To the Devotees, at Winter Solstice

Long nights are well-suited to picking up something from the TBR pile and following up on last year's resolution to read War and Peace, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Pepys' Diary, or the Complete Plays of Shakespeare. (Well, if you're going to do it before you have to make your next New Year's Resolution, you may have waited too long on those.)

My goal is to finish all of Shakespeare's Plays--which means to read the ones I've never gotten around to: the Henry VI plays, Pericles, and Timon of Athens. This is, I believe, definitely manageable before 2021.

Next year--all of Pepys!

What are your plans for reading over the holidays?

I am about 600 pages in to Atlas Shrugged's 1500 (alas, in it's Folio Society edition). It is one of two big milti-volume books I had staring at me from the book case all year. Will be quite happy to have knocked it down and am enjoying it more than anticipated.

For what it's worth, the other three volume thing on my TBR pile is the LEC Life of Samuel Johnson, which is going to take a bit more courage.

>2 ubiquitousuk: "LEC Life of Samuel Johnson, which is going to take a bit more courage"

Yes, most of Vol 1 is fairly dry when it's just Boswell relating Johnson's early history; once he starts relating his meetings with Johnson and relating their adventures together and with others in Johnson's circle, it's much more entertaining!

Well, this is a Reminder, to be sure. I'm somewhere in the middle of the 3 volume "Life of Johnson" (LEC). I do intend to finish but not before end of year. One of the things I put it down for was "Pax Britannica" by James/Jan Morris (Folio Society-3 volumes)which I've also interrupted and need to get back to.
Assuming we overcome Covid, there is a symposium in June sponsored by The Baker Street Irregulars on Holmes and the British Empire which i plan to attend and be prepared for by reading this set along with a few other books including N. Ferguson's "Empire".

Somehow (maybe pandemic related...) I got a jump on my reading goals this year. I managed to finish up the six volumes of My Struggle, the five volumes of the Chin P'ing Mei, and the six volumes of the recent translation of In Search of Lost Time. Took two years to get through them all.

On the LEC front, I need to finish up The Story of an African Farm. It just hasn't grabbed me much yet so I'm having some motivational issues with it. I also intend to get to The Diary of Samuel Pepys at some point. To date, most of my reading has been snippets from randomly opened pages when I dust my books. (A habit that makes my dusting even slower than it is by nature...)

>5 jveezer: I often take on a sudoku at bedtime (evil level) and then read afterwards. Maybe if I went straight for the books, I'd cover more ground.

>6 laotzu225: I do Sudoku when my eyes are tired from reading and/or I'm listening to music. Good brain food. I mostly use the app on my phone so I don't know if my eyes really get much relief...