I wrote one of these in 2023 (you can find it here) & figured I would do it again, though I feel as if I've had less time to read this year. I don't know if that's actually true, as I don't really track reading time, but it sure feels that way. Maybe it's because I've developed the habit (or this tendency has worsened) of starting a book & then reading it only in fits & starts, so it takes much longer to finish than you'd think it would, based on its length. Despite all that, this list will be long, but lots of the items are plays, which are, for obvious reasons, fairly short.
If you read the introduction to the 2023 list, you'll see I lay out the rules (books completed in the year, cover-to-cover, even if I started them earlier) & I mention some reading I do every morning: one chapter of the King James translation of the Bible & one poem by Emily Dickinson. I am now up to the epistles in the Bible, so nearing the end of the cover-to-cover read-through; when I finish, I might go back to hopping among the books, or maybe I'll just circle back to the beginning. I'm around poem #1500 for Dickinson, as since the edition I use contains 1,775 poems, I will finish it this year, at which point I will probably just go back to the beginning & start over. But maybe this time I'll read two or even three poems a day; time is running shorter for all of us. In 2023 I also mentioned reading a few pages of Finnegans Wake each day. After I went through it a few times, I decide to switch things up & moved on to Gertrude Stein: a few pages a day, two to six, usually. Those books will appear on this list, or at least some of them will, the ones I finished.
I'm also doing a simultaneous read of 13 different translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but I should probably do a separate entry on that. As you can imagine, that takes a while, & it's not something you'd want to slam through anyway.
There will be a lot of Shakespeare on this list, as I re-read his complete works this year. I read him regularly, as I have for decades, but this is the first time I read everything in a row, one thing after another. I came close in a college course, a two-quarter Shakespeare survey (taught by Janet Adelman at Cal) in which we read all the plays (except for the Merry Wives of Windsor, which she, like many lovers of Falstaff, disliked, as in it he is a buffoon & a gull & not the mighty character from the Henry IV plays) so she told us we could read it over the break if we wanted to but she wouldn't discuss it – of course I did read it over the break). But for that course we didn't read the sonnets or the narrative poems. Occasionally I will read all the history plays in a row. But last January I had picked up Macbeth again to read on BART. I always have a separate BART book; for a while, back when I worked in offices & went to many, many live performances, I did most of my reading on BART. But it's gotten increasingly difficult to read on BART, mostly because of device-related noise. People are, as we all know, idiots, & I do not understand why someone would think an entire car on a train should have to listen to whatever nonsense they're listening to (people, headphones exist!). But there it is. (Yes, I use earplugs, but they don't quite get the job done.) So I'm looking for something that fits easily into my satchel & that can be interrupted (I've read the plays so many times, yes I know that makes me sound unbearable, but I can pick them up & put them down at any point & not be lost). So I had Macbeth & thought, sure, let's just keep going. For years I read through the complete works, beginning, as I had the first time around, with Twelfth Night & ending with Hamlet (always smart to keep something excellent in reserve for the end). Eventually I realized / decided that I didn't need to read every play every time; I could read King Lear three times & read Merry Wives maybe once (I don't hate it, but it's not really a favorite). So there were a few I hadn't read in quite a while, until last year. But this year is already passing, so let's get to it:
Macbeth
Shakespeare
Really struck this time by the bird imagery; still working out the way it's used. I think I re-watched Throne of Blood in conjunction with this. I should post movie updates as well.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
I had started re-reading this a couple of years earlier. I read it slowly, with long gaps, which is a good way to read this book in particular (though it's also increasingly the way I read everything). I had read it in college, for an American literature course. I was fascinated then by the reactions when people saw me carrying it around: ten years earlier it had been a touchstone book, but when I read it (in the late 1970s) every person said, Oh, I had to read that in high school, & I hated it. I could image their idealistic high school English teachers, assigning the significant books of their generation, to an ensuing generation that wasn't having it. Thoreau is always going to be thorny, I think, & controversial; I need to read more of him. A few years ago the New Yorker ran an article attacking him by a woman whose name I can't remember. It seemed to me she missed his point(s) completely. I remember she went on about how he doesn't give the exact depth of some body of water. In that American lit class, we had an entire lecture on how he doesn't give us the exact depth, & what that means. In short, she was a journalist & Thoreau was a poet & philosopher & she just didn't get him.
