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Having happily idled away many hours of ‘07 by reading book blogs, I’ve decided to start one of my very own.

Here’s the end-of-year reading I’m treating myself to:

I’ll review the first-time reads- The Bookshop and Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love- and recommend the old favourites- Pride and Prejudice and A Study in Scarlet.

And here’s what I plan to read over January:

From the top:

1. A Pair of Blue Eyes- An early (1873) Hardy novel, new to me and eagerly anticipated due to the Hardy that I’ve read and cherish (Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge and of course, Tess).

2. John Bayley’s Iris trilogy- I’ve been meaning to read this memoir of Iris Murdoch by her husband since it came out. It’s languished on the TBR pile ever since!

3. Anna Karenina- because it’s been too long since I read it. Re-reading this may inspire me to tackle War and Peace in ‘08.

4. Elementals by A.S Byatt- I recently re-read Byatt’s brilliantly unsettling Little Black Book of Stories. Hopefully these six earlier short stories “of fire and ice” are as good.

5. To start my personal Dickens project, and on a lighter, more cheerful note- The Pickwick Papers. This is a good ongoing read to ration out over the month.

6. Moving from the fun to the fantastic ,Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. #2 in the Thursday Next series features Dickens’ own Miss Havisham and should provide some literary light relief.

7. Lastly, the first two books in Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie quartet. I’m suffering #44 Scotland Street withdrawal symptoms. Until further adventures of Bertie and his fellow residents materialise, I seek consolation in another McCall Smith series.

Of course, given the demands of a FT job and other boring but necessary aspects of life, I may not actually read all of the above. It’s a pleasure planning to, and I’ll be interested to see how I’ve gone at the end of January.

For now though, Rereadings, a cup of tea and my comfy bed are calling.

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