LITERATURE: Deciding on What’s Up Next

With Munro half-finished, I'm ready to browse the bookshelf. While I was rather thinking of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, my amazon order has been sitting in the hands of the US Postal Service since the 11th, in Springfield, Mass which is about an hour away.

In looking over my list, I come across several works of Joseph Conrad and maybe it's time for me to get into that. Continuing down the alphabetical list, I come to Faulkner, and wonder if I deserve to read him now–I hold him and a few others as a special treat. There's Forster and Gibson, both tempting. There are a few Hemingway, but somehow I'm not in that sort of reading mood. James and Joyce….mmm…nope. Then I come to Marquez, and as with Faulkner, I've managed to sneak more of his work onto my shelf. McCarthy? I do have a few yet, while hoping that he's busy writing more, but I have to be very very good to allow myself such a thing. Maybe it'll be a Christmas gift to myself.

Steinbeck, Twain, Tyler, Wells; these and more if I go back to the beginning. I suppose the most important element that determines my selections is this: mood and what calls to me that I find myself responding to in matched anticipation. We'll see…we'll see.