Timon of Athens
Shakespeare
This one has actually been staged a few times recently, which is interesting. This play, with its heedless millionaire turned misanthrope, seems to hit the current world in a suggestive way (I saw a staging in which Timon was, though I dislike this term, a tech bro – provocative, especially as I'd always pictures Timon as an older man, possibly influenced by the Milton Glaser cover for my Signet Classic Shakespeare edition). When I first read it decades ago, the consensus was that it was unfinished. Recently I looked for more current thinking, &, as collaboration is a big thing now (no more solitary genius expressing his vision!) Timon is presented as a co-written work. But that still doesn't explain some of the loose ends, like why Alcibiades makes a long speech begging for mercy for someone we don't know anything about, or why the amount of money Timon needs keeps changing.
Within a Budding Grove
Marcel Proust
I re-read Swann's Way at the end of 2024, but I'm being a purist & this list is only 2025. I re-read Proust about every 10 years (it was a bit over that this time). I've been doing this since the series was known by the evocative but less accurate title Remembrance of Things Past. It's one of the central books of my life. But as with stepping into rivers, you never read the same book twice. I was struck this time by how comical much of Proust is, but often in a very awkward way that maybe struck me when I was younger as almost too embarrassing to be funny. And of course one point of the novel is the shifting in perception: characters change throughout the book, & then they change in how we react to them. When I decided to re-read, I briefly considered picking up one of the newer translations, but I decided to stick with the Moncrieff, as revised by Kilmartin & Enright. It is one of the classic translations, & I already had all the volumes,, in lovely hardback Modern Library editions. But there were a few things (Britishisms, phrasing that's a bit outdated) that made me think I should explore some of the other translations, next time around.
Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare
I have to confess that I have increasingly complicated feelings about this play. There's something a bit desperate about the word play between Beatrice & Benedick: have you ever been in a relationship / friendship where you were always supposed to be "on", always "witty"? It can be grating & ultimately exhausting. As Shaw pointed out, much of what B & B say to each other is not particularly clever (in fact, much of it is downright rude); it's the phrasing that makes it magic. Of course breaking out of that endless "wit trap", or trying to, is what the play is about. Claudio is a fine example of one of Shakespeare's young men who is a romantic hero, officially, but not a particularly nice or admirable person. Years ago a friend of mine was understudying the part & he asked me about one of Claudio's lines: why does he ask if Hero is the only child? I pointed out that if Hero is the only child (meaning, there is no male heir), then her husband would inherit her father's estate entirely. Charming fellow! This play is quite popular now. I wonder if it's because of the Branagh film (which I had mixed feelings about), or is it just hitting the zeitgeist in some other way?
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Shakespeare
Fabulous in every sense.
The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare
Another play made more complicated by subsequent history. It's a mark of Shakespeare's genius as a playwright that though Shylock remains basically villainous, you can't help but sympathize with him. He's complicated (contrast that with Marlowe's Barabbas from the Jew of Malta, which will show up later on this list, who wins us over basically because of his zest in doing evil, but who lacks the emotional complications of Shylock – his love for his late wife Leah, not to mention his complicated emotions for his daughter & his ducats – but also his sophisticated justification for revenge in the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech). Of course, Shylock sort of swamps the rest of the play, which has many lovely moments (see Berlioz's borrowing in Les Troyens's Nuit d'ivresse of the Act 5 flirtations between Jessica & Lorenzo). Interesting that the Victorians looked on it as a romantic comedy, & for us it's more of a problem play: but of course we live in a post-Shoah world.
Lucy Church Amiably
Gertrude Stein
So Gertrude Stein is making her first appearance. This book has the lovely subtitle "A Novel of Romantic beauty and nature and which Looks Like an Engraving" & that's pretty much it. I know Stein drives a lot of people crazy. My theory is that if you connect with her rhythms on a deep level (& apparently I do), you will love her. Otherwise, maybe not your cup of tea.
The Guermantes Way
Marcel Proust
Volume 3, in which the narrator explores high society. There are some reminders in these novels (the discussion, for instance, of "servants" who started calling themselves "employees") that this is all taking place in a very different world. The high society here, based on an aristocratic descent that is completely alien to an American, for whom money, inherited or not, is the main dividing line, is interesting exactly because it's so foreign. I can understand the romance of someone descended from Genevieve of Brabant; it's historical poetry, a glowing link to a golden past, though of course the actual people are . . .well, people.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare
Quite a charming play, though, as is often noted, overshadowed by the later, greater romantic comedies.
The Wife of Bath: A Biography
Marion Turner
Fascinating & engaging history of the sources & offspring of Chaucer's celebrated Wife of Bath (including the intriguing thought that she was one of the sources for Falstaff).
Julius Caesar
Shakespeare
This used to be taught in American high schools, long ago, to show that "Shaespeare approved of democracy" (!!!!!) (& also the verse is not too knotty); it should have been taught as a perfect example of Shakespeare's technique, because no matter what you think of anyone in this play & his or her actions, he forces you to confront another perspective.
OK, that's Part 1.
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