This Year's Reading List

This year I wanted to plan my recreational reading more than I have in past years.  I seem to flit from one mystery series to another, and while there’s nothing wrong with reading a good mystery or two, I haven’t been getting to the much better books that are gathering dust on my shelves.  With that in mind, I made a list of 12 fiction books that I want to read this year, approximately, one per month, although I probably won’t read them in the order I’ve listed them below.

Top Ten Fiction Books to Read in 2013 (plus a couple of classics)

1.    Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
2.    Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
3.    NW, Zadie Smith
4.    The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers
5.    Arcadia, Lauren Groff
6.    The Round House, Louise Erdrich
7.    Live By Night, Dennis Lehane
8.    This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
9.    State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
10.  The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin
11.  Classic #1: Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
12.  Classic #2: Germinal, Emile Zola

Numbers 1 and 2 are both winners of Britain’s Man Booker Prize for fiction, and they’re the first two books in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the infamous secretary to Henry VIII.  Historical fiction is right up my aisle, so these are must-reads for me.

Number 3 is Zadie Smith’s novel of four Londoners who grew up in the same council estate but who lead very different lives as adults.

The Yellow Birds made several of the year’s best novel lists for 2012.  It follows two, young US soldiers during a stint in northern Iraq, where they’re thrown into the midst of an urban battlefield.

Number 5 narrates the history of a commune in upstate New York from the 1960’s to the present day through the eyes of the first child born there.

Number 6 needs little explanation, since Erdrich’s works are heavily reviewed and discussed in the US media. This one has garnered a lot of praise, and I’m interested in taking a look.

Dennis Lehane is one of my perennial favorites, so Live By Night was going to make this list no matter what.  And it’s historical fiction novel set in Prohibition-era Boston.  What’s not to like about that?

I have a secret to confess:  I’ve never read Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which would make me a pariah in any group of supposedly well-read people.  And I say, “So what.”  I’ll just make up for it by reading This Is How You Lose Her.

I’ve heard so many people rave about Patchett’s State of Wonder that I broke down and bought a copy, but it’s been gathering pixel dust on my Kindle ever since.  I’m determined to get to it this year.

Number 10 made a few of the year’s best lists, too.  The Orchardist was written by a local author and is set in the Cascade foothills, so I’m eager to see what the fuss is about.  And, again, it’s historical fiction, which I deeply enjoy.

The two classics on this list hardly need an introduction.  This year is the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, so it’s about time I got around to reading the first book in Proust’s monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time, depending on how literal you like your translations to be).

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Zola’s labor classic, Germinal, but it’s true, I haven’t.  It’s time to change that.