On the to do list . . .

New Year's resolutions for the new decade?

Still working on my list from 2006.

Or, rather, I'm still working up to working on my list from 2006. It's a slow process and takes a lot of due consideration.

However, I know one thing about that list: I'm sure I'll learn Spanish before I ever finish that Dave Eggers book. (Daft thing is, is that living in our new neighbourhood I might be better off learning Russian or Hebrew instead.)

I will add one addendum to that wish list that can be acted upon right away. I undertake to get back to publicising the current issue of the Socialist Standard on the blog. I know I've been better in recent months but I really was slacking earlier on last year. Not good. Must do better.

Those 2008 New Year Resolutions In Full

What he said.

Do I Even Know How To Read? Do You Even Know Me?

Nothing like a broadsheet reading poll to show one up to be the poorly read dolt that you've always suspected yourself to be.

It's not enough that I don't 'get' the subtle nuances of the handful of books that I have read, it now transpires that there are 48 must-read lost classics out there that I've not even heard of, never mind read.

Snappy Kat can probably guess the one book out of the fifty from that Observer's Forgotten Fifty that I've actually read, and I will put my hand up to having actually heard of 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' by David Nobbs, but I fall into the category of people who thought that the book was a novelisation of the sitcom, and not the other way round.

The fact that none of the fifty "celebrated"* writers feel fit to mention Gordon Legge's 'The Shoe' or Edward Gaitens' 'The Dance of the Apprentices' seems to confirm my long held suspicion that both books are lost classics only within the realm of my ever-diminishing brain.

*Of course they are 'celebrated'. Any time I see Will Self's name in the paper, I do a Mexican Wave in his honour. I'm sure you're the same.