part of the soul that is visible to others…What is success? It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace…Help us to understand that wisdom lies not in the answer we are given, but in the mystery of the questions that enrich our lives…The most terrible of all weapons is the word, which can ruin a life without leaving a trace of blood, and whose wounds never heal. Let us, then, be masters of our tongue and not slaves of our words…your enemies are not the adversaries who were put there to test your courage. They are the cowards who were put there to test your weakness.

He Would Spend Hours on End in His Room

Excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades' magical irons. 'Things have a life of their own,' the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. 'It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.' José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: 'It won't work for that.' But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. 'Very soon we'll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house,' her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armour which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armour apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck.

In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm's length away. 'Science has eliminated distance,' Melquíades proclaimed. 'In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.' A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun's rays. José Arcadio Buendía, who had still not been consoled for the failure of his magnets, conceived the idea of using that invention as a weapon of war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him, but he finally accepted the two magnetized ingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifying glass. Úrsula wept in consternation. That money was from a chest of gold coins that her father had put together over an entire life of privation and that she had buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. José Arcadio Buendía made no attempt to console her, completely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attempt to show the effects of the glass on enemy troops, he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun's rays and suffered burns which turned into sores that took a long time to heal. Over the protests of his wife, who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention, at one point he was ready to set the house on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction. He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory sketches, by a messenger who crossed the mountains, got lost in measureless swamps, forded stormy rivers, and was on the point of perishing under the lash of despair, plague, and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by the mules that carried the mail. In spite of the fact that a trip to the capital was little less than impossible at that time, José Arcadio Buendía promised to undertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put on some practical demonstrations of his invention for the military authorities and could train them himself in the complicated art of solar war. For several years he waited for an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned to Melquíades the failure of his project and the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof of his honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifying glass, and he left him in addition some Portugues maps and several instruments of navigation. In his own handwriting he set down a concise synthesis of the studies by Monk Hermann, which he left José Arcadio so that he would be able to make use of the astrolabe, the compass, and the sextant. José Arcadio Buendía spent the long months of the rainy season shut up in a small room that he had built in the rear of the house so that no one would disturb his experiments. Having completely abandoned his domestic obligations, he spent entire nights in the courtyard watching the course of the stars and he almost contracted sunstroke from trying to establish an exact method to ascertain noon. When he became an expert in the use and manipulation of his instruments, he conceived a notion of space that allowed him to navigate across unknown seas, to visit uninhabited territories, and to establish relations with splendid beings without having to leave his study. That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talking to himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone, as Úrsula and the children broke their backs in the garden, growing banana and caladium, cassava and yams, ahuyama roots and eggplants. Suddenly, without warning, his feverish activity was interrupted and was replaced by a kind of fascination. He spent several days as if he were bewitched, softly repeating to himself a string of fearful conjectures without giving credit to his own understanding. Finally, one Tuesday in December, at lunchtime, all at once he released the whole weight of his torment. The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august solemnity with which their father, devasted by his prolonged vigil and by the wrath of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them:

'The earth is round, like an orange.'